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QuillBot Review: Features, Pricing, and Free Alternatives

Initially conceived as a paraphrasing tool, QuillBot has evolved significantly. With the continuous incorporation of features such as grammar and plagiarism checks, a word processor, translation capabilities, and citation support, QuillBot has become one of the most widely utilized tools by students for academic writing today with over 50 million users worldwide. 

In this comprehensive QuillBot review, we delve into its features, pricing, and QuillBot alternatives tailored for academic writing. Additionally, we discuss the reasons why QuillBot might not be the optimal choice for academic writing.

Table of Contents

What is QuillBot?

QuillBot is an AI writing assistant with features like paraphrasing, grammar checking, summarizing, and citation generation that enhance the clarity and quality of written content. Its efficient rephrasing of text using natural language processing (NLP) techniques makes it a valuable tool for writers, students, and professionals seeking to simplify complex sentences and improve readability. Let’s jump into our QuillBot review starting with its features. 

QuillBot Review: Key Features

In our QuillBot review, we examine the features the AI tool offers to help creative writers, bloggers, and students enhance their writing.    

  1. Paraphraser – QuillBot offers 8 pre-defined paraphrasing modes with in-built customization to change more (or less) of your writing.
  • Standard – Changes the word order and vocabulary of the text
  • Fluency – Improves readability and text clarity
  • Formal – Rephrases text to be suitable for formal communication
  • Simple – Presents text in lay terms
  • Creative – Rephrases text from a creative point of view
  • Academic – Rewrites text to sound academically correct
  • Expand and Shorten Increases/Decreases text length without changing context
  • Custom – Rewrites text to match the unique description provided
  1. Grammar Checker – Instantly corrects grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors in US, UK, CA and AU English and other languages like German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazilian).
  1. Plagiarism Checker – Provides a plagiarism score and real-time analysis of improper attribution of authorship and citations for text scanned in 100+ languages.
  1. QuillBot Flow An all-in-one word processor that helps you research, take notes, and auto-complete sentences to write research papers faster.
  1. Summarizer Quickly extracts key points and summarizes essays, papers, and documents in bullet points and paragraphs.
  1. Free Essay Checker – QuillBot’s AI-driven essay checker roots our lack of fluency, tricky plurals, repetitions, and other issues to help you write an A-grade essay.
  1. Free AI Content Detector Flags AI-generated content with indications like repeated words, awkward phrases, and unnatural flow.
  1. Citation Generator Offers free citation generation capabilities for APA, MLA, and Chicago style as full and in-text citations.
  1. Translator – QuillBot provides real-time text translation in 40+ languages.

QuillBot, at its core, is an article rewriter, but it can also double up as a grammar checker, plagiarism checker, and citation generator. Let’s review QuillBot from the perspective of academic writing and see how it performs against several QuillBot alternatives. 

Get all of QuillBot’s features and more with a free account. Start writing with Paperpal.

Pros of QuillBot

  1. Easy-to-use – QuillBot reviews show it has a minimal learning curve and is quite user-friendly with feature navigation and texting out all the features.
  1. Free Extensions It provides extensions for Chrome, Word, and MacOS without tab switching or desktop app downloads.
  1. Free AI Detector – QuillBot offers an AI detector so you can test the generated content to see if it sounds robotic.
  1. QuillBot Flow – QuillBot Flow allows you to paraphrase, summarize, research, and more with built-in grammar checking and citations.
  1. Freeze Words – The AI tool allows you to freeze words like nouns that you don’t want to paraphrase. However, the free version only provides one frozen word.
  1. Lucrative Plans QuillBot’s premium plans are affordable. Plus, they offer a 100% money-back guarantee within 72 hours.

Like QuillBot, but want more? Try Paperpal’s comprehensive toolkit for academics

Cons of QuillBot

  1. Paraphrasing Limitations — QuillBot’s paraphrased text output doesn’t sound like human-written text and lacks flow and context. Getting the desired output often requires a lot of manual editing.
  1. Limitations of the free version The free version allows paraphrasing up to 125 words at a time and restricts users to two writing modes: Standard and Fluency.
  1. Limited use of plagiarism checker QuillBot’s plagiarism checker only allows you to scan 20 pages of text for plagiarism (approx.. 5,000 words) even with a premium account. Additional charges apply in case of lengthy texts.
  1. Lack of a comprehensive grammar checker Unlike other free QuillBot alternatives, the tool does not provide detailed insights into the grammar corrections it makes.

