5 Best Grammar Checkers for Google Docs

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For academics looking for the best grammar checker for Google Docs, we heard you! While Google Docs has basic spelling and grammar checks to correct grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and punctuation errors, very few help to align your language and tone to stringent academic writing conventions. Academics need tools that recognize specialized terminology, catch more complex grammar errors, and provide accurate, reliable writing assistance.

This is where academia-focused grammar checkers for Google Docs like Paperpal excel, offering comprehensive editing and proofreading assistance without requiring you to leave the familiar interface.

In this article, we evaluate top Google Docs grammar checkers, including Paperpal, Grammarly, QuillBot, ProWritingAid and Google Spell Check, covering their features and listing their pros and cons to help you make an informed choice.

Paperpal

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI academic writing assistant that offers accurate grammar checks for Google Docs. Students, researchers, and academics can now write and implement Paperpal’s real-time language suggestions without ever having to switch between tabs. This integrated workflow also allows students and supervisors, co-authors, or research teams to collaborate efficiently on Google Docs, reducing revision time and streamlining the writing and editing process.

While you can use Paperpal grammar checker free on Google Docs, upgrading to Paperpal Prime grants you unlimited checks as well as access to advanced features such as reference finder, citation generator, and plagiarism check directly from within the Paperpal interface.

Install Google Docs Add-on

Features of Paperpal’s Google Docs Add-on

Tailored for academic writing: Paperpal’s grammar checker for Google Docs recognizes academic contexts and terminology, providing precise suggestions to improve your text.
Grammar Correction: The powerful grammar checker can fix typos, spelling mistakes, punctuation issues like missing commas, and other more complex grammar errors.
Sentence Checker: Paperpal goes deeper, checking overall sentence structure and clarity and providing suggestions to improve overall readability and flow.
Tone Correction: Unlike other Google Docs Add-ons, the Paperpal grammar checker also recommends edits to help you maintain the proper academic tone in your writing.

Pros and Cons of Paperpal’s Grammar Checker for Google Docs

Pros	Cons
Most accurate grammar correction for academic text: Compared to Google Spell Check, QuillBot, and Grammarly, Paperpal offers the most accurate grammar correction tailored for academic text.	Mainly suited to academic writing: Paperpal’s grammar checks in Google Docs are perfect for enhancing academic writing, so they may not be the best tool for marketing and creative writing use cases.
No word count limitations in the free version: Compared to other tools that have strict word limits in the free version, Paperpal offers 200 language suggestions for free regardless of the length of your text.	Limited to language suggestions: Paperpal currently only offers language suggestions and a grammar checker for Google Docs. Features like AI reference finder, citation generator, chat with pdf and other paid features are accessible directly within the Paperpal interface (outside Google Docs).
Available across all major browsers: Paperpal ensures sophisticated academic writing and real-time editing support no matter where you write.
Multi-user access on shared documents: It allows your peers or supervisors to benefit from Paperpal’s grammar checker, making it easier and faster to collaborate when writing in Google Docs.
100% secure, Paperpal does not store, share, or use your work and documents written or edited in Google Docs to train its AI models.

Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the most popular grammar checkers for Google Docs. It is well known for its real-time grammar and spelling corrections and its clean, easy-to-use interface.

Features of Grammarly’s Google Docs Add-on

Grammarly’s grammar checker in Google Docs provides a comprehensive set of writing enhancement tools that operate in real-time as users compose their documents.

Grammar and Spelling Check, Clarity Improvements: Grammarly identifies and suggests corrections for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, punctuation issues, and verb tense errors. It also analyzes sentence structure, identifies wordy or awkward phrasing, and suggests concise alternatives.
Engagement and Delivery Analysis (Premium): Checks for sentence engagement (making writing more interesting), delivery (ensuring the tone matches the intended effect), and style consistency throughout the document.
Generative AI Capabilities (Premium): Grammarly can generate drafts for reports, emails, and other content, as well as sentence and paragraph rephrasing options, and it gives ideas to overcome writer’s block.
Authorship Feature (Premium): Grammarly now tracks the origins of text in a document based on its source (typed by the user, copy-pasted from browser-based sources, pasted content from unknown sources, AI-generated, rewritten by the user).

