Writefull Review: Features, Pricing and Alternatives

With the rise in collaborative research projects spanning across geographies, languages, and disciplines, there is a growing need for AI writing tools. Here Writefull, designed to understand the intricacies of academic writing, emerges as a powerful ally for scholars. The Writefull AI writing assistant provides instant feedback and suggestions to refine your language, sentence structures, word choice, and style to meet the high quality expected from academic writing. 

In this comprehensive Writefull review, we’ll delve into: 

• Core Features: Explore the key functionalities that make Writefull a valuable tool for researchers.
• Overleaf Integration: Examine how Writefull for Overleaf enhances the LaTeX writing and editing workflow.
• Advantages and Challenges: Weigh the pros and cons of choosing Writefull as your writing partner.
• Alternative Options: Suggest a trusted AI writing tool that may better suit your academic writing needs.

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.

What is Writefull?

Writefull is an AI-powered writing tool built to assist academics and researchers with the challenging writing process, helping them produce publication-ready content efficiently. It leverages advanced AI algorithms to offer a range of useful features, including feedback on grammar, syntax, and style; a paraphraser; abstract and title generator – all tailored to the needs of academic writing. 

Writefull: Key Features

The Writefull AI writing tool boasts of several exciting features that streamline key tasks in the research writing process. Here’s a look at its top solutions. 

1. Language Edits: Writefull provides real-time language feedback and suggestions to improve your grammar, vocabulary, style, and phrasing, ensuring your writing aligns with stringent scholarly standards.
2. Sentence Palette: It intelligently categorizes phrases based on the goals of different sections in a paper and allows users to browse and select phrases to incorporate directly into their writing. The palette includes connectors and other transitional phrases that help frame arguments or express relationships between ideas, enhancing the overall coherence of the text.
3. Paraphraser: Writefull offers alternative phrasings for selected text, which prevents repetitive language and helps convey ideas in an engaging narrative.
4. Academizer: Writefull converts informal sentences into more formal, academic language. This helps users avoid colloquial expressions and adopt a more precise and specialized vocabulary suitable for academic writing.
5. Ask AI: Integrated into Microsoft Word, the Ask AI feature functions as an academic assistant, providing reliable responses to queries. It offers insights, explanations, and suggestions directly within your document, eliminating the need to switch between applications.
6. Change Style: Modifies the writing tone to suit different audiences or purposes. Options include making text more concise, punchy, or scientific, facilitating effective communication tailored to your target readership.
7. Explain: Allows users to select a portion of text and click on Explain to get detailed clarifications, enhancing comprehension.
8. Summarize: Condenses selected text into concise summaries useful in creating abstracts, introductions, or overviews faster.
9. Split/Join: Writefull AI can split long sentences for clarity or join short ones for better flow, writing coherence, and improved readability.
10. Synonyms in Context: Suggests alternative words or phrases with a suitability percentage, helping to choose the option that fit seamlessly within your sentence.
11. Title Generator: The Writefull AI assistant can suggest titles based on overall text.
12. Abstract Generator: Summarizes key points and findings from your text to create abstracts.

Writefull for Overleaf

Writefull’s online editor is primarily tailored to enhance basic academic texts. However, its integration with Overleaf makes it a popular tool among PhD students and researchers who work on and edit LaTeX documents in Overleaf. Writefull Overleaf also offers exclusive features to save time in proofreading and finalize drafts faster.  

Here are the features exclusively available on Writefull for Overleaf:  

1. GPT Language Edits: Beyond English, Writefull for Overleaf leverages GPT models to offer language edits across various languages and writing genres. This versatility allows users to receive contextually appropriate suggestions, enhancing clarity and coherence in diverse linguistic contexts.
2. GPT Language Edits with Prompt: Input custom prompts, like adjusting tone or adhering to particular guidelines, to tailor the AI’s language suggestions and get targeted results that align with your writing objectives.
3. TeXGPT: This allows you to input prompts or upload images and generate accurate LaTeX code for tables, equations, and other elements, streamlining the writing process for LaTeX users.
4. Table Generator: Streamlines the creation of tables in LaTeX by generating the necessary code based on your input
5. Equation Generator: Produces LaTeX code for equations from prompts or images to represent mathematical expressions accurately in documents.

How to use Writefull on Overleaf?

You can enable Writefull within Overleaf. Simply go to your “Account Settings”, scrolling to the “Integrations”; locate “Writefull for Overleaf” and toggle it ‘On’. Once enabled, the Writefull icon will appear in your Overleaf editor toolbar. Click the Writefull icon and sign in using your existing Writefull account or by linking to your Overleaf account. 

Is Writefull for Overleaf worth it?

For researchers juggling technical writing and LaTeX formatting, Writefull’s Overleaf extension is a great add-on. Once enabled, it works inside Overleaf, providing real-time assistance as they write. The paraphrasing tool, title generator, and other exclusive AI features are also helpful in streamlining the writing process. 

