Most people pick writing tools based on which one their friend recommended. That’s the wrong way to choose. Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and Hemingway do completely different things.
How I tested these writing tools
I ran all three tools on the same five documents: a 1,000-word blog post, a 500-word email, a 3,000-word short story, a 1,500-word academic paragraph, and a 2,000-word marketing landing page. I rated each tool on correction accuracy, style suggestions that actually improved the text, speed of feedback, and whether the paid features justified the cost. These results reflect my writing style and document types. Your experience may differ based on what you write.
Grammarly: Fast corrections wherever you write
Grammarly is a real-time writing assistant that checks grammar, spelling, punctuation, and tone as you type. It works as a browser extension, desktop app, mobile keyboard, and plugin for Google Docs, Word, and most text fields across the internet. Grammarly’s free plan catches basic errors. Pro costs $12/month and adds sentence rewriting, tone adjustment, plagiarism detection, and AI text generation with 2,000 prompts per month.
What Grammarly does better than anything else
Grammarly’s real-time correction is unmatched. As you type, it underlines errors and suggests fixes before you finish the sentence. The browser extension works everywhere: Gmail, Slack, Notion, Google Docs, Twitter, WordPress. You don’t have to copy-paste your text into a separate tool. For quick corrections (emails, Slack messages, social media posts), Grammarly is the fastest option because it’s already where you are typing.
Grammarly’s limits
Grammarly catches surface-level errors well but misses structural issues. It won’t tell you that your third paragraph contradicts your first, or that your argument lacks evidence. The AI rewrite feature sometimes changes your meaning in ways that sound polished but no longer say what you intended. The tone detection is useful for emails (showing if your message sounds “confident” or “uncertain”) but feels gimmicky for longer content. For blog posts and articles, Grammarly catches typos and grammar but doesn’t help with structure or style beyond basic suggestions.
Grammarly results
| Document type | Corrections caught | Useful suggestions | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blog post (1,000 words) | 12 | 7 | Real-time |
| Email (500 words) | 4 | 3 | Real-time |
| Short story (3,000 words) | 18 | 5 | Real-time |
| Academic (1,500 words) | 8 | 4 | Real-time |
| Marketing page (2,000 words) | 10 | 6 | Real-time |
Check pricing at grammarly.com/plans.
ProWritingAid: Deep analysis for serious writers
ProWritingAid takes a different approach. Instead of real-time correction, it runs detailed reports on your document after you finish writing. The free plan limits you to 500 words per analysis and 2 runs per day. Premium plans start at around $30/month (billed annually, the price drops significantly). ProWritingAid offers 20+ different reports covering readability, pacing, dialogue tags, cliches, overused words, and more.
Where ProWritingAid destroys both competitors
ProWritingAid’s reports go deeper than anything Grammarly or Hemingway offer. The readability report scores your text against multiple indices (Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, Coleman-Liau). A pacing report highlights paragraphs that are too similar in length or sentence structure. And the overused words report shows you that you used “however” 14 times in a 2,000-word article. For fiction writers, the dialogue report flags unrealistic speech patterns. ProWritingAid catches problems that Grammarly doesn’t even look for.
Why most people won’t use it
ProWritingAid isn’t real-time. You write your draft, paste it in, run a report, read the feedback, go back and edit. The workflow is slower and more deliberate. The free plan’s 500-word limit makes it useless for anything beyond a quick paragraph. And the interface, while packed with data, feels like a spreadsheet for writers. It’s overwhelming if you just want someone to tell you if “their” or “there” is correct. ProWritingAid is built for people who treat writing as a craft and want to get better at it, not people who want quick fixes.
ProWritingAid results
| Document type | Issues found | Useful suggestions | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blog post (1,000 words) | 34 | 18 | 15 seconds |
| Email (500 words) | 12 | 6 | 8 seconds |
| Short story (3,000 words) | 87 | 42 | 30 seconds |
| Academic (1,500 words) | 41 | 22 | 20 seconds |
| Marketing page (2,000 words) | 58 | 31 | 22 seconds |
Check pricing at prowritingaid.com/pricing.
Hemingway: Free, focused, and frequently misunderstood
Hemingway Editor grades your writing on readability. It highlights hard-to-read sentences in yellow or red, flags passive voice, adverb overuse, and complex phrasing. The web version is free. The desktop app costs $19.99 one-time. Hemingway doesn’t correct your grammar. It doesn’t check spelling. Or suggest better words. It tells you one thing: how hard your writing is to read.