Pros and Cons of Grammarly’s Grammar Checker for Google Docs

Pros	Cons
Writing Enhancements: Provides solid writing assistance with real-time feedback. Identifies and underlines incorrect verb tenses, missed articles, wrong prepositions, and awkward phrasing for review.	Not Tailored for Academic Writing: Designed for general-purpose writing, Grammarly may miss more nuanced errors in academic writing. For example, it overlooked determiner errors that require in-depth contextual understanding, which Paperpal could identify and correct.
	Collaboration Compatibility Challenges: Struggles to maintain context, provide accurate suggestions when multiple users edit a document simultaneously. This can lead to misleading suggestions or missed errors, reducing its reliability in collaborative environments.

QuillBot

QuillBot’s grammar checker for Google Docs brings its language checks, paraphrasing, and summarizing capabilities together, allowing you to rephrase text to improve clarity or avoid repetition, summarize long passages, and check grammar and spelling – all within the Google Docs interface.

When installing the free version of QuillBot’s grammar checker for Google Docs, you’ll receive access to basic paraphrasing modes (Standard and Fluency) and fundamental grammar checks. Upgrading to QuillBot Premium grants you additional, more sophisticated paraphrasing modes, increases the word limit, accelerates processing speed, and includes a plagiarism checker.

Features of QuillBot’s Grammar Checker for Google Docs

Grammar Checking: QuillBot’s grammar checker for Google Docs highlights issues like subject-verb agreement, verb tense, punctuation, etc., and offers explanations for many corrections. You can apply suggested corrections with a single click using QuillBot’s “Fix All Errors.” This is convenient for handling numerous small mistakes, but it’s better to review changes individually to ensure accuracy.
AI Paraphrasing: Select text to rephrase a sentence or paragraph and choose a mode in QuillBot’s sidebar to generate a rewritten version of the selected text. The free version offers two modes (Standard and Fluency) with a 125-character limit. In comparison, Premium users get 7 additional modes and a higher word limit for paraphrasing.
Summarizing: If you want to condense a long article or document section, choose a summary length, and QuillBot will generate a summary of the selected text.
Vocabulary Enhancement (Premium): QuillBot suggests synonyms for overused words to improve variety.
Tone Insights (Premium): QuillBot Premium grammar checker for Google Docs includes a tone detection capability. Within the Chrome extension, a tone insight tool analyzes your text to determine whether it is formal, informal, or other and provides suggestions for modifications.
Other Tools: QuillBot’s Google Docs add-on also includes a Thesaurus feature when paraphrasing (you can click on words to see synonyms and adjust the synonym-level slider); if you have Premium, you might access tools like Compare Modes (to see outputs from multiple paraphrase modes side by side). However, some features like the Plagiarism Checker or Citation Generator may not be directly available inside the Google Docs integration; those are typically on QuillBot’s website.

Pros and Cons of QuillBot’s Google Docs Add-on

Pros	Cons
Ease of Grammar Checks: QuillBot’s grammar checker allows users to fix multiple grammatical errors in a document in a single click. This simplifies editing, especially in the final stages of submission.	Grammar Suggestions Need Improvement: QuillBot’s grammar checker for Google Docs can miss some complex grammar issues that Paperpal may catch and needs better stylistic improvements.
Multi-function Convenience: QuillBot can fix grammar mistakes, improve your writing style via paraphrasing, and generate a summary without using separate apps. This makes the Google Docs add-on versatile for writers who need more than just a grammar check.	Character Limits and Premium Dependency: QuillBot-free users face character limits (e.g., ~125 words at a time for paraphrasing and a cap on the number of uses per day), which makes it ineffective for a longer academic text.
	Occasional Processing Glitches: Users have complained that QuillBot’s Google Docs Add-on often faces hiccups, such as failing to load or “unable to scan” errors while processing large documents.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid is often described as an “editor’s toolkit” or a writing mentor for writers and students. This grammar checker for Google Docs provides over 20 in-depth writing analysis reports covering grammar, style, readability, overused words, clichés, sentence length variation, consistency, and more. It also allows you to run deeper reports (like checking how repetitive your vocabulary is or if you’re using passive voice too much), all while you edit in Google Docs.

ProWritingAid offers a free version with limited capabilities (it will analyze up to 500 words at a time and provide basic suggestions) and a Premium version, which unlocks complete document scanning, all reports, and integrations. When integrated with Google Docs, the Premium plan allows you to analyze the entire document without word count limits. However, huge documents may still need to be processed in chunks for best performance.

