What are some cheaper alternatives to Grammarly that are equally as good?
As a non-native English speaker, I use Grammarly's free tier daily. It is invaluable to help me catch common mistakes, as well as to get a better understanding of the language through the explanations it provides. I will need to write even more English in the next few months, so it seemed like a good idea to get the Premium subscription. Unfortunately, Grammarly's pricing ($144 for the year) is prohibitive when converted to Brazilian Reais. And even if I am capable of making that payment now, I would rather avoid becoming dependent on something that is so expensive for me. So, what are some affordable alternatives to Grammarly's Premium subscription?
Just to be clear, I am aware that it is not ideal to rely too much on that kind of tool. Rest assured that my domain of English is enough that I am entirely capable of taking the suggestions as extra help and not as a crutch.
Maybe Language Tool?
+1 – Works pretty well for me when writing in non-native languages, although I don't write anything particularly critical.
This looked very interesting. I tried to find out what data they collect and while initially it looked like it wasn't too much, turns out they capture either URL or domain which is very off-putting to me:
Yup, my favorite to use as well. As an added bonus it is possible to self host the server for extra privacy. Though, I never personally tries that.
Did you use Grammarly to create your post? Your written English is better than mine, and I have English as a first language.
EDIT: If you're happy with dictionaries and reference books there are collections available for the software "Golden Dict". There's a big torrent that has a lot of English dictionaries, but also English Usage guides too.
Yes, I have. But nowadays it's not like it highlights my entire texts, it's just a few corrections. Grammarly greatly improved my English so, in a sense, it works to make itself less useful.
That said, when you're not writing in your own language some errors are impossible to prevent given that I think in two languages. Grammarly doesn't write anything for me, but it greatly reduces the time I would dedicate to proofreading.
The Premium tier includes highlighting and suggesting improvements to sentences that are difficult to read, as well as other stuff.
I honestly think your current level of written English is very good, and I don't think you need Grammarly.
There are tools called "readability checkers" that test how easy it would be to read a passage of writing. Older versions were not sophisticated.
Wikipedia has some information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests
You probably don't really need Grammarly. Since English isn't your first language, you probably learned to write it the "correct" way rather than relying on slang/shorthand (which is how native speakers tend to write).
If the reason you need to write English more is because you're traveling, you'll probably be fine. If you do need your writing to be more proper, then the free Grammarly tier you've been using is probably fine.
I used Grammarly's pro version for work for a while. It sucks a lot and gives you bad advice more often than not. Grammarly free is the cheaper alternative to Grammarly pro that's just as good.
You can also try using ChatGPT for shorter documents, e.g. with this prompt
I see. Because I never had Premium, I only really used its features when Grammarly allowed me to try it. It felt useful, but I didn't have it for long. I forgot to mention the Hemingway Editor, which is very good but only highlights troublesome sentences without making suggestions. They're transitioning into using AI but I don't how that's working. It's a little cheaper than Grammarly. Their free trial requires a credit card, I don't really wanna try it.
see, that's kind of the problem. You see "oh there are more suggestions" and you assume that this means there are more good suggestions. But in reality, all the good suggestions are in free grammarly; and then in Pro, it gives you suggestions that have maybe a 50% chance of being correct. But the only way you know which ones to accept and which ones to ignore is if you're already a skilled writer...in which case, you probably made most of the "mistakes" deliberately, for stylistic reasons.
I would definitely not recommend any non-native speaker to use pro because it will sometimes tell you things that are wrong and you'll have no way to know better. For example, it often says "Why don't you start this sentence with
So," because then you have a "transition word" (likeAlso,orTherefore,etc).But the thing is, starting with
So,is a very conversational thing and a really bad writing habit. And a big thing in English writing is not to use the same "transition word" over and over and over again. But Grammarly doesn't "understand" this bigger context, and so if you listen to it then you'll have bad writing where nearly every paragraph contains a sentence that starts with "So,".Now all this said, I don't want to scare you off of writing in English - a lot of these rules are important when you are writing professionally, and they don't matter when you are writing casually. However, you will have your "ear" trained by what you see in your writing-correction tool, and I don't think you should let that be Grammarly's opinions.
There are absolutley many situations in which I don't use Grammarly's suggestion, but rather my own sense of correction and style. However, the way I speak and write is naturally formal in Portuguese as well, so one might get the impression that a lot of what I write is profoundly influenced by Grammarly when in reality that was not the case.
There's no point in false modesty here: I feel confident enough as a writer that when a tool makes me a suggestion that is all it is for me. A suggestion.
Although I do have the browser extension that is useful for catching low-hanging fruit, anything of length or importance I write on a text editor without any assistance. Only when it is done, do I give it a pass on Grammarly, and I judge every suggestion attentively. I understand the concern with people who just click "NEXT NEXT NEXT" but that is just not my case. Because I read all the explanations, and sometimes cross-referenced with other tools, I ended up improving my English more and more. A tool is what you make of it, right?
Thanks ;)
I use LanguageTool instead of Grammarly. It's also free and they have really good privacy policies.
I should start off by saying I have never used these tools, so I can’t comment on how well each of them work. With that said, there are a few I have heard other people mention using with good things to say.
SlickWrite is a completely free tool that I’ve seen praised. It seems to be full-featured and have everything you’re looking for, plus being completely free with no paid version or premium tiers is surely a major advantage.
There’s also ProWritingAid, which is one of the more direct Grammarly competitors. I’m not sure how much cheaper it is, to be honest, but it also has a free tier and I thought it worth mentioning. Readable is another tool with similar features, but there is no free version. However, a look at their pricing page tells me it is only $4 per month, $48 annually, for a non-commercial subscription and has a 7-day free trial.
I apologize for not having the personal experience with any of the above tools and not being able to give you more information on them than simply saying they exist. I do know people who have used SlickWrite and were pleased with it and see other two frequently mentioned online, but, without Googling them and pretending I’m not simply copying and pasting what it tells me, I can’t tell you much more.
I use chat gtp and ask him/her it (sorry not sure of the correct pronoun) to reword whatever I wrote.
Be aware that this will create sentence structures that are often very easy to recognize as AI-generated. Specifically, GPT generated as different models have a different way of writing (probably something to do with their training data).
The recognizability of the AI-generated text depends on what you ask it to do with your input. But, if you request a complete rewording, the resulting structure will likely be recognizable as AI-generated by many people.
You can avoid some of that by adding custom instructions.
This is the bare minimum you should add when asking it to completely reword input.
You can probably get much more constructive and detailed feedback if you create more detailed instructions.
Edit: Just because I had some time on my hands and because I thought it was a fun challenge, I did work on a more complex prompt, which I included below. Some notes though: