The best AI rewriting tools in 2026
Ten tools that will rewrite a sentence for you, listed A to Z, with the kind of writing each one is actually built for.
Every tool here will turn a clumsy sentence into a better one. That is not the interesting difference between them, and it has not been for about two years — the models underneath are good enough that output quality is rarely what makes somebody stop using a rewriter.
What decides it is the shape of the tool around the model: whether the text has to travel to it, whether it understands a manuscript or a Slack message, how much it costs in a month when you barely open it, and whether it works in the third application you use rather than only the first two.
The list below is in alphabetical order, not ranked. aiCat is one of the tools in it, so any ranking we published would be worth what you would expect — instead, every entry says plainly which situation it is the right answer for, and which it is not.
What was actually compared
- Where the text has to be before the tool can touch it
- How many actions stand between a sentence you dislike and one you can send
- What kind of writing it was designed around — a manuscript, a campaign, an email, a message
- Languages beyond English
- What a month costs when you use it four times
All 10, A to Z
| Tool | Price from | What it is | Languages | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiCat | Free · Premium from $6/mo | Every app, OS-wide | Any language the model speaks | One key that proof-reads, translates, explains, detects, dictates and reads aloud |
| ChatGPT | Free · Plus from $20/mo | Chat assistant | Multilingual | General reasoning that is still at or near the top of the field; Long, open-ended sessions where the task changes as you go |
| Claude | Free · Pro from ~$17/mo | Chat assistant | Multilingual | Long-form writing that keeps a consistent voice; Following detailed instructions about tone and structure |
| Grammarly | Free · Pro from ~$12/mo | Writing assistant | English-first | Deep grammar, spelling and clarity checking in English; A browser extension plus Office, Google Docs and desktop surfaces |
| Hemingway Editor | Free · Plus from ~$10/mo | Readability editor | English only | Making prose shorter and plainer, which most prose needs; A readability grade you can actually act on |
| Jasper | From ~$39/seat/mo | Marketing writing platform | Multilingual | Brand voice: it can be taught how your company sounds and hold it; Campaign workflows, templates and multi-asset generation |
| Notion AI | From ~$10/member/mo on top of Notion | Workspace assistant | Multilingual | Writing and editing inside Notion pages, where it is genuinely good; Answering questions about your own workspace, with the sources linked |
| ProWritingAid | Free (limited) · from ~$10/mo | Writing analysis suite | English-first | Twenty-plus reports on structure, pacing, echoes and readability; Genuinely useful for book-length manuscripts |
| QuillBot | Free (word-capped) · from ~$10/mo | Paraphraser | Several, English strongest | Named paraphrase modes with a synonym slider you can actually feel; A summariser and a citation generator in the same account |
| Wordtune | Free (limited) · from ~$7/mo | Rewriting assistant | English-first | Rewrite suggestions offered as a list you pick from; Casual/formal and shorten/expand controls that are easy to reason about |
The list, A to Z
aiCat
The one that goes to the sentence instead of asking for it
Why: Rewriting here is a hotkey over whatever is already selected, in any application on macOS, Windows and Linux, and the tool works out from context whether you meant fix, tighten or translate. Free to start; Premium starts from $6/month and coins bought outright never expire.
Watch out: A download and, on macOS, one permission. No style-guide engine and no citation tooling, so a company house style is outside it.
Download for free →ChatGPT
The rewrite that needs an argument about it first
Why: When you do not want a version of the sentence so much as a discussion about what it should say, a chat window is the right shape and this is the strongest of them.
Watch out: Every rewrite costs a copy, a switch and a paste back, which is why almost nobody uses it for the short ones.
aiCat vs ChatGPT →Claude
The rewrite that has to keep sounding like a person
Why: Consistently the best of the general assistants at rewriting a paragraph without flattening the voice out of it — useful when the draft is yours and you want it to stay that way.
Watch out: Same window problem as any chat tool, and the free tier runs out on a long working session.
How aiCat rewrites →Grammarly
The rewrite you did not ask for, offered before you noticed
Why: Half its value is that the underline is there while you type. For English prose it also has the deepest style engine on this page and the only enforceable house style.
Watch out: English-first, and it reaches only where its extensions and add-ins reach. Paid plans start from about $12/month.
aiCat vs Grammarly →Hemingway Editor
The rewrite that is really a deletion
Why: Most paragraphs that need rewriting are simply too long, and this says so faster and more bluntly than anything else here. The web editor is free.
Watch out: English only, one house style, and you paste into it.
How aiCat rewrites →Jasper
The rewrite that has to match a brand somebody signed off
Why: Built for marketing teams: it can be taught how a company sounds and hold that across a campaign's worth of assets.
