As a leader in the AI writing tools industry, Grammarly has established a strong foothold among various target audience segments due to its first-mover advantage. Until recently, researchers, PhD students, and authors have also relied on Grammarly to improve their academic writing skills.
Grammarly acts as a great assistant that can proofread and edit your writing to enhance readability and follow a conversational or confident tone, but does this hold relevance for academic writing? We aren’t so sure. In this detailed Grammarly review, we explore the features of Paperpal vs Grammarly, pricing, and Grammarly alternatives tailored to academic writing; we also explain if Grammarly is worth the hype and may not be the best choice for research writing.
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:
Grammarly goes beyond simply identifying mistakes, empowering users to strengthen writing skills through detailed feedback and learning tools. Here’s a Grammarly review considering academic writing as a use case, through its pros and cons.
Grammarly’s pricing plans are as follows –
While conducting the Grammarly review, we found out that the free version allows users to experience the platform, it also employs persistent reminders about additional features and benefits unlocked through Grammarly Premium, which can be frustrating or distracting.
In addition to that, it doesn’t fully understand academic writing conventions and can misfire in cases that need strict adherence to academic tonality, avoiding accidental plagiarism, 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.
Paperpal is a comprehensive AI academic writing assistant that offers real-time, subject-specific language suggestions to help you achieve publication success faster. When you compare Paperpal vs Grammarly, you’ll notice that Grammarly’s coverage of errors and language suggestions is pretty low.
The latter’s ML models outperform Grammarly, providing 2 to 3 times more suggestions on par with corrections by professional academic editors. With over 21 years of STM expertise and robust AI trained on millions of published research manuscripts, Paperpal, the Grammarly alternative, helps academics write 2x faster. It offers precise language and grammar suggestions, generative AI capabilities, academic tone adherence, and more.
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 AI academic writing tool you’ve been searching for.
Compared to Grammarly’s free version, this Grammarly alternative offers a whole lot more. You get access to the following features:
Our Grammarly review concluded that it is a trusted AI writing assistant, but if you’re in search for a niche, free Grammarly alternative tailored to academic writing, Paperpal might be a better choice. This Grammarly vs Paperpal comparison proves it.
Feature | Paperpal | Grammarly (Academic Mode) |
Target Audience | Academics, Researchers, Students | All Writers (general, creative, business) |
Academic Focus | High, tailored for academics | Yes, but less than Paperpal |
Language Suggestions | Academic-focussed, preserves references, equations, technical terms, and non-English words | Aggressive passive voice correction, doesn’t preserve academic terms |
Academic Tone Suggestions | Ensures academic tone adherence | Provides suggestions as Confident, Informative, etc. |
Academic Vocabulary | Provides synonyms used in academic context, ranked by usage | Provides context-specific synonyms but may not always be accurate for academic text |
Predictive Writing | Suggests sentences, based on user context. Allows to expand, write counter arguments, examples and more | N/A |
Consistency | Flags inconsistencies in word usage, spelling, numbers, statistics, equations | Flags inconsistencies in word usage and spellings (as per preferred language style) |
Plagiarism Check | Scans text against a trusted database of 100+ billion webpages and provides a report with similarity score, side-by-side comparison, and color-coded results. Scan upto 7000 words/month for free | Catches plagiarism from ProQuest databases comprising millions of graduate works including dissertations and theses. |
Citation | Answers to research questions, referring from 250 million research articles. Citation library that allows you to save relevant citations to refer to later | Offers a free tool for citation formatting |
Rewrite – Paraphrase, Trim, Make Academic | Paraphrases effectively, trims word length, and ensures an academic tone all while retaining context, meaning. | General paraphrasing, not specific to academic purposes |
Language Translation | Offers accurate translations for 28 global languages | NA |
Generative AI Capabilities | In-built prompts to achieve academic writing excellence | Prompt expertise required to get reliable results |
Feedback & Insights | Offers detailed insights to enhance scholarly writing | Broad communication goals feedback |
Integration | Available on Word and Web | Available on Word, Web, and Google Docs |
Pricing | Priced at US$19 a month or US$119 a year Free plan allows for limited access to premium features | Priced at US$30.16 a month or US$142.34 a year Free plan offers only grammar and language checks |
Based on the 2022 whitepaper by the University of Cambridge titled ‘Comparison of Automated English Editing Tools,1Paperpal 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.
In the detailed Grammarly review, our experts identified error detection to be poor in comparison to Paperpal, even in its Academic mode. It fails to correct specific word choice (“administered” works better with chemotherapy, not “added”) and does not understand technical terminology (“Kaplan-Meyer” should be “Kaplan-Meier”).
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 issues in language, 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.
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.
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.
There are several free Grammarly alternatives like Copy.ai, Jasper, and Frase that 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.
Grammarly is a grammar and writing assistant software that checks for various errors and offers suggestions on clarity, style, and engagement. It works across various platforms, including Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and web browsers.
Based on our Grammarly review, the grammar and writing assistant can catch some basic grammar and spelling mistakes, but its limitations become apparent in the academic arena. Here’s why:
Limited scope: Grammarly primarily focuses on general writing rules. It may not recognize specific academic formatting styles or nuances like APA, MLA, or Chicago.
Specificity issues: The feedback might not be tailored to the specific requirements of your academic discipline. For instance, it might flag a passive voice sentence even when acceptable in your field.
False positives: Some suggestions can be subjective or inaccurate, potentially leading to confusion and compromising the integrity of your work.
There are many free Grammarly alternatives for academic writing like Paperpal, which offers 2x the suggestions compared to Grammarly, making it a more reliable option.
Grammarly is generally good for basic errors, but in academic writing, its effectiveness is debatable. It can misinterpret complex sentences, miss specific style requirements, and provide suggestions that don’t align with academic rigor. If you’re looking for an AI academic writing tool, there are other more trusted AI writing tools and websites like Grammarly that provide better suggestions.
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.
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. There are several AI academic writing tools that provide double the edits, without the restriction of a paywall.
Grammarly offers a free basic version with limited features. The premium versions offer more comprehensive checks and suggestions but come at a rather steep cost.
While Grammarly’s free version offers basic features, there might be limited options for tailored academic support. Paperpal is one of the best free alternatives of Grammarly that offers extensive academic writing support.
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Paperpal is a comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time. It leverages 21+ 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$19 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!
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