Best Content Editing Tools to Improve Your Writing: ProWritingAid vs. Grammarly

Are you a blogger, freelance writer, or web content editor? 

Or even a novelist?

Are you embarrassed by grammar and spelling mistakes in your articles or books?  

Do you worry it will cost you contracts, readers, or even sales?

Well, you could be right. In one survey, US businesses with poor grammar and spelling on their websites lost double the number of potential customers than those with fewer errors. [1]

And if you’re a novelist, it’s the same scenario. Sherna Khambatta, who handles both fiction and nonfiction at Wade & Doherty Literary Agency, said in an interview asking why agents reject manuscripts: “The manuscript is not worth our attention if there are glaring grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.” [2]

Part of the problem is time. Often as a blogger, freelancer, or editor, you are committed to writing thousands of words daily. Even a novelist nowadays is expected to produce new books much faster than before. And that’s when errors creep in. Errors you just haven’t the time to hunt down and eliminate.

Which is where grammar checkers can help.

What are ProWritingAid and Grammarly?

ProWritingAid and Grammarly are both grammar checkers, although they can do a lot more than just check your spelling and punctuation. 

Perhaps a better description would be ‘writing enhancement tools.’ 

They analyze your writing not only at a word, sentence, and paragraph-level to spot basic errors but also as a whole to spot inconsistencies in style and tone.

Both are available as stand-alone programs or as extensions to apps. The stand-alone programs can be used online or on your desktop, while the extension can be used with a wide variety of popular apps from email and social to word processing and project management. 

For instance, if you are using Chrome, simply head to the Chrome Web Store and add the Grammarly extension. Then as you write in Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other program you use in your browser, it will automatically correct your grammar and spelling or offer suggestions for you to accept or reject.

Both programs have free and paid versions, although the free version of both is limited in features.

ProWritingAid vs. Grammarly

Before we review ProWritingAid and Grammarly separately, let’s see how they compare side by side:

What is the Best Editing Software for Writers?

ProWritingAid and Grammarly are both quality products that have excellent grammar and spell checkers. Beyond that, there are several differences.

If ease of use is most important to you, then Grammarly is probably your best choice. Its interface and extensions are more user-friendly, making it more suitable for the casual user. The learning curve with Grammarly is a little less steep than with ProWritingAid.

However, suppose in-depth feedback on particular aspects of your writing is essential to you. In that case, it’s worth the extra effort to master ProWritngAid’s many reports as they concentrate on the text’s overall tone and style, which is particularly useful to fiction writers.

If you spend most of your time writing shorter pieces like blog posts and web pages, Grammarly is for you as it is geared towards writing. ProwritingAid really comes into its own with longer texts such as books, although, as its reports can be very detailed, it is best to analyze a chapter or two at a time.

ProWritingAid also offers more reference points to check your work against, so if you are writing, say, Young Adult fiction, you can set this default at a macro level, so the reports show relevant corrections. 

If you struggle to find the right ‘tone’ for your writing, both programs can be very useful. Grammarly has several settings for the piece’s overall tone, which might be sufficient for emails and blog posts.

However, if you want to go further, you’ll need ProWriting Aids as it can compare your work to, say, Zig Ziglar, Timothy Ferris, or even Stephen King!

Can AI Grammar Checkers Replace a Human Editor?

It might surprise you that at the time of writing, even if you are only using a grammar checker to correct spelling mistakes, it still can’t replace a professional editor. 

For instance, both ProWritingAid and Grammarly may miss homophones, among other grammatical errors.

Homophones are words in the English language that sound the same but have different spellings. For example:

Get started: Grammarly

Grammarly fails to detect the error because the sentence is poetic, not logical.

It is the ‘night’ that has fled, not the ‘knight’.

This is just one example where grammar checkers cannot fully replace a human editor at the time of writing.

ProWritingAid Review

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Chris Banks, a seasoned programmer, founded ProWritingAid in 2012 to help with his own writing.

He soon realized there was a demand for a grammar checker for authors wanting to tidy up their writing before submitting it to a publisher or agent.

