Grammarly Alternatives (2026): Cheaper and Free Options, Sorted by the Job You Need Done

By the AI Tools For Me team · Updated October 21, 2026 · Prices checked October 21, 2026

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Grammarly is a writing assistant that checks grammar, spelling and tone in the apps where you type. It has a free plan, and Pro costs $12/mo billed yearly or $30 billed monthly. The Grammarly alternatives below either do the same job for less or do a different job, like rewording or drafting, better suited to what you write.

The short answer

For a cheaper grammar and style checker, ProWritingAid Premium costs $120 a year, against $144 for Grammarly Pro. For rewording and summarizing, QuillBot Premium is $99.95 a year. If you want AI to write whole drafts, Jasper does that, but it doesn’t replace a grammar checker.

Grammarly pricing in brief

Grammarly has three plans. Free checks spelling and grammar, shows your tone and includes 100 AI prompts a month. Pro adds full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment, plagiarism and AI-text detection, and 2,000 AI prompts a month per member. Enterprise has no public price.

Pro’s price depends on how you pay. Grammarly’s support center lists $30 billed monthly, $60 every 3 months or $144 a year. Over 12 months that is $360, $240 or $144, so paying monthly costs 2.5 times the yearly price.

Grammarly alternatives compared: price, free plan and main job

An “alternative” here means one of two things: a tool that checks your writing like Grammarly does, or an AI writer that drafts text for you. The table shows which is which.

Tool	Main job	Yearly price	Monthly price	Free plan
Grammarly	Grammar, clarity and tone checks	$144 ($12/mo)	$30/mo	Yes, 100 AI prompts a month
ProWritingAid	Grammar plus style reports for long writing	$120 ($10/mo)	$30/mo	Yes, 500 words at a time
QuillBot	Paraphrasing, with a grammar checker	$99.95 ($8.33/mo)	$19.95/mo	Yes, 100 words at a time
Jasper	AI marketing drafts (not a grammar checker)	$708 per seat ($59/mo)	$69/mo per seat	No, 7-day trial
Writesonic	AI articles and AI search tracking (not a grammar checker)	$948 ($79/mo)	Not shown on the pricing page	No, free trial

US list prices before tax, cheapest paid plan. Grammarly, ProWritingAid and QuillBot checked October 21, 2026; Jasper and Writesonic October 10, 2026. QuillBot uses regional pricing, so it can show less in some countries.

What does a year cost?

Paying monthly can cost more than twice the yearly price. Here is the bill for 12 months of the cheapest paid plan, paid each way.

Plan	Paid yearly	Paid monthly for 12 months
QuillBot Premium	$99.95	$239.40
ProWritingAid Premium	$120	$360
Grammarly Pro	$144	$360 ($240 if paid quarterly)
Jasper Pro, 1 seat	$708	$828

ProWritingAid also sells Premium as a one-time $399 lifetime plan. That costs more than three years of its yearly plan ($360), so it only pays off if you keep using it for longer than that.

How did we choose these alternatives?

We looked at why people leave Grammarly: the $30 monthly price, wanting deeper feedback on long writing, wanting rewording rather than proofreading, or wanting AI to write the draft. For each reason we picked a tool and read its US pricing page. We haven’t tested these tools hands-on yet, so we don’t claim any of them catches more mistakes than Grammarly. We only compare published plans and features.

LanguageTool is a well-known option we left out for now: on October 21, 2026 its pricing page showed no prices (“There was an issue displaying the prices”), so we couldn’t check them. Wordtune, Hemingway Editor and Ginger aren’t covered yet either. We’ll add them once we’ve checked their plans the same way.

ProWritingAid: best for long-form and fiction editing

ProWritingAid is a grammar checker and style editor built for storytellers, with 25+ reports on things like repetition, pacing and sentence length. It starts at $10/mo billed yearly ($120), or $30 billed monthly. Free plan checks 500 words at a time.

Screenshot of the ProWritingAid homepage — ProWritingAid homepage, captured Oct 21, 2026. The live site may look different.

Compared with Grammarly: It does the same core job as Grammarly (grammar, spelling, punctuation) and adds deep style reports for long documents. Yearly Premium is $24 a year cheaper than Grammarly Pro ($120 vs $144). Month to month, both cost $30. ProWritingAid also sells lifetime access for $399, paid once.

Who it’s for: You write books, long blog posts or reports, and you want reports on overused words and pacing, not just typo fixes. It also works in Scrivener, Google Docs and Word.

Skip it if: You mostly write short emails and chat messages, or you want to pay month to month: monthly plans can’t be refunded, and the yearly and lifetime plans have only a 3-day money-back window.

Visit ProWritingAid Read the ProWritingAid profile

Source: prowritingaid.com, checked October 21, 2026

QuillBot: best for paraphrasing on a budget

QuillBot is a paraphrasing tool that rewrites text in different styles, with a grammar checker, summarizer, AI detector and plagiarism checker. It starts at $8.33/mo billed yearly in the US ($99.95), or $19.95 billed monthly. Free plan rewrites up to 100 words at a time in 2 modes.

Compared with Grammarly: It is the cheapest paid plan here: $99.95 a year against $144 for Grammarly Pro, and $19.95 against $30 month to month. Its center is rewording, not proofreading: the free grammar check fixes basic errors, and advanced grammar suggestions are on Premium.