Features of ProWritingAid’s Google Docs Add-on

Comprehensive Grammar and Spelling Check: ProWritingAid’s grammar checker for Google Docs identifies errors like sentence fragments, misplaced commas, and spelling and suggests corrections. What sets it apart is the depth of its grammar explanations – it often tells you why something is wrong, which is great for improving your writing skills.
Style and Clarity Suggestions: ProWritingAid shines in offering stylistic improvements, flagging wordy or complex sentences and making them more concise. It also identifies passive voice constructions, or repetitive sentence starts and suggests improvements
25+ Writing Reports: All ProWritingAid’s analytical reports can be run within Google Docs (especially with Premium). With the free version, users can get a summary report, which provides an all-in-one look at the statistics in your writing. This involves your writing’s key scores, where it looks great, and areas that may need improvement.

Pros and Cons of ProWritingAid’s Google Docs Add-on

Pros	Cons
Detailed Feedback: Known for its in-depth analysis with 25+ reports on text quality, it also catches subtle consistency errors or overly complex sentences.	Usage Limits: The free version of this grammar checker for Google Docs only offers corrections for up to 500 words. Users need to upgrade for a comprehensive writing analysis.
Customization Based on Writing Style: The tool learns your writing preferences as you adjust settings or tell it to ignore specific rules, giving fewer false alarms for your particular style over time.	No Embedded Editor: Unlike other grammar checkers for Google Docs. ProWritingAid does not have an embedded editor within Google Docs. It opens a separate editor for making updates. This workflow, while effective, requires switching contexts during the editing process
	Aggressive Passive Voice Elimination: Like Grammarly, ProWritingAid also repeatedly suggests using active voice in academic text, which might lead to user frustration.

Google Grammar and Spelling Check (Built-in)

Google Docs comes with a built-in Spelling and Grammar Check tool for catching typos and simple grammatical errors without any third-party extensions. It automatically underlines potential spelling mistakes in red and grammar issues in blue as you type. It’s completely free and part of Google Docs by default, with no installation required.

Features of Google Grammar and Spell Check

Grammar and Spell Checks: Identifies likely misspelled words and provides basic grammar suggestions, including subject-verb agreement errors, incorrect word forms, determiner and article usage, casing errors, etc.
Punctuation Corrections (Basic): If you accidentally type two spaces between words, Google Docs will underline that (it might even autocorrect it silently, depending on settings). It may catch missing question marks or periods at the end of a paragraph, though this isn’t always consistent.
Multilingual Support: Google’s checker works for English and a few other languages, like Spanish and French.

Pros and Cons of Google Grammar and Spell Check

Pros	Cons
Completely Free and Built-in: The most obvious pro is that Google’s Spell checker is free and already part of Google Docs; no need to install anything or pay for upgrades.	Limited Accuracy and Depth: The biggest con for users is that Google’s grammar check is not very thorough, missing errors that other dedicated tools catch.
No Setup or Learning Curve: Users find it very easy to use – essentially, if you know how to right-click, you can use this checker.	No Style Improvement or Advanced Feedback: The built-in checker doesn’t flag excessive passive voice usage or wordy sentences or suggest synonyms to improve overall writing quality.
	Inconsistent Grammar Catching: When it comes to grammar correction, this is often a miss and go. For instance, it might catch a missing “a/an” in one sentence but overlook a similar error in the next.

Best Google Docs Grammar Checker for Academic Writing

Grammar checkers for Google Docs enhance the editing experience by providing real-time, comprehensive error detection and correction that far exceeds the capabilities of the platform’s native tools. Grammar checkers for Google Docs like Paperpal, Grammarly, QuillBot and ProWritingAid seamlessly integrate with Google Docs and boost productivity, minimize revision cycles, and help users produce polished, error-free content. However, when it comes to more nuanced academic writing that requires accurate, context-relevant suggestions to improve text, you can’t go wrong with Paperpal.

Whether you’re drafting your class assignment, PhD thesis, journal paper, lab reports, or other professional academic documents, Paperpal is the best choice to help you produce polished, error-free content while writing in Google Docs. See the benefits for yourself, install Paperpal’s free Google Docs Add-on and try it now!

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time. It leverages 22+ years of STM experience and insights from millions of research articles to provide in-depth academic writing, language editing, and submission readiness support to help you write better, faster.

Get accurate academic translations, rewriting support, grammar checks, vocabulary suggestions, and generative AI assistance that delivers human precision at machine speed. Try for free or upgrade to Paperpal Prime starting at US$25 a month to access premium features, including consistency, plagiarism, and 30+ submission readiness checks to help you succeed.

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