Since then, ProWritingAid has grown into a tool suitable for anyone who writes, no matter what field they are in. 

What is ProWritingAid?

ProWritingAid is a series of algorithms that analyze any given text and compare it to a pre-existing database for anomalies.

So if it comes across the word ‘catt’, it examines its database to see if there is a similar word.

If not, it will flag it as an error and suggest an alternative (or several) from its database. 

As I said in the introduction, its algorithms are much more advanced than that.

If you tell it what genre you are writing in, it will analyze whole passages of text. It will then compare them to a specific database matching your genre and flag differences in average sentence length, style, tone, and more.

Why is ProWritingAid Different?

The unique thing about ProWritingAid is how much you can customize its reports for your particular needs.

Like Grammarly, you can set the type of English you write in:

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Also, like Grammarly, it has a style feature that allows you to set several options:

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Unlike Grammarly, however, this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of customization.

ProwritingAid also has a feature called document type. You can set it to a variety of different writing types, and it will check its database and adjust the results of the reports accordingly.

This is essential if you are writing in a particular niche, for instance, as what may be seen as a grammatical or stylistic error in one genre of writing may not be an error at all in another.

The example I gave as a homophone is a good example. If you were writing general non-fiction, and you used a sentence like:

“The night had fled, and the new day was welcoming in the dawn.” 

It would probably be too poetic or ‘flowery’ and out of character with the rest of the book. 

Once you’ve set the document type to ‘general non-fiction,’ ProWritingAid’s reports will check this, and any other sentence, against its database of published works in that genre and tell you how closely it resembles them.

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And you can be even more specific than that.

In the settings menu, you can specify a particular author whose work you wish to emulate, or at least be close to in style.

ProWritingAid will then analyze the given text against this author’s works (the ones in its database) and flag differences.

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Once you’ve set up your customizations, you can then choose from over 20 reports.

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The ‘Combo’ report can be customized to your requirements:

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How Does it Work?

Once you’ve opened an account, you have 2 options:

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1. Use the web-based editor on ProWritingAid’s site. Simply click ‘start web editor,’ go to settings (see above) and then paste in any document you want to be edited. You can then choose what reports you want to run. ProWritingAid will show you what needs fixing in the left-hand panel. Click on an item, and it will highlight the word or phrase in your document and suggest one or more alternatives.
2. Download and install an extension. Depending on the app, the features and the way the results are displayed may vary. You can either install an app through ProWritingAid’s website, your browser, the Chrome Webstore, or Apple Store. If you install it in a particular app, such as MS Word, it will check all documents you open in that app. If you install it in your browser, it will check your writing in any program it is compatible with, such as Gmail, Gdocs, Twitter, etc.

Is ProWritingAid Free?

The basic program is free (see above for details). However, to unlock all the features of ProWritingAid, you’ll need to buy the Premium Edition.

And if you want plagiarism checks as well, you’ll need a Premium Plus account. This gives you 50 checks a year.

Alternatively, you can buy plagiarism checks separately if you have a Premium account:

How Much Does ProWritingAid Cost?

Plan	Monthly	Yearly	Lifetime
Free	–	–	–
Premium	$20	$79	$399
Premium Plus	$24	$89	$499

Premium Plus, as mentioned above, gives you 50 plagiarism checks a year, or you can buy them separately:

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ProWritingAid Free vs. Premium

The free plan is limited to browser apps. You can use the online editor, but it is restricted to basic reports. 

If all you need is a spell and grammar checker, then you might be better off just using Word or Google Docs’ built-in grammar checkers. 

However, if you need your writing to be polished as well as error-free, then you’ll need the Premium plan.  

ProWritingAid’s Features

ProWritingAid includes a series of reports that analyze the text and suggest various improvements or alternatives. It also has useful features like a thesaurus.

