The 6 best grammar checkers in 2025 | Zapier TechTricks365

With all the hype around AI, it’d be easy to forget that AI tools have existed for a while now. One area where AI has been working its magic for years is in AI grammar checkers.

We’re not talking about AI writing generators here—these are purely AI grammar checkers, with broader editing tools designed to correct, refine, and improve your content. I use some of these apps daily as a prompt to make my writing more concise and, hopefully, more enjoyable.

So, if you’re looking for an AI grammar checker to help you spot and fix typos, improve your grammar, or take your content to the next level, you’ve come to the right place. I considered dozens of apps and did in-depth testing on the top contenders to narrow it down to these six apps.

The best grammar checkers

What makes the best grammar checker and AI content editor?

There are plenty of lists of the best AI grammar checkers, so what makes this one different? For starters, many of those lists become intertwined with AI generative writing apps, but this one steers clear and focuses primarily on AI content editing apps. Second, I didn’t just read these apps’ marketing materials and customer reviews. I spent dozens of hours researching and testing the best AI rewording tools, paraphrasing apps, grammar checkers, and other similar tools.

For transparency, I’ve used some of these apps for many years in my writing career. But I was also keen to review the competition and see what I was potentially missing out on. For each one, I signed up and ran the editor through its paces, testing various scenarios, like spotting and fixing spelling and grammar errors or cutting fluff to make the text more concise. 

I was also mindful that some editing apps do one thing well, like paraphrasing, while others cover several bases. In my experience, I’ve not found one editing app that does everything well. And that’s fine, as long as you know how to use a couple in tandem.

As I was testing the apps, here’s what I was looking for:

• Spelling and grammar checker. At a minimum, each app needed to have the ability to identify and fix punctuation errors, spelling mistakes, and typos—with minimal false negatives and positives. 

• Style and tone suggestions. The best apps use contextual understanding to refine or enhance your writing style.

• Style consistency. In some situations, especially when working in larger teams, you’ll want the option to build a custom style guide so everyone writes consistently. For example, you can get suggestions on style, tone, vocabulary, readability, and even gender neutrality and ensure it’s compatible with and accommodates your unique writing style. 

• Privacy and IP controls. To use an AI grammar checker, you have to upload or otherwise share written content—whether that’s an unpublished blog post, a forthcoming scientific publication, a contract, or anything in between—so I looked for tools that actively protect your privacy and intellectual property.

• Extra features. I was looking for built-in tools like multilingual support, plagiarism checkers, and paraphrasing tools to rewrite, shorten, or lengthen content when you want to write concisely or expand on a point

• Integrations. The best apps integrate with other writing platforms, such as Google Docs and Microsoft Word, or offer browser extensions.

Overall, I whittled the list down from over 30 possibles to the six best AI grammar checkers.

The best grammar checkers at a glance

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Best all-around grammar checker

Grammarly

Grammarly works on multiple desktop and mobile platforms, browsers, and apps. It’s a comprehensive AI “writing partner” (grammar checker) that covers all my criteria and includes extra features like a plagiarism checker. You can set your writing goals when you start a new document and get tailored suggestions based on your selection. And it also prompts for conciseness, clarity, and engagement automatically. 

With the built-in generative AI functionality, you can get more inputs for rewriting your text, like shortening it, making it more descriptive, or adjusting the tone to make it more assertive or diplomatic. Alternatively, if you want to quickly reword sentences, you can use its free online paraphrasing tool.

As a long-time user of Grammarly, I’m familiar with its quirks. Sometimes the suggestions are off or totally wrong—but, hey, it’s a machine, not a human, and it suggests more positives than negatives. One thing I like is the flexibility to switch the Chrome browser extension on or off. So, for example, I keep it switched off while writing in Google Docs, so I don’t get interrupted with suggestions. I much prefer to copy the text into the online editor afterward and work in editing mode then. The browser extension also doesn’t play well in WordPress, so I switch it off there again.

