Grammarly alternatives that are cheaper, broader, or both
Nine alternatives, A to Z, grouped by the reason people actually leave Grammarly: price, languages, or the applications it never reached.
People leave Grammarly for three reasons and it is worth knowing which one is yours, because the right replacement is different for each. Price sends you to LanguageTool. Languages send you to LanguageTool or a model-based tool. Coverage — the IDE, the terminal, the desktop client where the extension never went — sends you somewhere else entirely.
None of these is a drop-in replacement for what Grammarly does best, which is deep English style checking with suggestions that appear before you ask. If that is what you are paying for, the honest advice is to keep paying for it. Everything below is for the cases where it is not.
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
- Monthly floor price and whether the free tier does real work
- Languages checked properly rather than nominally
- Where it reaches: browser only, Office too, or every application
- Whether it does anything besides grammar
- Whether it can run without sending your text to a vendor
All 9, 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 |
| Ginger | Free · from ~$14/mo | Grammar checker | English, with translation add-ons | Grammar and spelling correction aimed at English learners; Sentence rephrasing suggestions |
| 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 |
| LanguageTool | Free · Premium from ~$5/mo | Grammar checker | 30+, genuinely multilingual | Grammar and style checking across thirty-odd languages, not just English; An open-source core you can self-host, which very few competitors offer |
| 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 |
| Sapling | Free · Pro from ~$25/mo | Business writing assistant | Several, English strongest | Built for customer-facing teams: CRM and helpdesk integrations; Autocomplete and snippet expansion for repeated replies |
| 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
If you left over coverage rather than price
Why: It reaches what an extension cannot: IDEs, terminals, native mail clients, PDF viewers — and any language the model speaks, on the same key that dictates. Free to start, Premium from $6/month.
Watch out: No team style guide, nothing appears until you press a key, and it is an installed application.
Download for free →ChatGPT
If what you wanted from Grammarly was a second opinion
Why: For 'is this rude', 'is this clear', 'what am I not saying' it is better than any checker, because those are questions rather than corrections.
Watch out: $20/month, a window to switch to, and nothing appears while you type.
aiCat vs ChatGPT →Ginger
The closest thing to Grammarly for an English learner
Why: Correction plus rephrasing plus a trainer that drills the mistakes you keep repeating — a shape Grammarly abandoned years ago.
Watch out: English only, thinner coverage than Grammarly, and a slower pace of development.
What aiCat checks besides grammar →Hemingway Editor
If your Grammarly suggestions were always 'this is too long'
Why: Free, immediate, and better than Grammarly at the one thing most drafts actually need.
Watch out: One opinion, English only, and you paste into it.
What aiCat checks besides grammar →LanguageTool
The straight swap, if price or languages sent you here
Why: Cheaper — Premium from about $5/month — with thirty-plus languages checked properly and a self-hosting option Grammarly has no answer to.
Watch out: It will not talk to you about style the way Grammarly does, and it does not claim to.
aiCat vs LanguageTool →ProWritingAid
If Grammarly was too shallow rather than too expensive
Why: Structural reports on a whole manuscript, Scrivener and Word integrations, and a one-off lifetime licence instead of a subscription.
Watch out: English-first, and far too much feedback for a two-line email.
What aiCat checks besides grammar →QuillBot
If most of your corrections were really rewrites
Why: Paraphrase modes, a summariser and citations alongside the grammar pass, which fits the case where 'fix this' means 'say it differently'.
Watch out: Word-capped free tier, paste-based, Premium from about $10/month.
aiCat vs QuillBot →Sapling
If Grammarly was bought for a support team
Why: CRM and helpdesk integrations, snippets, autocomplete and team analytics — the organisational half of what Grammarly Business is bought for.
Watch out: From about $25/month, and outside the integrations there is much less to it.
What aiCat checks besides grammar →Wordtune
If you wanted options rather than a correction
Why: Several versions of the sentence offered at once, with controls for register and length that are easy to predict.
Watch out: English-first, browser-centred, and it does not check grammar at Grammarly's depth.
What aiCat checks besides grammar →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.
I left Grammarly over coverage rather than price — half my writing is in a code editor and a terminal, where no extension goes. Getting started was about four minutes and one clearly-explained permission. The unexpected part was the combination: the same two keys handle dictation and text, so a long reply gets spoken and then tightened, and it keeps the details of what I am working on and applies them without my re-explaining. It is an installed app rather than an extension, which is precisely why it reaches the places the extension did not — if you want an assistant rather than a plugin, that is the trade.
The straight swap if price is the issue. Cheaper, more languages, and you can run it yourself. It will not talk to you about style the way Grammarly does, and it does not pretend to.
Nicer than expected for the specific job of offering five versions of a sentence and letting you pick. English only, browser only, and that is fine — it knows what it is.
If you run a support team it is a different proposition from the rest of this list: the snippets and the CRM integration are the product, and the grammar checking is the part you notice least.
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
What is the closest free alternative to Grammarly?
LanguageTool. Its free tier does genuine grammar and style checking across thirty-plus languages, and Premium starts from about $5/month if you want the deeper suggestions.
What if I write in two languages?
LanguageTool checks thirty-plus properly. Model-based tools such as aiCat or ChatGPT handle any language the model speaks, including text that mixes them inside one sentence.
Does anything replace the underline that appears as I type?
LanguageTool and Ginger, within their extensions. Hotkey-based tools including aiCat act when you press a key, which is a real behavioural difference and worth trying before you switch.
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.