Reports and tools:

• Real-time editing
• Summary report
• Style analysis
• Grammar-check
• Thesaurus
• Overused words
• Combo
• All Repeats
• Echoes
• Structure
• Length
• Transition
• Readability
• Sticky
• Cliches
• More Reports – Diction, Pronoun, Alliteration, Homonym, Consistency, Acronym, Dialogue, Pacing, Sensory, and House.

Special Offer with ProWritingAid

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What Apps Does ProWritingAid Work With?

As well as being a web-based program, you can use ProWritingAid in the following apps:

• MS Word
• MS Outlook
• Chrome
• Edge
• Firefox
• Safari
• Open Office
• Scrivener
• Google Docs

ProWritingAid Reviews

ProWritingAid scored an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars from a total of 282 reviews on Capterra. [3]

Here’s what one reviewer had to say:

Is ProWritingAid Worth it? 

If you write for a living or even a hobby, then ProWritingAid is definitely worth it.

The amount of time it saves going through copy and manuscripts trying to spot errors is reason enough to buy the Premium version. If you want to increase your productivity as a writer, the less time you spend on editing, the more you can spend on writing.

The amount of stress it could potentially save you also makes it worth it. Many writers are worried about pressing ‘send’ or ‘publish’ because they fear there are errors they have missed. ProWritingAid won’t catch every one, but it will almost certainly catch more than you will on your own.

There is also no real alternative that checks so many different facets of your writing, making ProWritingAid invaluable if you are writing more complex works.

However, it might not be worth the investment if you only write emails and the occasional article.

If you do need a grammar checker, then ProWritingAid is good value, being considerably cheaper than Grammarly if paid yearly.

Grammarly Review

Get started: Grammarly

Grammarly was founded in 2009 by Alex Shevchenko and Max Lytvyn, and Dmytro Lider. Initially based in Kyiv, Ukraine, it now operates out of San Francisco. 

What’s Great About Grammarly?

Grammarly has many useful features, but overall, it’s the ease of use that stands out. 

ProWritingAid is a great tool, but its interface is clunky to use and could be better designed. 

For instance, you often find yourself struggling to make corrections because the suggestion boxes overlay the actual text you are trying to change.

On the other hand, Grammarly has the impression of a top-class piece of software, where a lot of time and money has gone into making it as intuitive and easy to use as possible. 

Get started: Grammarly

Get started: Grammarly

How Does Grammarly Work?

Once you’ve signed up for an account, you have two options:

1. Upload a document to the web-based browser and work on it there.
2. Download and install one of the extensions and work on your document in your favorite app.

Get started: Grammarly

How much does Grammarly cost?

Grammarly’s pricing structure is more straightforward than ProWritingAid. There is a basic free account or a Premium account:

Grammarly Free vs. Premium

The free plan is okay as a basic spell and grammar checker, but if you write in any Microsoft, Word, or Mac app, the native grammar checker is as good.

If you write for a living or for work or are a student in higher education, then it is worth paying for the premium version.

Grammarly’s Features (Premium version)

Correctness	Clarity	Engagement	Delivery	Plagiarism Detection
Grammar, spelling, and punctuation	Conciseness	Compelling vocabulary	Tone detection	Checks over 8 billion web pages
Consistency in spelling and punctuation	Clarity-focused sentence rewrites	Lively sentence variety	Confident writing
Fluency	Formatting		Politeness
			Formality
			Inclusive language

Grammarly

Free and Premium Plans: Grammarly

What Apps Does Grammarly Work With?

Grammarly works with native apps for Windows and macOS as well as iOS and Android. It works in MS Word and Google Docs as well as several browsers:

• Chrome
• Safari
• Firefox
• Edge

It also works with several email, project, and social apps:

• Gmail
• Outlook
• Messenger
• Yahoo
• Documents and Projects
• Slack
• Asana
• Jira
• SalesForce
• Social Media
• Medium
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Grammarly Reviews

On average, Grammarly scored an average of 4.4 out of 5 stars from a total of 2,510 reviews on Trustpilot.

Reviewers generally praised Grammarly’s ease of use and the confidence it gave them in their writing. Overall, most reviewers believed it had saved them time and improved their writing.