What Hemingway actually does well
Hemingway forces you to write simpler. Paste in a paragraph and it lights up every sentence that’s too long, too complex, or too passive. For writers who tend to overwrite (long sentences, nested clauses, passive constructions), Hemingway is the fastest writing tool to identify and fix readability problems. The readability grade (aiming for Grade 9 or below) gives you a concrete target. For blog posts, web copy, and any content meant for a general audience, Hemingway’s simplicity-first approach is exactly right.
Hemingway’s blind spot
Hemingway doesn’t know if your simple sentence is saying the right thing. It will happily give a Grade 5 readability score to text that is grammatically correct but completely wrong. It also can’t handle context. Passive voice isn’t always bad, but Hemingway flags every instance. Scientific writing, legal writing, and academic writing often need passive voice, and Hemingway penalizes you for it. The free web version doesn’t save your work. You paste in, edit, copy out. No cloud storage, no history, no integration with your writing tools.
Hemingway results
| Document type | Issues flagged | Readability grade | Useful flags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blog post (1,000 words) | 22 | Grade 8 | 15 |
| Email (500 words) | 8 | Grade 6 | 5 |
| Short story (3,000 words) | 45 | Grade 7 | 28 |
| Academic (1,500 words) | 38 | Grade 12 | 12 |
| Marketing page (2,000 words) | 30 | Grade 8 | 20 |
Check it out at hemingwayapp.com.
Writing tools compared
| Tool | Best for | Price | Real-time | Depth of analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grammarly | Emails, quick writing, everywhere | Free / $12/mo | Yes | Surface |
| ProWritingAid | Long-form, fiction, craft | Free / ~$30/mo | No | Deep (20+ reports) |
| Hemingway | Readability, web copy | Free / $19.99 | No | Readability only |
My overall winner
Grammarly wins for most people because most writing happens in real-time (emails, Slack, Google Docs, social media). Having a writing assistant that works where you already type is more valuable than having a deeper analysis tool that requires copy-pasting your text somewhere else. Grammarly’s Pro at $12/month is worth it for anyone who writes daily because the tone adjustment and sentence rewrite features save real editing time on emails and short-form content.
The exception is fiction writers, novelists, and anyone producing long-form content (3,000+ words per piece). ProWritingAid’s 20+ reports catch structural and stylistic problems that Grammarly doesn’t even see. If you’re writing a novel, a whitepaper, or detailed articles, ProWritingAid is the better tool even though the workflow is slower. Pair ProWritingAid (for deep editing) with Grammarly Free (for real-time typo catching) and you cover both needs.
Grammarly vs ProWritingAid: Which should you pick
This comes down to writing workflow. If you write in short bursts across multiple platforms (email, Slack, Docs, social media), Grammarly’s browser extension means you never have to switch tools. If you write in longer sessions focused on one document at a time (blog posts, chapters, reports), ProWritingAid’s analysis-after-drafting workflow fits naturally. Grammarly is faster for catching mistakes. ProWritingAid is deeper for improving writing quality. For most knowledge workers, Grammarly. For serious writers working on book-length projects, ProWritingAid.
Pick your writing tool by writing type
Not all writing tools are built the same. The right choice depends on what you write, how you write, and where you write it. Here is the breakdown.
Quick daily writing (emails, Slack, social media)
Of all the writing tools available for quick daily writing, Grammarly Free is the fastest. The browser extension catches typos and grammar mistakes as you type. No workflow change, no copy-pasting, no thinking about it. Upgrade to Pro ($12/month) if you write a lot of emails and want the tone adjustment feature.
Blog posts and web copy
Write in your normal editor, then paste into Hemingway for a readability check. Fix the red and yellow highlights. Paste back into your editor. This takes 2-3 minutes per article and catches the readability problems that make your writing feel dense. Free for both tools.
Long-form content (articles, whitepapers, reports)
Write your draft, run it through ProWritingAid for structural analysis, then use Grammarly Free for a final typo sweep. ProWritingAid catches pacing, overused words, readability, and style issues. Grammarly catches the spelling and grammar mistakes ProWritingAid might miss. Cost: ProWritingAid Premium + Grammarly Free.
Fiction and creative writing
ProWritingAid Premium. The dialogue report, pacing report, cliché checker, and chapter critique are built specifically for fiction writers. No other tool offers this depth for creative writing. Hemingway can help with a final readability pass, but ProWritingAid does the heavy lifting.
For more AI tools that improve your daily productivity, check out our comparison of AI task management tools. If your writing is part of a content creation workflow, our guide to AI content automation covers tools that handle ideation, drafting, and publishing.