Watch out: From about $39 per seat per month with no free tier. Wildly over-specified for fixing an email.
How aiCat rewrites →Notion AI
The rewrite that should know what the document is about
Why: Inside Notion it rewrites with the rest of your workspace as context, which is something no general rewriter can do without being fed the documents first.
Watch out: Only inside Notion, and it needs a paid Notion seat underneath it before the AI charge starts.
aiCat vs Notion AI →ProWritingAid
The rewrite that is a structural problem, not a sentence one
Why: Twenty-plus reports on echoes, pacing and readability across a whole manuscript. For anything book-length this finds what sentence-level tools cannot see.
Watch out: Overwhelming on a short piece, English-first, and the reports take learning before they pay off.
How aiCat rewrites →QuillBot
The rewrite with a dial on it
Why: Named modes and a synonym slider mean you can predict what it will do and get the same behaviour twice, which matters more in a rewriter than the feature lists suggest. Summariser and citations in the same account.
Watch out: You paste into it, and the free tier caps words per paraphrase. Premium starts from about $10/month.
aiCat vs QuillBot →Wordtune
The rewrite offered as a shortlist
Why: It hands you several versions of the sentence and lets you pick, which is a genuinely different interaction from being handed one. Casual/formal and shorten/expand are easy to reason about.
Watch out: English-first and browser-centred: native applications are outside it.
How aiCat rewrites →Hands-on notes
First-person impressions from using these, not a benchmark. They are here because everything above this point is a table, and a table cannot tell you which tool you will still be opening in three months.
Installing it was the part I expected to resent and did not: about four minutes, one permission explained in a sentence rather than a paragraph, and it was working. What I did not anticipate liking is that dictation and text sit on the same two keys — I talk out a rough version and then rewrite it without moving my hands anywhere else. It also quietly keeps what I have told it about my projects and brings it back where it is relevant, which is the difference between rewriting a sentence and rewriting one of mine. The honest cost is that it is a download: a desktop app, with an installer and a permission prompt, not a tab you open. If you want an assistant that is an application rather than a website, that is exactly the trade you are making.
Used it for a term of coursework years ago and again for a fortnight for this. It has not lost what made it good: the modes are predictable, and predictability matters more in a rewriter than people admit. The friction is unchanged too — a tab, a paste, a mode, a paste back — and by the fourth rewrite of an afternoon I was skipping the short ones.
The thing Grammarly does that none of the hotkey tools do is tell you before you asked. Half its value is the underline appearing while you type, and you only notice how much that was worth when you switch to something you have to invoke.
Still the fastest way to find out that a paragraph is 40% too long. It says one thing and says it clearly, and for a certain kind of over-written first draft it is more useful than the tools that cost money.
One of them is a hotkey. Try it on the text you have open
Free to start with 10 aiCatCoins, no card. Premium starts from $6/month. macOS, Windows and Linux.
aiCat pricing at a glance
| Plan | Price | aiCatCoins / month | Max selection | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10 | 500 chars | Everything aiCat does, plus free dictation and your own memory |
| Premium | from $6/mo (list $10) | 3 000 | 5 000 chars | Think More, read-aloud, encrypted memory, premium models |
| Team + Offline | from $18/member | 12 000 | 50 000 chars | Edit your memory, MCP access, local models, team sync |
| Enterprise | from $90/member | 150 000 | Unlimited | SSO, audit, best coin rate |
Shortlist of one? Start with the one that costs nothing to try
aiCat's free tier includes every task, 10 aiCatCoins a month, and coins bought outright never expire. macOS, Windows and Linux.
Frequently asked
Why is this list alphabetical rather than ranked?
Because aiCat is in it. Any ranking published by a product that appears in the list is worth exactly as much as you would expect, so the order carries no claim at all and each entry says plainly which situation it is the right answer for.
Which of these is free?
Hemingway's web editor is free outright. QuillBot, Wordtune, ProWritingAid, Grammarly, ChatGPT, Claude and aiCat all have free tiers with different shapes of limit — words per paraphrase, messages per day, or coins per month.
Do any of them work outside a browser?
aiCat does, at the OS level. Grammarly and ProWritingAid have desktop apps and Office integrations. The rest are browser or web-based.
Which operating systems does aiCat support?
macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows 10/11, and Linux as AppImage, .deb or .rpm.
Is my text sent anywhere?
Only the text you explicitly act on is sent to the model you selected, for that one request. Your history is stored locally on your device. Team + Offline can run a local model so nothing leaves the machine at all.