Writefull’s Overleaf extension is also useful in general language polishing. Users who don’t work heavily with complex math or technical terms might like its ability to catch basic grammar issues or suggest alternative phrasings.  

Despite its potential, Writefull for Overleaf underperforms in key areas: 

1. Grammar and Spell Checking: Writefull’s grammar checker doesn’t always meet expectations. A common frustration is its inability to handle technical terms, which are frequently flagged as errors. For those working in fields with specialized vocabulary, this can make the tool more of a distraction than a help.
2. User Interface and Usability: The tool’s interface can feel clunky and slow in Overleaf, making it a challenging experience for many.
3. Handling Mathematical Content: Writefull often treats mathematical statements and formulae as regular text, leading to inappropriate corrections.
4. Suggestions Lacking Nuance: Writefull for Overleaf often misses the subtler points when providing suggestions, leading to incorrect suggestions and edits.

When compared to more mature AI academic writing tools like Paperpal, this entire experience can feel underwhelming. 

Paperpal: A better alternative to Writefull

While there are many Writefull alternatives, Paperpal stands out as the perfect choice for academic writing with 3x the language suggestions compared to other AI language tools.  Modelled to replicate human editorial expertise and recommendations with a full suite of sophisticated features, Paperpal is often seen as the best alternative to Writefull when it comes to producing high-quality academic text.  

What is Paperpal?

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.    

Paperpal’s Top Features for Academic Writing

Let’s explore Paperpal’s features tailored to academic writing:  

1. Comprehensive language correction: Built to enhance academic text, Paperpal recognizes technical terms, references, equations, and non-English words while providing suggestions to correct spelling, punctuation, and complex grammar errors.
2. Contextual writing suggestions: Overcome writer’s block by telling Paperpal what you want to write and get suggestions on how to turn your ideas into words. Add custom instructions, use the pre-set prompts, or upload reference files to get more tailored responses. The Write feature is perfect to summarize takeaways from notes, draft a strong literature review, generate writing ideas, and more.
3. Insights from 250M+ scholarly articles: Paperpal’s Research feature generates science-backed answers with verified citations for research queries as you write. Save relevant articles to your citation library to read later or cite in your work.
4. Chat with any PDF: Upload any PDF and instantly extract key information from the full text. Users can ask any questions on the PDF content to instantly summarize, analyze, and organize relevant insights, making the research reading and review experience faster and more efficient. It’s advanced version also allows users to reference relevant sections from PDFs with citations and find related papers.
5. Citation formatting in 10,000+ styles: Ensure accurate, complete, and consistent citations in your academic writing with Paperpal. Use Research to find references by title/DOI and generate in-text and full citations in a click. Paperpal supports all up-to-date versions of top styles, including APA, MLA, Chicago, AMA, IEEE & more.
6. Literature-validated synonym suggestions: Struggling with repetition or conveying your ideas appropriately? Just highlight a word, and Paperpal presents you with a list of relevant academic words and phrases, ranked by their context and usage in the literature.
7. Precise translation for 30+ languages: Translate academic text in 30+ languages with Paperpal, without altering the meaning or changing technical terms. Paperpal context-specific translations, powered by DeepL, adhere to patient-first language conventions, which is critical in fields such as medicine and psychology.
8. Complete rewriting support: Paperpal helps you write and refine your text 2x faster. Get reliable paraphrasing suggestions, shorten text up to 25%, and ensure a professional academic tone, all while retaining the original meaning and context.
9. Instant AI reviews of your academic writing: No matter what writing stage you’re at, Paperpal’s AI Review feature can provide practical feedback and targeted advice to help improve your draft and boost your confidence before submission.
10. Consistency checks for error-free writing: Paperpal’s consistency checks ensure uniformity in the style and presentation of numbers, tables, figures, equation labels, word forms and spelling, and statistics, helping you create flawless documents.
11. Best-in-class plagiarism checks: Paperpal scans your writing for similarity against 99B+ webpages and provides a detailed report with a similarity score and a color-coded comparison that lets you quickly find and address red flags, cite overlooked sources, and avoid accidental plagiarism.
12. In-depth pre-submission checks: Paperpal helps you ensure your manuscript is complete and ready to submit with 30+ language quality and technical compliance checks, which help you polish your work and enhance your chance of acceptance.

Paperpal for Overleaf

Paperpal’s Overleaf Chrome extension seamlessly integrates into your writing workflow. It allows you to quickly edit LaTeX documents and perfect your writing directly within the online LaTeX editor, all without changing the integrity of your source codes or formatting. 

Once you enable the Paperpal Chrome extension, you will start to get reliable language and grammar suggestions to improve your work. This allows Overleaf users to save time and streamline their scientific writing and seamlessly edit LaTeX documents, all without having to switch tabs.  