You’ll have to upgrade to the Pro plan if you want to create a style guide for your organization. So, for example, monday.com could specify that employees use “monday.com” when writing about their company. 

The Pro plan also lets you configure snippets and brand tones, and provides an analytics dashboard so that you can identify team writing trends. 

Currently, Grammarly only supports the English language. But it does recognize a number of spelling, grammar, and punctuation differences in American, British, Canadian, Australian, and Indian English.

Grammarly pricing: Free plan available, then $12/user/month for the Pro plan.

Best grammar checker for rewriting, shortening, or expanding content

Wordtune

Wordtune is the perfect companion to Grammarly. While it doesn’t check for plagiarism, it excels at rewriting, shortening, and expanding your content. It can even make suggestions for a more casual or formal tone. 

You can use it as an online editor, an add-in for Microsoft Word, or a browser extension for Chrome and Edge. For example, working in Google Docs, the app’s icon just hovers on-screen, waiting for you to put it to work. Simply highlight the text you want to rewrite, and it delivers several alternatives.

It’s a great option when you need a fresh take on what you’ve been working on. With the online editor, you also get a spelling and grammar checker to eliminate mistakes and a proofreader to ensure your writing is clear, concise, and fluent. But there’s no option to enforce style consistency like ProWritingAid or Grammarly.

Wordtune pricing: There’s a free version with unlimited text corrections but only 10 rewrites and AI suggestions per day, which is a good starting point. But the premium versions—from $6.99/month billed annually—also give you unlimited text recommendations plus extra rewrites and AI suggestions.

Best grammar checker for creative writing

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid works along the same lines as Grammarly, including the online editor where you can copy/paste your text or upload a document to work on. The interface is more crowded than Grammarly, with lots of reports and scores in the margins. It can be a little distracting initially, but it did highlight errors that Grammarly missed. For example, it stipulates that en dashes shouldn’t have a space on either side.

While it’s perfectly capable for simple grammar checks on any kind of writing, ProWritingAid really shines when you use it for creative writing and storytelling. 

The app features a ton of different reports designed specifically for this use case—like the Pacing report and the check for clichés and redundancies. The web editor also has reports that are particularly helpful for longer texts like manuscripts, including consistency, overused words and phrases, and structure. You can even get real-time feedback with Chapter Critique, Manuscript Analysis, and a Virtual Beta Reader.

Plus, you can create your custom style guide in the premium version. I tested this by adding a rule about not having spaces on either side of an em dash on the Zapier blog. For example:

• INCORRECT: You can use it as an online editor — where you get spelling and grammar suggestions — an add-in for MS Word, or a Chrome extension.

• CORRECT: You can use it as an online editor—where you get spelling and grammar suggestions—an add-in for MS Word, or a Chrome extension.

ProWritingAid also includes a Rephrase tool to help you rewrite sentences and AI Sparks to help you “edit” or “continue” your writing.  But you’ll need to purchase plagiarism checks as an add-on starting from $10 for 10 checks.

There are desktop apps for Windows and Mac, browser extensions, and add-ons for Microsoft Word and Google Docs. And ProWritingAid encrypts all data, so you can be sure your manuscript stays private and secure.

ProWritingAid pricing: There’s a free version limited to 500 words, 10 rephrases, and 3 AI Sparks per day, giving you basic writing suggestions. But you’ll want the unlimited premium version with extra functionality—from $10/month—to “write and edit like an expert.”

Best grammar checker for multilingual writers

LanguageTool

LanguageTool is a multilingual grammar, style, and spell checker with an AI-powered sentence rephraser and custom style guide. The rephrased suggestions are as good as other apps like Wordtune, and the level of grammar and spelling matches Grammarly.

