Grammarly Review – Is Grammarly Worth it? [2025 Update]

You might find this Grammarly review unique. Unlike reviews aimed at users who write blogs or marketing copy, this one is for those engaged in academic writing. If you’re working on theses, essays, research papers, or literature reviews, this article introduces a Grammarly alternative you’ll want to consider.

Grammarly’s first-mover advantage has made it a dominant force in AI writing tools, attracting a diverse audience. Though researchers and academics initially adopted it for writing improvement, its effectiveness in academic contexts is still debatable. This Grammarly review compares the AI tool with an academic alternative to Grammarly, Paperpal, and differentiates its capabilities, pricing, and more.  We’ll critically examine Grammarly’s value and argue why it may not be the best solution for research writing.

Disclaimer: This article is based on independent research and is intended to provide an unbiased comparison of various AI writing tools, including our own. While we strive to present accurate and up-to-date information, features, and pricing, we recommend checking directly with the respective companies for the latest details, as offerings may change over time. Additionally, any opinions expressed here reflect the author’s perspective and may not represent the official stance of the companies/tools discussed.

TL;DR – What does this Grammarly review focus on?

• Grammarly is a comprehensive AI writing assistant that offers grammar checking, proofreading, spell checking, and plagiarism detection. It is ideal for bloggers, content creators, students, and authors.
• Grammarly suggests only 187 edits, i.e., 1.7 edits per sentence on average for academic writing, compared to Paperpal, which provides the highest number of suggested edits, 392 with 3.88 edits per sentence on average, which is >2x the number of edits that Grammarly (Academic mode) does.
• Why Paperpal is a better alternative for academic writing: – Exploring features like Language suggestions, Chat PDF, AI Reference Finder, Citation Generator, AI Writing Templates, AI Review, Plagiarism Checker, and more features tailored to academic writing
• Comparing the pricing plans and features of Paperpal and Grammarly followed by recommended uses for Paperpal vs Grammarly

Paperpal vs Grammarly – Quick Feature Comparison

What is Grammarly? 

Grammarly is a comprehensive AI writing assistant offering grammar checking, proofreading, spell checking, and plagiarism detection on a single platform. While core grammar improvement benefits most users, Grammarly extends beyond basic error correction with features tailored to various content types. Let’s review Grammarly’s features. Ideal for bloggers, content creators, students, and authors, Grammarly offers:

• Tone and Fluency suggestions: Provides writing feedback and tone recommendations.
• Rewrite and Paraphrasing: Provides suggestions to improve language clarity through generative AI paraphrasing and rewriting.
• Plagiarism detection: Flags specific sentences for similarity, provides information about the source, and calculates an overall originality score for your document.
• Generative AI Capabilities: Grammarly Go allows you to quickly compose, rewrite, ideate, and reply with basic prompts.
• AI Detector: Analyzes your text to detect AI-generated content, providing a clear score that indicates the likelihood of AI involvement. This allows you to submit your work confidently, knowing the extent of AI influence.
• Free Essay Checker: Grammarly’s free version is customized to identify grammatical errors in essays.
• Free Citation Generator: Enter your citation information, and Grammarly will format it according to APA, MLA, and Chicago style.
• Thesis Statement Generator: Share some basic details, and Grammarly provides ideas for your thesis statement.

Grammarly goes beyond simply identifying mistakes; it empowers users to strengthen their writing skills through detailed feedback and learning tools. Here’s a Grammarly review that considers academic writing as a use case and discusses its pros and cons.

Pros of Grammarly  

• Real-time language and grammar suggestions: Grammarly helps you check and fix grammatical errors as you write, resulting in a cleaner final result.
• Clarity and readability suggestions: Grammarly helps improve the clarity and flow of your writing by suggesting more straightforward word choices, restructuring sentences, and highlighting confusing passages. This can enhance your writing’s overall quality and accessibility to readers.
• Citations and formatting: Grammarly offers basic citation suggestions and formatting checks. This can save you time and ensure consistency in your references.
• Generative AI Capabilities: Based on your prompts, Grammarly provides you with polished drafts in seconds.