Looking for a QuillBot alternative for academic writing? Start writing with Paperpal for free

QuillBot’s Pricing Plans

As part of our QuillBot review, we also cover the pricing plans. Quillbot has both free and premium plans with the following features:  

Free Plan:  

  1. Paraphrasing tool with a 125-word limit
  1. Two writing modes
  1. Summarizer tool for up to 1,200 words
  1. Ability to process two words at once
  1. Access to Google Docs and Chrome extensions
  1. Up to three synonyms
  1. Freeze one word or phrase
  1. Citation generator tool
  1. Grammar checker
  1. Access to all extensions, including Microsoft Word

Premium Plan:  

QuillBot Premium offers advanced features, backed by a 3-day money-back guarantee. These are available at US$4.17 for Annual, US$6.66 for Semi-Annual, and US$9.95 for Monthly plans. 

  1. Seven paraphraser writing modes
  1. Four synonym options
  1. Phrases compare modes
  1. Unlimited words and phrases
  1. Faster processing speed
  1. Summarize up to 6,000 words
  1. Advanced grammar rewrites
  1. QuillBot Flow
  1. Unlimited words for paraphrasing tool

QuillBot is a great paraphrasing tool with additional features for academic writing. However, even with QuillBot Premium, the content output doesn’t live up to the standards of other more academia-focused QuillBot alternatives. Let’s understand how Paperpal, a tool like QuillBot, delivers more than Quillbot, Grammarly, Jenni and other AI academic writing assistants in the market today.   

Need access to advanced AI academic writing features for free? Try Paperpal

Why is Paperpal a better alternative to QuillBot?

Paperpal, an AI writing assistant trained on millions of scholarly articles and over 21 years of STM expertise, is specially for academic and scientific writing. Unlike QuillBot, Paperpal understands academic context and enhances clarity, sentence structure, and academic tone accurately all while retaining the author’s voice and meaning. 

When trying out Paperpal as a QuillBot alternative, you’ll find that it offers more comprehensive language and grammar suggestions to help you achieve academic writing excellence, rather than merely providing one-time corrections. 

Let’s dive deeper into this AI academic writing assistant and understand why Paperpal the perfect QuillBot alternative for academics.  

Top Features of Paperpal

  1. Language Suggestions: Paperpal comprehends the structure and conventions of academic writing, offering precise language suggestions tailored to scientific contexts. It retains references, equations, technical terms, and non-English words.
  1. Paperpal Copilot: Leveraging secure generative AI technology tailored to academic writing conventions, Paperpal Copilot assists users in overcoming writer’s block and confidently creating clear, concise, compelling academic text.
PAPERPAL GENERATIVE AI FEATURES ASK PAPERPAL GENERATE REWRITE
BENEFITS Unblock yourself by brainstorming ideas, get on-point assistance on varied topics, and expert tips for your research. Get instant outlines, paper titles, abstracts, summaries, study highlights, keywords, and email templates Enter your text to paraphrase and add variety, ensure correct academic tone, or trim length to meet journal word limits.
Paperpal Copilot
  1. Plagiarism Checker: Paperpal scans your paper against 100 billion online web pages, furnishing a detailed report with a similarity score. This score helps you address actionable items, cite overlooked sources, and prevent accidental plagiarism.
  1. Contextual Synonyms: Struggling with vocabulary? Highlight a word, and Paperpal accesses a vast database of impactful research to analyze how similar words have been used in published papers. It then presents a list of relevant academic vocabulary alternatives, ranked by usage and context, ensuring you always choose the right words.
  1. Academic Translation: Paperpal supports 28 languages, allowing you to write in your preferred language and obtain precise English translations with a single click. This avoids unnecessary context-switching and potential miscommunication associated with other translation tools.
  1. Academic Consistency Checks: Paperpal ensures style uniformity in numbers, tables, figures, equation labels, word forms, spelling, and statistics. By automating tedious manual checks and providing a simple click-and-fix solution, Paperpal saves researchers time and effort.
  1. Check and Refine: Once you’re done writing, Paperpal aids in editing and refining your text. Students and academics can use its suite of checks to correct and enhance language, grammar, word choice, phrasing, consistency, and more.
  1. Be Submission Ready: Paperpal offers 30+ language and technical compliance pre-submission checks to ensure your manuscript is submission-ready, increasing its chances of acceptance.