You can copy your text or upload a Word document into the online editor to check and fix errors or paraphrase it. Once you’ve made your changes, you can export it as a Word document or copy and paste your text back into your doc. Alternatively, you can install the software on multiple platforms, including: 

• Desktop apps: macOS, Windows 

• Browser extensions: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Opera

• Office plugins: Google Docs, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice

• Email add-ons: Gmail, Apple Mail, Thunderbird

Another nice feature in the settings is the option to select the Oxford comma in British English. (It’s standard on other English varieties like U.S. and Canadian.) I also found the style guide worked as well as Grammarly and ProWritingAid when I performed similar tests. You can choose from one of five writing goals, from “Professional & serious” to “Personal & encouraging” and opt to toggle “Picky Mode”—which offers more in-depth style, tone, and structure suggestions—on or off for each text.

Enter a text in one of 30 different languages, and the app should auto-detect the change and make suggestions. Admittedly, I had mixed results here—when I pasted in some Spanish text, it instantly switched to Spanish and highlighted some spelling and grammar errors, but I didn’t see the same success with Italian text. That said, it’s super easy to manually set the language, and it worked fine in Italian once I did.

LanguageTool pricing: Free plan available; then $5.83/month (billed annually) for individuals or $66.40/user/year (billed every 2 years) for small teams of 2–20 members.

Best grammar checker with handy writing stats

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor is built to help you craft the most compelling, impactful, and concise writing possible. The online editor does offer grammar and spelling checks, of course, but these are a smaller part of Hemingway than some of the other apps on this list.

Beyond grammar checking, Hemingway looks for: overly long or complex sentences you can simplify or break up; adverbs, passive voice, and qualifiers that weaken your text; and words that have simpler alternatives. All of these are highlighted according to Hemingway’s color-coded system, making it super easy to identify where you can improve your writing.

I’ve used Hemingway off and on for many years now, and the overall vibe, interface, and focus on impactful writing hasn’t changed a bit. What has changed is the addition of a number of AI-powered writing tools to help you rephrase, polish and clarify, adjust the tone, and even make your writing more skimmable.

The app also gives your writing a grade-level readability score and a target score, which you can adjust from the default to make your writing more accessible or allow for more technical language.

Hemingway Editor pricing: Free plan available; from $8.33/month for the Individual 5K plan or $12.50/user/month for the Team 10K plan (billed annually).

Best grammar checker for academic writing

Paperpal

If you’re an academic, then you’ll want to try Paperpal. It’s designed for academic writing and provides subject-specific language suggestions for students, researchers, and publishers. It’s trained on millions of research papers that have been carefully edited and prepared for submission by professional academic editors. For example, it doesn’t like contractions—it suggests “can’t give” should be “cannot give”—and favors more academic words like “however” instead of “but.”

The grammar checker covers spelling, punctuation, and vocabulary. There’s also a consistency checker that flags academic conventions and inconsistencies, plus a translator, paraphraser, and plagiarism checker. There’s even a simple “Make academic” button that uses AI to “improve academic tone” of your writing.

You can decide how picky the app is by setting the editing mode to experimental, extensive, or essential. You can also select from American or British English style, though the grammar checker didn’t flag “realised” vs. “realized” in either mode.

Paperpal offers checks for plagiarism, journal submission, and AI review, plus help with research and citations. Aside from the online editor, you can use Paperpal as a Microsoft Word add-in.

Paperpal pricing: Free plan available; then $11.50/month (billed annually) for the Prime plan.

Do AI grammar checkers work?

As a freelance writer, I rely on AI content editing apps to highlight areas for improvement in my first drafts. Do I accept all the suggestions? No, I don’t. And that’s the rub. 

Grammar checkers are an aid—they’re not perfect. But between me and them, I can produce a solid first draft before my editors apply their superpowers. So my advice is to take them for a spin. Most have a free trial or free version to get you started, and then you can choose the premium AI grammar checker that works best for you.

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This article was originally published in May 2023 by David Hartshorne. The most recent update was in June 2025.