aiCat vs QuillBot
QuillBot: free tier capped by words per paraphrase; Premium starts from about $10/month on an annual term. aiCat: free to start, Premium starts from $6/month. Neither is a superset of the other, and this page says which is which.
QuillBot is a paraphraser with a very clear idea of what it is for, and if you are a student it is probably the better-fitting tool: the modes, the summariser and the citation generator are all pointed at coursework. aiCat is not a paraphraser — paraphrasing is one of the things one hotkey does, wherever the sentence happens to be.
What follows is written to be usable by somebody who ends up choosing QuillBot. Prices are floors — the cheapest tier each product is honestly available at — checked in August 2026 and worth re-checking on the vendor's own page before you decide on price alone.
Side by side, on the axes that decide it
| aiCat | QuillBot | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is built to do | Act on any selected text — rewrite it, translate it, explain it, check it, or answer a question about it | Rewrite a passage in a chosen mode, summarise it, and cite it |
| How the text gets there | It does not move. You select it where it is and press a key | You paste it into the site, or open the extension panel over it |
| Shape of the free tier | 10 aiCatCoins a month, every task included, no per-sentence cap | Unlimited paraphrases, capped by words each time, with modes held back |
| Control over the rewrite | Asked in plain words — shorter, warmer, more formal — with the original still on screen | Named modes and a synonym slider, which is more predictable |
| Citations and plagiarism | Neither | Both, at the paid tier |
| Languages | Whatever the model speaks; a selection can hold more than one | Several, with English clearly the strongest |
| Voice | Dictation into any field, and read-aloud | Neither |
| Price floor | Free; Premium starts from $6/month, or buy coins outright | Free with word caps; Premium starts from about $10/month |
What changes when the paraphraser stops being a website
- The text never leaves the application it is already in
- One key covers rewriting, translation, explanation, checking and voice, rather than one tab per task
- Coins are spent per request, so an idle month is free
- The free tier is not word-capped per sentence — a 500-character selection is a 500-character selection
What QuillBot has that aiCat has not built
- Purpose-built paraphrase modes, with a slider for how far to go
- A citation generator, which matters if you are writing papers
- A summariser tuned for long source documents
- A plagiarism check in the same subscription
Pick by the shape of your week
You are writing a dissertation
QuillBot. Citations, the summariser and the plagiarism check are all in one place and aiCat replaces none of them.
You rewrite messages, not documents
aiCat. Forty short selections a day is where the pasting cost is real.
You hit the word cap constantly
Either, but for different reasons — QuillBot Premium removes the cap, aiCat never had one and charges by use instead.
You also need translation
aiCat. QuillBot's strength is English rewriting; translation is not part of the product.
You work mostly outside a browser
aiCat. A browser panel cannot reach a native IDE or a desktop mail client.
Hands-on: paraphrasing the same paragraph in both
One person's account of using both. It is an opinion, it is not a benchmark, and it is here because the rest of this page is a table.
The test that decided it was dull on purpose: the same awkward paragraph, rewritten in both, five times. QuillBot's Formal mode produced the more consistent result — you can predict what it will do, and predictability is underrated in a rewriting tool. aiCat's rewrites varied more and were better twice out of five, worse once. What actually changed the working day was not the output quality: it was that the QuillBot version needed a tab, a paste, a mode click and a paste back, and by the fourth repetition I had stopped bothering for anything under a paragraph. The sentences you do not fix because fixing them is annoying are the real difference between these two.
Stay on QuillBot if you are writing papers
If you are writing papers, QuillBot's citation generator and plagiarism check are worth the subscription on their own, and aiCat has neither. The paraphrase modes are also genuinely more predictable than asking in words — you learn what 'Formal' does to your prose and it does it again.
aiCat is the better fit when the rewriting is scattered through a working day rather than concentrated in one document, and when half of it is not in English.
Try aiCat on the text QuillBot cannot reach
Free to start, 10 aiCatCoins included, no card. 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 |
Read the whole page? Then you were deciding. Try both — QuillBot keeps its key
aiCat is free to start with 10 aiCatCoins a month and does not conflict with anything else on your machine.
Frequently asked
Is aiCat a good QuillBot alternative?
It depends on why you are looking. aiCat replaces QuillBot for people who want one key that acts on text anywhere on the machine, in any language. It does not replace QuillBot for named paraphrase modes with a synonym slider you can actually feel, which is what QuillBot is built around.
Is aiCat cheaper than QuillBot?
It depends entirely on how often you use it. QuillBot Premium starts from about $10 a month and its free tier is capped by words per paraphrase, which is the cap most people eventually pay to remove. aiCat starts free and Premium starts from $6, but the alternative to subscribing is the point: coins can be bought outright at $1 = 200 and never expire, so rewriting forty sentences a month costs somewhere under a dollar and no subscription at all.
Can I use aiCat and QuillBot together?
Yes, and the boundary is obvious once you have both: QuillBot for the essay you are drafting in one long document, aiCat for the forty scattered sentences a day that live in Slack, an email client, a CMS and a code review.
What does QuillBot do that aiCat does not?
Purpose-built paraphrase modes, with a slider for how far to go; A citation generator, which matters if you are writing papers; A summariser tuned for long source documents; A plagiarism check in the same subscription.
What is aiCat?
aiCat is a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux. You select text anywhere on your computer, press one hotkey, and an AI does what you need with it — proof-read, translate, explain, check the facts, read it aloud, or answer a question about it.
Does aiCat work in every application?
Yes. It works at the operating-system level rather than through per-app plugins, so it covers native apps, browsers, IDEs, terminals and PDF viewers alike.