Ready to explore the most trusted alternative to QuillBot? Start writing with Paperpal

Paperpal’s Pricing Plans

Paperpal, like QuillBot comes with free and paid plans for users. However, Paperpal does a lot better when considering QuillBot alternatives as its free plan offers users more support. When you sign up for free, you get access to 

Paperpal does a lot better as a QuillBot alternative in terms of pricing because it offers limited usage to academic writing benefits like language suggestions, generative AI, language translations, contextual synonyms, etc. Sign up with Paperpal for free, and you get the following:   

  1. Language Correction: Get 200 language correction suggestions per month
  1. Generative AI Features: Generate outlines, titles, abstracts, summaries and more with Paperpal Copilot, available to use up to 5 times a day.
  1. Academic Synonyms and Translations: Instantly translate your text into English and ensure the right word choice with 25 uses per month.
  1. Submission Readiness Checks: Get a free summary report of 30+ language and technical checks and evaluate if your manuscript is ready to submit.
  1. Monthly and Daily Resets: Get a fresh quota of assistance for your ongoing or new projects with limits being reset daily or monthly based on your chosen feature.

With a free account, you can choose your editing mode (Extensive or Essential) and language styles. You also get a free account on Researcher.Life, a subscription-based platform that hosts the best AI tools and services to help you speed up, simplify, and streamline your research journey.   

Paperpal’s Prime plan unlocks unlimited access to all the free features, plus consistency, plagiarism, and submission readiness checks at just US$19 per month, US$39 per quarter or US$119 per year.  

Paperpal vs QuillBot – Which is better for academic writing?

QuillBot is handy for fixing essays and grammar quickly when you’re in a rush. But Paperpal gives you all of QuillBot’s features and more, for free. Let’s see how Paperpal is the best QuillBot alternative.  

Feature Paperpal QuillBot
Target Audience Academics, researchers, students Students and other writers (general, creative, business)
Academic Focus High, tailored for academics Low, compared to Paperpal
Language Suggestions In-depth and academic-focussed suggestions to improve academic writing Lack of in-depth suggestions to improve academic writing quality
Academic Tone Suggestions Ensures academic tone adherence Provides academic mode of language editing as a premium feature
Academic Vocabulary Provides synonyms used in academic context, ranked by usage in published literature Provides a synonym slider allowing the extent of paraphrasing. The output often becomes difficult to understand and irrelevant to context
Consistency Flags inconsistencies in word usage, spelling, numbers, statistics, equations Not Available
Plagiarism Check Scans up to 7,000 words against a trusted database of 100+ billion webpages and get a similarity score, side-by-side comparison, and color-coded results. Scan up to 100 pages against Copyleaks’s sources and internal database
Citation Builder Coming soon Create full and in-text citations for free
Rewrite, Paraphrase, and Trim Paraphrases effectively, trims word length up to 25%, and ensures an academic tone all while retaining the context and original meaning. QuillBot allows up to 125 words in the Free version.   QuillBot Flow (premium feature) can paraphrase and summarize but often loses context, adds complex synonyms, making the suggestions unsuitable for academic writing.
Language Translation Offers accurate academic translations of 28 global languages to English Offers generic language translations for 40+ languages
Generative Original Academic Content Generate outlines, titles, abstracts, summaries, study highlights, keywords, and emails. Ask Paperpal helps in brainstorming ideas, offers assistance on research topics QuillBot Flow offers Write Assist to complete your sentences and has a built-in web search to browse search results.
Feedback & Insights Offers detailed insights to enhance scholarly writing No detailed feedback
Integration Available on Word and Web (Windows and Mac) Available on Word, Web (Chrome), and Mac OS
Pricing Priced at US$19/month, $39/quarter or US$119/ year Priced at US$9.95/month, $39.95/semi annual or US$49.95/year
Paperpal vs QuillBot for Academic Writing

Is QuillBot worth it?

