Grammarly is among the best tools for everyone who writes, works with content creation, and looks for instruments and tips on how to improve academic writing. It’s multifeatured, accurate, precise, and user-friendly. It helps you write, edit, and check your writings for plagiarism and AI text patterns.
If it’s so great, why look for a Grammarly alternative then?
With so many corresponding tools on the market, it’s worth exploring other players to see if they better suit your writing needs. Plus, as with everything in this world, Grammarly isn’t ideal: price, English-only functionality, integration options — all these can be arguments to consider competitors.
Below are your top Grammarly alternatives to check and compare to choose the most suitable academic writing tools for your needs.
What Is Grammarly?
For those unfamiliar with Grammarly, here is a pinch of background information:
Grammarly is an English language writing assistant tool. Born in 2009 from the vision of Ukrainian entrepreneurs, it has grown from a simple grammar checker to a comprehensive AI-powered software. Today it’s a personal coach for writers of all levels, assisting with spelling, grammar, punctuation, writing style, tone, originality, and more.
It has free and paid versions, is browser- and mobile-friendly, and welcomes millions of daily active users.
Why Look for Grammarly Alternatives
The better the tool, the more limitations it introduces to its features and access. Grammarly isn’t an exception. A free Grammarly version isn’t your option if you are looking for research paper editing tools and need an AI-driven writing assistant beyond spelling or grammar checks.
Here are some of its drawbacks you should know:
- Grammarly’s free version is for checking grammar and spelling errors only. You won’t have access to a plagiarism checker, an AI detector, or writing style and context improvements.
- Grammarly’s paid version is on the more expensive end of the spectrum if compared to similar tools.
- Grammarly only supports English.
- Grammarly’s editor limits you to 4MB and 100,000 characters documents, which can be problematic for those working with more extensive texts like academic research papers.
Speaking of academic writing, by the way:
As a college student or aspiring scientist, you may want to try Grammarly’s alternatives that offer industry-specific suggestions (tech documentation, academic language, niche-related terms, etc.). Other platforms’ features may align closer with your requirements.
5 Best Alternatives to Try for Academic Writing and Research Papers
Let’s see what other Grammarly-like tools you can test to improve your academic writing and research papers. We’ll cover the top five here so you don’t drown in the pandemonium of instruments promising to enhance your writing clarity, style, and effectiveness.
1. LanguageTool
It’s a spelling and grammar tool that operates much like Grammarly but is open-source, meaning that you can try it for free even without registration. LanguageTool works in 25 languages and offers the “Mother Tongue” feature:
If you are an ESL student who often writes academic papers, you can select your native language and the one you write in, and the tool will look for common mistakes between the two and offer suggestions on how to improve both. It also has a “Picky mode” for you to maintain your writing style and voice throughout the documents.
LanguageTool checks spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Like Grammarly, it can detect passive voice and suggest synonyms for common and overused words: Perfect to enhance your vocabulary and make your academic papers sound more professional!
A nice bonus: Affordable premium option for students.
2. WhiteSmoke
WhiteSmoke is a multifunctional proofreading tool that makes suggestions based on your writing style. (It’s essential in academic writing for an author to maintain consistency and communicate a comprehensive message to the audience.)
Use it as a spelling and grammar checker to detect and correct drawbacks like passive voice, mechanical errors, subject-verb agreements, and sentence structure. Also, WhiteSmoke includes a translation feature that can help ESL students craft better papers. A plagiarism checker is available here, too.
A nice bonus: 100+ templates for different writing needs (medical, legal, business, etc.)
3. Writefull
This one is perfect for college students looking for help with academic writing. It checks essays and research papers for grammar errors, proper paraphrasing, and overall language quality. You can also use it to generate titles and abstracts for your academic papers.
A nice bonus: Writefull can rewrite your informal sentences in academic language! They call this feature “Academizer,” and it’s perfect for those needing a formal writing style for their papers. Plus, you can use Writefull as a GPT detector: It will check your texts for AI text patterns so you can revise them accordingly.
A free subscription is available; a paid one gives you unlimited language searches and suggestions.
4. PaperRater
Designed specifically for college students, PaperRater helps you correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes in academic texts. It will rate them and suggest word choice and style improvements.
A free version also includes ten monthly plagiarism checks to avoid unintentional duplications and prevent copyright infringement in your essays and research papers. The con: You have only 1,500 words to check for free and 6,000 words for the premium version.
A nice bonus: There’s no need to download the tool or look for extensions. You upload a document or copy and paste your text online at their website — and get a printable summary report in a minute.
Their premium subscription is relatively cheap, which makes PaperRater an affordable option for students.
5. Ginger
This Grammarly alternative isn’t new on the market, with thousands of loyal users worldwide. Ginger finds spelling and grammatical mistakes and rephrases poor abstracts for better clarity and readability.
Both desktop and mobile versions and a Microsoft Office add-in are available, and you can try this tool for free to see if it fits your writing needs.
A nice bonus: Ginger translates texts into 40+ languages and reads your writing to you so you can “hear” and detect awkward phrasings and sentences to revise. More than that, it offers grammar tutorials, which might be very helpful for non-English speakers willing to improve their writing.
Which One Will You Try First?
We love Grammarly. This article is not about humiliating them or demonstrating how bad they are. The point is that these guys aren’t the only ones on the market, and we have worthy alternatives to try for our specific writing needs. The five from this article are great options for college students and those dealing with essays and research papers:
Try any of them to enhance your vocabulary and polish your academic writing skills.