Cons of Grammarly

• Aggressive elimination of passive voice: Grammarly always nudges its users to use active voice to make their writing sound more natural and more precise. While using a friendly and inviting tone can be beneficial for marketing and business-related tasks, passive voice is not unusual in scientific writing, as it encourages a more objective style when describing data collection or outlining methods.
• Limited suggestions for academic tone: In our Grammarly review, we found that Grammarly’s tone suggestions are less attuned to the formality required in journal submissions. The AI writing tool also misses out on the usage of patient-first language, a crucial aspect of academic writing, particularly in the fields of medicine and healthcare.
• Limited detection of stylistic inconsistencies: While Grammarly catches inconsistencies in language and hyphenation, it has limitations in academic writing. It doesn’t consistently enforce specific academic style guides and often misses errors in tables, equations, figures, and number formatting, as identified in our detailed Grammarly review.
• Academic precision relies on expert prompts: Grammarly’s Gen AI does a great job of streamlining day-to-day tasks, like writing an email, rewriting, and paraphrasing generic text. However, crafting precise academic content requires absolute prompt mastery, and fine-tuning it to get your desired output can be time-consuming.
• No language translation capabilities: In our Grammarly review, we found that many ESL researchers grapple with effectively communicating their ideas in English. While Grammarly offers valuable assistance in correcting grammatical errors, incorporating a real-time translation feature directly within the writing process would be even more beneficial. This feature would empower ESL researchers to write seamlessly in their native language, with the tool automatically translating their thoughts into clear and accurate English.

Grammarly’s Pricing Plans

Based on our Grammarly review, the AI tool provides free and premium plans. The free plan allows users access to basic language and tonality checks and 100 Generative AI prompt usage at no cost. The premium plan, priced at US$30/monthly or US$140/annually, Grammarly allows access to tone adjustments, check plagiarism, build citations, and use 2000 Generative AI prompts.

In our Grammarly review, we found that most of Grammarly’s best features were hidden behind a paywall, preventing users from trying all the features before making a purchase. Grammarly also consistently reminds users to upgrade to Grammarly Premium to unlock all the additional features, which interrupts work and leads to frustration.

Moreover, Grammarly’s premium version doesn’t fully understand academic writing conventions and can misfire in cases that require strict adherence to academic tonality, accidental plagiarism avoidance, and more. Researchers should be cautious while using Grammarly for academic writing. Fortunately, there is a better Grammarly alternative for academic writing. Let’s delve into the details of this trusted AI academic writing assistant.

Why Paperpal is a Better Alternative to Grammarly for Academic Writing?

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI academic writing assistant trained on published scholarly content and backed by 22+ years of expertise in science, technical, and medical fields. This extensive training enables Paperpal’s AI to quickly analyze, understand, and offer reliable context-specific suggestions to enhance academic text.

When you compare Paperpal vs Grammarly, you’ll notice that Grammarly’s coverage of errors and language suggestions is pretty low. Paperpal’s machine learning models outperform Grammarly, providing 2 to 3 times more suggestions on par with corrections by professional academic editors. Paperpal acts as the perfect Grammarly alternative for academic writing and research, empowering users to research, write, cite, edit, and finalize submissions from a single editor.

In the previous section, we discussed how Grammarly’s free features are designed to entice you to buy a Premium plan. Well, with Paperpal, a free Grammarly alternative, you get much more than just a teaser! Let’s dive into why it is the best Grammarly alternative for academic writing.

Paperpal’s Features for Academic Writing

Language Suggestions: Paperpal understands academic writing structure and conventions and provides language suggestions based on scientific contexts while retaining references, equations, technical terms, and non-English words.
Reference Finder: Get science-backed answers with verified citations to your questions from over 250 million research articles as you write. You can also save relevant articles in your citation library, which helps you research, write, and cite with confidence.
Chat PDF: Paperpal’s ChatPDF feature lets you upload PDFs or find and chat with PDFs available in our repository of 250M+ research articles. You can chat with any PDF—from research papers to your own notes—and derive relevant insights.