Here are what a couple of Grammarly Premium users had to say:

Is Grammarly Premium Worth it? 

Grammarly Premium is worth it for several reasons. First, it will save you time trying to edit your writing and thus help increase your productivity. If you make a living writing, then that is especially useful. 

Second, It will save you embarrassment by helping you spot typos and poor grammar before your readers do. If you are a blogger or digital marketer, this could be especially important for your website’s reputation. 

Third, it will help make your writing clearer and more concise, improving your communication. And clear communication is the main aim of most writers. 

Grammarly’s free plan is too basic if you are serious about your writing. Two features in particular make the Premium plan worth buying:

1. Plagiarism checker. This is invaluable to make sure no one else is stealing your writing (or to make sure, if you are an editor, no one is trying to pass off work as their own that isn’t.) 
2. Automatic sentence rewriter. This would be great even if it only highlighted vague or awkward sentence constructions. However Grammarly goes a step further by providing an automatic rewrite feature, which is a huge timesaver.

Is ProWritingAid Better Than Grammarly?

ProWritingAid is better if you need it for analyzing long works like fiction books. In contrast, Grammarly is better for shorter, more straightforward texts like grade papers, blog posts, or business documents.

ProWritingAid and Grammarly are both excellent grammar checkers or ‘writing enhancement tools.’

ProWritingAid is better than Grammarly if you are an author, particularly of fiction, as you can tailor the reports to your particular writing.

Grammarly, however, is better if you are a student, editor, or business person as it is geared towards clarity and conciseness. It will also appeal if you are a freelance writer or blogger as it would increase your productivity and keep your work error-free.

ProWritingAid is better for those on a budget as it costs $79/year compared to $139.95/year for Grammarly.

However, Grammarly’s Premium plan includes unlimited plagiarism checks, whereas you have to pay extra on ProWritingAid’s Premium plan. Checks cost from $10 for 10 up to $200 for 1000.

Even if you did 100 plagiarism checks a year, however, ProWriting Aid’s Premium plan would still work out cheaper.

If you write books, ProWritingAid supports Scrivener, a popular tool with authors.

However, it doesn’t have a mobile application for Android and iOS, so you’ll need to go for Grammarly if you use either.

In the final analysis, ProWritingAid is focused on improving the quality of your writing.

In contrast, Grammarly is focused on saving you time and preserving your reputation by eliminating typos, grammar mistakes and helping you rephrase awkward or unclear sentences.

In the end, whichever you choose, grammar checkers like ProWritingAid and Grammarly save you time, stress, and possible embarrassment.

And they may even help you improve the quality of your writing so that you can get that next contract, sale, or book deal!

ProWritingAids FAQs

Is ProWriting Aid free?

ProWritingAid’s basic version is free, but to access all its features, you’ll need to upgrade to the Premium plan.

How much does ProWritingAid cost?

ProWritingAid Premium costs $20/month, $79/year or $399 for a lifetime subscription.

Grammarly FAQs

Is Grammarly free?

There is a free version of Grammarly, but it is limited to basic grammar and spell checking.

Is Grammarly illegal to use?

Grammarly is rarely illegal to use, but you should check your organization or college’s policy on grammar checkers before using it.

Is Grammarly really worth it?

Grammarly is worth it if you need clear, concise, error-free writing for your business, work, or college.

How correct is Grammarly?

Grammarly is correct most of the time, but it’s not guaranteed to spot 100% of errors, like any grammar checker.

Is using Grammarly cheating?

Using Grammarly is not cheating in most cases, but check your college’s policy on using grammar checkers.

Does Grammarly steal your work?

Grammarly does not steal your work, although it stores your work until you delete it if you use their online app.

Is there an alternative to Grammarly?

There are many alternatives to Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Ginger, and Hemmingway being some others.

Why is Grammarly Premium so expensive? 

Grammarly is more expensive than ProWritingAid because it includes unlimited plagiarism checks, whereas, with ProWritingAid Premium, you have to pay extra. Checks cost from $10 for 10 up to $200 for 1000.