Check this quick tutorial on how to enable Paperpal’s Overleaf chrome extension 

Get Paperpal for Overleaf

Paperpal for Overleaf comes with a number of benefits.  

• Accurate, real-time language suggestions: Paperpal for Overleaf offers precise language suggestions without oversimplifying technical terms
• Non-intrusive editing within Overleaf: Seamlessly polish your language within Overleaf without disrupting your LaTeX code
• Efficient collaboration on writing projects: Reduce review cycles and focus on ideas, not proofreading
• Higher chances of publication success: Achieve publication-ready writing by correcting often-overlooked errors
• 100% Secure Overleaf Chrome extension: Ensure your research remains private and secure

How do Writefull’s language corrections perform when compared to Paperpal?

To assess the effectiveness of top language editing tools for technical scientific writing, a benchmark test was conducted by senior editors from the Editage training department. The goal was to identify the tool that most effectively improved technical scientific writing by minimizing the number of residual errors per 1,000 words.  

Paperpal-edited documents had the least errors that still needed human correction, compared to Writefull, QuillBot, and Grammarly. 

While Writefull currently offers a wider range of options on Overleaf, Paperpal is more accurate and is already working to expand its Overleaf Chrome extension. Users will soon be able to access top features, including an academic paraphraser, reference finder, citation generator, and more, ensuring comprehensive support at every writing step. 

Paperpal vs Writefull: Which is the best AI academic writing tool? 

Feature	Paperpal	Writefull
Target Audience	Researchers, students, medical professionals, science journalists and others in academi.a	All Writers (general, creative, business)
LaTeX editing on Overleaf	Provides accurate, real-time language suggestions mimicking the expertise of human editors	Provides language suggestions, but common inaccuracies (e.g., technical terms flagged as errors) can lead to user frustration
Language Suggestions	Academic-focused, preserves references, equations, technical terms, and non-English words	Improves the overall grammar, vocabulary, phrasing, and style
Writing Assistance	Offers context-appropriate writing suggestions based on existing text, pre-set/custom prompts, with file upload option for tailored results.	Not available
Consistency Checks	Corrects consistency errors in tables, figures and equation representation	Not available
Literature Search (Reference Finder)	Offers fact-based insights from 250M+ research articles; option to save relevant papers to in-built citation library for citing later	Not available
Citation Generator	Generates accurate citations in 10,000+ styles, including APA, MLA, Chicago, and more for free	Available only with Writefull’s Institutional plans
Chat with Docs/PDFs	Search/upload PDFs, ask questions and get insights with source links, summarize, select and cite in writing, and find related papers. Available on Web, MS Word & Chrome	Available only on MS Word
Templates & Outlines	Generates outlines, titles, abstracts, keywords, summaries, study highlights and more	Generates titles, abstracts (available as widgets), tables and equations (only on Overleaf)
Paraphrasing and Word Reduction	Paraphrases effectively, trims word length and ensures an academic tone all while retaining context and meaning	Allows to paraphrase, explain, summarize, split/join sentences
Plagiarism Checks	Scans academic text against an extensive database of 99B+ webpages, including 200 million Open Access research articles	Not available
Language Translation	Supports accurate academic translations for 30+ languages, powered by DeepL	Not available
Academic Tone Suggestions	Provides suggestions to ensure a professional, academic tone in your writing	Allows tone customization, with options such as concise, punchy, or scientific, etc.
Contextual Synonyms	Provides academic synonyms in order of their popularity and usage in the academic corpus	Provides alternative words that fit in the sentence context with suitability score
AI Review	Provides detailed feedback and advice to improve your essays, research papers, and reports instantly with Paperpal	Not available
Pre-Submission Checks	Has 30+ language and technical compliance checks to ensure your manuscript is ready to submit	Not available
Integrations	Available on Word, Web, Overleaf, Google Docs (coming soon)	Available on Word, Web, and Overleaf
Pricing	Free version available, with paid plans starting at $25/month, $55/quarter and $139/year	Free version available, but with limited features, prices start at $7.21/month, $16.62/quarter and $30.75/year

Writefull AI Review: Honest Opinion

Writefull AI has a suite of great features for restructuring sentences and polishing content. For example, the academizer, paraphraser, and tools to summarize and explain can be handy when you want quick fixes for your essay, thesis, or research paper before sending it for submission. However, the Writefull AI assistant often misses nuances, misreads scientific context, and struggles to identify technical terms and mathematical equations, all of which can be frustrating and increase the need for detailed human review. 

While the pricing plans seem affordable, Writefull has a more limited, narrower list of features than Paperpal, which provides a comprehensive all-in-one solution for writing excellence. So, if you’re looking for a reliable academic partner to take your essays, theses, dissertations, research articles and scientific documents to the next level, try Paperpal.  

Sign up for FREE

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. 

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