• Citation Generator: Generate unlimited in-text and full-text citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, and 10,000+ styles. Save relevant references in the citation library to cite them later.
• AI Writing Assistance: Upload your notes or choose from the existing prompt library to generate academic text based on what you’re writing. Quickly expand on existing text, write a first draft of a research paper, and draft a literature review, thesis, or essay without the need to write detailed prompts.
• Paraphrase: Improve clarity and tone with accurate paraphrasing. Retain the context of your work and meet journal-prescribed word counts with a formal tone
• Trim: Cut short word length and get a concise version of your writing without losing meaning
• Make Academic: Transform generic text to academically-toned statements in a click
• Plagiarism Checker: Paperpal allows plagiarism checks for up to 7000 words (FREE), 10,000 words (PRIME), and up to 50,000 words (purchase extra words). The Grammarly alternative checks your paper for similarity against 100 billion online web pages and provides you with a detailed report with a similarity score that lets you address actionable items, cite overlooked sources, and avoid accidental plagiarism
• Contextual Synonyms: Struggling with vocabulary? Just highlight a word, and Paperpal instantly dives into a vast database of high-impact research, analyzing how similar words have been used in published papers. It then presents you with a list of relevant academic vocabulary alternatives, ranked by their usage and context, so you’re always using the right words.
• Academic Translation: Translating academic text with Google Translate often leads to unnecessary context-switching or introduces distractions, which can lead to miscommunication and delay the process. Paperpal supports translation for 30+ top language pairs, so you can write in your preferred language and get accurate academic translations in one click!
• Academic Consistency Checks: Paperpal’s consistency checks ensure style uniformity in the presentation of numbers, tables, figures, equation labels, word forms and spelling, and statistics. By automating these tedious manual checks and providing a simple click-and-fix solution, this Grammarly alternative saves researchers both time and effort.
• AI Writing Templates: Paperpal’s secure generative AI technology is tailored to academic writing conventions and based on proprietary large language models. Templates enable users to generate outlines, emails, and brainstorm with AI
• Journal Submission Checks: Get 30+ language and technical compliance pre-submission checks to boost your manuscript’s chance of acceptance
• AI Review: Instant, targeted advice on your draft to identify logical gaps and improve flow and readability before submission
• Human Editing: Get a professional human editor to review your manuscript to enhance quality, ensuring it meets high academic standards

Paperpal’s Pricing Plans

Paperpal’s free plan provides limited access to almost all of its academic writing features compared to Grammarly, where most features are hidden behind a paywall. With a free Paperpal plan, you get access to the following features.

• Language Suggestions tailored to academic writing – 200/month
• AI Writing Assistance (Paperpal Write) – 5 uses/day
• Rewrite (Paraphrase, Trim, Make Academic and Synonyms) – 5 uses/day
• AI Reference Finder (Research) – Search and find up to 5 references
• Citation Generator (Cite) – Unlimited citation generation with the free plan. Generated citations are saved for 7 days in the library (for users who haven’t signed up yet)
• AI Writing Templates (Templates) – 5 uses/day
• AI Translation powered by DeepL (Translate) – 5 uses/day
• Chat PDF  – Unlimited PDF uploads and interactions (Standard Model)
• Plagiarism Checker – Check up to 7000 words
• AI Review – Complete document review and recommendations for improvement
• Journal Submission Checks – Free submission readiness summary report with high-quality technical checks

Grammarly Review: Is Grammarly Worth it?  

Based on the 2022 whitepaper by the University of Cambridge titled ‘Comparison of Automated English Editing Tools,1 Paperpal was the most appealing writing and editing tool for researchers. We followed this up with a blinded benchmarking analysis in October 2023, when senior editors from the Editage training department evaluated Paperpal vs Grammarly (Academic Mode) and three other AI tools.

Paperpal vs Grammarly (Academic Mode)

In the detailed Grammarly review, our experts identified error detection as poor compared to Paperpal, even in its Academic mode. It fails to correct specific word choices, determiner errors, and capitalization and does not understand technical terminology.

In terms of language editing coverage, Paperpal provided the highest number of suggested edits (392) with 3.88 edits per sentence on average, compared to Grammarly (187 with 1.77 edits per sentence on average) – over 2x the number of edits that Grammarly (Academic mode) does.