In a 2022 whitepaper by the University of Cambridge titled ‘Comparison of Automated English Editing Tools,’ Paperpal emerged as the preferred writing and editing tool among researchers. Following this, a blinded benchmarking analysis was conducted in October 2023. Senior editors from the Editage training department evaluated Paperpal against QuillBot and three other AI tools for academic writing. In terms of language editing coverage, Paperpal provided the highest number of suggested edits (392) with an average of 3.88 edits per sentence. This was higher than that by QuillBot, which suggested 259 edits or 2.42 edits per sentence on average. 

With a focus on paraphrasing, QuillBot often simplifies academic text into more generalized language. In a detailed QuillBot review, experts have stated that QuillBot tends to offer heavier suggestions compared to Paperpal but most of these involved unnecessary rephrasing of original text. These heavy revisions not only deviate from the author’s original voice and tone but also alter the intended meaning. For instance, the term “external fluctuation” has a specific meaning, and it needs to be retained, but QuillBot suggested revising it to “even when things change outside” which alters its significance. For authors with English as a second language, who may not catch these edits, such changes could mean the difference between acceptance and rejection. Here, Paperpal is the best QuillBot alternative to enhance the clarity, sentence structure, and maintain an academic tone while preserving the author’s voice and intended meaning. 

Who should use QuillBot?

If you’re a student hurrying to submit your essay and need basic checks before handing it in, QuillBot is a suitable choice. The tool provides sufficient capabilities for a one-time check and ensures your work is free of errors. 

Who should use Paperpal?

If you’re a student, educator, researcher, or an academic aiming to refine your academic writing, overcome writer’s block, and initiate your research projects, dissertations, theses, and more, Paperpal is your best option. This trusted AI writing tool supports you from first draft to submission readiness, boosting your productivity and helping you achieve 2x the writing in half the time. 

While there are various free alternatives to QuillBot such as Grammarly, Jasper, and Frase, if you require a comprehensive AI toolkit designed specifically for academic writing, Paperpal should be your first choice. Try Paperpal for free and see the difference for yourself.  

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does QuillBot work?

QuillBot uses natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to rewrite text while preserving its original meaning. QuillBot’s AI datasets are trained on grammar, spelling, punctuation, tone, sentence structure, and clarity. Users input text, QuillBot analyzes it using NLP techniques, deconstructs it, captures context, and replaces words/phrases. 

2. Is QuillBot good for academic writing?

QuillBot facilitates academic writing through efficient paraphrasing, summarization, citation building, and checks for grammar and plagiarism. It serves as a convenient solution when you need quick corrections for your essay before submission. However, unlike Paperpal and other QuillBot alternatives, the tool lacks in-depth explanations for the corrections it makes. 

3. Is it worth paying for QuillBot?

While QuillBot’s free version imposes limitations on accessing premium features, opting for a premium plan doesn’t necessarily streamline the workload. Rather than simplifying tasks, it often generates paraphrases or rewrites using complex sentences that can be challenging to grasp within the intended context. Choosing a free Quillbot alternative like Paperpal may be better choice. 

4. What is the best free alternative to QuillBot for academic writing?

QuillBot alternatives like Paperpal offers similar functionalities. That being said, Paperpal allows you access to its entire AI academic writing toolkit, without the need for a premium subscription. With a free Paperpal account, you get the following benefits –  

Language Suggestions – 200/month   
Paperpal Copilot (Generative AI) – 5 uses/day   
Academic Language Translation and Contextual Synonyms – 25 uses/month    
Submission Readiness Checks – Receive a free summary report 
Receive renewed assistance for your projects, with limits resetting daily or monthly based on your chosen feature. 

Start writing now! 

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 Primestarting 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! 

Soundarya Durgumahanthi

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