Who it’s for: You rewrite and summarize a lot (students, researchers, bloggers reworking drafts) and want plagiarism checks of up to 25,000 words a month included.

Skip it if: Your main need is catching mistakes and adjusting tone wherever you type, or you need a team plan with a public price (QuillBot’s Team plan has none).

Visit QuillBot Read the QuillBot profile

Source: quillbot.com, checked October 21, 2026

Jasper: best for marketing teams that need drafts written

Jasper is an AI workspace for marketing teams that writes on-brand content with agents and brand voice controls. It starts at $59/mo per seat billed yearly, or $69 per seat billed monthly. No free plan; 7-day trial (card required).

Screenshot of the Jasper homepage — Jasper homepage, captured Oct 10, 2026. The live site may look different.

Compared with Grammarly: Not a grammar checker. Jasper writes new marketing content; Grammarly corrects what you wrote. A year of Jasper Pro for one person costs $708, about five times Grammarly Pro’s $144.

Who it’s for: Your team produces lots of marketing copy and the slow part is the first draft, not the proofreading.

Skip it if: You want a tool that checks your own writing as you type. Jasper doesn’t replace that.

Visit Jasper Read the Jasper profile

Source: jasper.ai, checked October 10, 2026

Writesonic: best for aI articles plus AI search tracking

Writesonic is an AI search growth tool that tracks where ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews mention your brand and writes articles to close the gaps. It starts at $79/mo billed yearly (Starter). No free plan; free trial (length not stated).

Screenshot of the Writesonic homepage — Writesonic homepage, captured Oct 10, 2026. The live site may look different.

Compared with Grammarly: Also not a grammar checker. Starter includes 15 AI-written articles and 50 tracked AI prompts a month. It suits site owners who want content and AI visibility in one place, not people who want their own sentences checked.

Who it’s for: You run a website and want AI-written articles plus a view of how AI assistants mention your brand.

Skip it if: You need everyday proofreading in email, Docs and Word, or a free plan.

Visit Writesonic Read the Writesonic profile

Source: writesonic.com, checked October 10, 2026

Is there a free Grammarly alternative?

Yes. Each of the three editing tools here has a free plan, and each is limited in a different way:

Grammarly Free checks spelling and grammar and shows your tone, with 100 AI prompts a month. Tone adjustment and full-sentence rewrites need Pro.
ProWritingAid Free checks grammar, spelling and punctuation on 500 words at a time, with 2 runs of each line-editing report a day and 10 Rephrases a day.
QuillBot Free rewrites up to 100 words at a time in 2 modes (Standard and Fluency), fixes basic grammar errors and summarizes up to 1,200 words.

Jasper and Writesonic have no free plan, only trials.

When should you stay with Grammarly?

Stay if you want one checker that runs everywhere you type, including email, chat and documents, or if your team uses shared style guides and brand tones. Pro covers 1 to 149 seats on one plan. Before you leave, try the cheaper ways to keep it:

Switch to yearly billing. $144 a year instead of $360 for 12 monthly payments.
Pay quarterly if you can’t pay a year upfront: $60 every 3 months, $240 a year.
Drop to Free if you mostly need typo and grammar fixes. You lose rewrites, tone adjustment and plagiarism checks.

See every plan on our Grammarly profile. For a feature-by-feature look at the two editing tools most people compare, read Grammarly vs QuillBot. For AI writers, see the best AI writing tools, or browse every AI writing tool we track.

FAQ

What is the best free alternative to Grammarly?

It depends on the job, and we haven’t tested accuracy side by side. For checking grammar on long text, ProWritingAid Free checks 500 words at a time. For rewording, QuillBot Free rewrites 100 words at a time in 2 modes. Grammarly’s own Free plan also covers spelling, grammar and 100 AI prompts a month.

Is there something cheaper than Grammarly Pro?

Yes. On US prices checked October 21, 2026, QuillBot Premium is $99.95 a year or $19.95 a month, and ProWritingAid Premium is $120 a year. Grammarly Pro is $144 a year or $30 a month. Inside Grammarly, paying quarterly ($60) also costs less than paying monthly.

Is QuillBot better than Grammarly?

They do different jobs. QuillBot is built around paraphrasing and is cheaper. Grammarly is built around catching mistakes and adjusting tone wherever you type, with team style guides on Pro. Our Grammarly vs QuillBot comparison goes through each feature and price.

Do Grammarly alternatives work in Google Docs and Word?

ProWritingAid lists Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Apple Pages and Scrivener, plus Chrome, Firefox and Edge extensions. QuillBot lists Microsoft Word, Chrome, Edge and Safari extensions, and desktop and mobile apps. Check each vendor’s site for the app you use most before paying.

Can AI writers like Jasper replace Grammarly?

No. Jasper and Writesonic write new content from prompts; they are not built to check your own sentences as you type. You can use an AI writer for first drafts and a grammar checker for the final pass. Jasper also costs far more: $708 a year per seat against $144 for Grammarly Pro.

Is ProWritingAid better than Grammarly for writing a book?

ProWritingAid is aimed at that job: it calls itself a toolkit for storytellers and includes chapter critiques, outline tools and Scrivener support. We haven’t tested it hands-on, so we can’t say its feedback is better. Try the free plan on one chapter first.

Sources

Grammarly, ProWritingAid, QuillBot and LanguageTool pages checked October 21, 2026; Jasper and Writesonic October 10, 2026.