The experts also found the least language issues, with no issues in terms of comprehension and integrity, in documents edited by Paperpal. In contrast, Grammarly (Academic Mode) had the most incorrect suggestions across all categories in the analysis, which could be frustrating for authors.

Who should use Grammarly?  

Followed by our detailed Grammarly review, if your work involves writing crisp marketing copy or sending professional emails, or if you require generic writing assistance, Grammarly is a good choice. Grammarly for students also offers tailored features that can help enhance their writing journey throughout the academic process.

Who should use Paperpal?  

If you are a master’s or PhD student, educator, researcher, or working in academia, Paperpal is your best bet. With its focus on academic writing and empowering students and researchers to write high-quality academic content, every time, this trusted AI academic writing assistant is the ally you need to succeed.

Several free Grammarly alternatives like Copy.ai, Jasper, and Frase offer features similar to Grammarly. However, if you’re seeking a comprehensive AI toolkit tailored for research papers, thesis, and dissertations, Paperpal stands out. Try Paperpal for Free today to experience its advanced language checks and academic style suggestions firsthand.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Is Grammarly actually effective for academic writing and research? 

While Grammarly is generally reliable for fixing basic grammatical mistakes, our Grammarly review suggests its suitability for academic writing is limited. It struggles with nuanced academic language, often misinterpreting complex sentences and failing to recognize discipline-specific style guidelines. Furthermore, Grammarly’s tendency to aggressively flag passive voice and past tense can be problematic in academic contexts. These tenses are crucial in research writing for precisely conveying completed actions – the experiments conducted, data collected, and results analyzed – which form the foundation of academic inquiry.

If you’re looking for an AI tool for academic writing and research, Paperpal provides 2x the language suggestions compared to Grammarly and adheres to the academic writing conventions followed by journals and professors. Paperpal’s AI is trained on millions of published research papers and 3.5 million hours of editorial expertise, which empowers it to provide contextually relevant writing assistance with real-time editing suggestions, in-line AI commands to keep the writing momentum going, and comprehensive checks to get to the submission line faster.

2. Is it okay to use Grammarly for thesis?  

No, Grammarly is not a great option to use for thesis writing. Grammarly struggles with academic writing nuances, and its suggestions might not always align with the specific conventions of scholarly discourse, leading to potential misinterpretations. Grammarly can flag many false errors, which can lead to confusion and unnecessary revisions if users do not critically evaluate the suggestions. Instead, investing in Grammarly alternatives for academic writing like Paperpal can be beneficial in getting the best language suggestions, AI writing assistance, plagiarism checks, and pre-submission checks for PhD Thesis, Essays, Research Papers, and more.

4. How does Grammarly work? 

Grammarly uses AI algorithms to analyze your writing and suggest improvements. It flags potential errors and offers alternative phrasing suggestions based on its understanding of general writing rules.

5. Is Grammarly the best grammar checker? 

Based on our Grammarly review, the AI writing tool is widely recognized for its user-friendly interface and general grammar-checking capabilities. However, if you’re looking for an AI academic editor, Grammarly may not be the right choice. Several AI academic writing tools provide double the edits without the restriction of a paywall.

6. Is Grammarly free? 

Grammarly offers a free basic version with limited features. The premium versions offer more comprehensive checks and suggestions but are rather steeply priced.

7. Are there any free alternatives to Grammarly for academic writing? 

While Grammarly’s free version offers basic features, tailored academic support might be limited. Paperpal is one of the best free alternatives to Grammarly, offering extensive academic writing support. Paperpal’s AI is trained on millions of academic texts across 1,300+ fields of study and is backed by 22+ years of science, technical, and medical expertise. This allows it to analyze, identify, and offer accurate, context-specific suggestions to enhance your language, reduce errors in academic text, and help you get to the submission stage faster. Compared to Grammarly, Paperpal offers 2x more suggestions to enhance your language quality, structure and flow, and overall readability.

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 and 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. 

Experience the future of academic writing – Sign up to Paperpal and start writing for free!