Grammarly

What it is

Grammarly checks your writing where you write it. It runs as a desktop app on Windows and Mac, as an extension in Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, on iPhone, iPad and Android, and inside Microsoft Office and Google Docs. The free version catches spelling and grammar mistakes and shows you the tone your text is landing in.

The paid version turns checking into rewriting. Full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment, unlimited personalized suggestions, plagiarism and AI-generated text detection, and 2,000 AI prompts per member per month, against 100 on the free plan.

Who it's for (and who it isn't)

It fits anyone who writes in a second language, anyone whose job involves a lot of client-facing email, and anyone who knows their first draft is careless. The reason it works is placement: the correction appears in the message you are already writing, so it costs no extra step.

It is a weaker fit if what you need is generation rather than correction. Grammarly improves text you have written, and if the blank page is the problem, Jasper or Copy.ai address that directly. It is also the wrong tool if you write in a voice that deliberately breaks convention, because a corrector defaults toward the conventional and will quietly sand your writing flat.

Pricing

Grammarly is freemium. The free plan covers spelling and grammar checks, tone detection and 100 AI prompts. Pro is EUR 12 per month and adds full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment, unlimited personalized suggestions, plagiarism and AI text detection, 2,000 AI prompts per month per member and priority support. Enterprise is quoted on request and adds proactive AI across applications, custom roles, data loss prevention and BYOK encryption. Prices as shown here were quoted in euros.

The free plan is not a teaser. For catching typos before you hit send, it is complete, and Pro is worth paying for only if you want rewriting and tone control rather than correction.

Set it up

Official guide: Get started with Grammarly

1. Have an email you wrote this week ready to paste in. Create a free Grammarly account: enter your email address, a password and your name, or sign up with Google, Facebook or Apple. The Free plan gives you spelling and grammar checks, tone detection (a note on how your text comes across) and 100 AI prompts (requests you type to Grammarly's AI). Your free account is now ready.
2. Open the Grammarly Editor at app.grammarly.com, which works in your browser without installing anything. Click "New document" and paste in that email. You now see Grammarly's suggestions on the right side of the screen.
3. Read each suggestion. Click "Accept" to apply a fix, or "Dismiss" to ignore it. Dismiss anything that does not sound like you, because the choice is always yours. Each fix you accept now appears in your text.
4. Set your spelling style. Click the "Menu" icon in the upper-left corner to open the sidebar, then choose your English under "Language preference". This stops Grammarly from marking correct words as errors, such as "colour" or "color". Your spelling style is now set.
5. When Grammarly flags a name or term that is correct, click "Add to dictionary" on the suggestion card. Grammarly now leaves that word alone.
6. Install the browser extension, a small add-on that checks what you type on websites. Open the extension page for your browser; in Chrome, click "Add to Chrome" in the Chrome Web Store and approve the install. The extension reads the text you type so that it can check it. Grammarly now checks what you write on websites, such as a new email in your webmail.

When this works, your real emails are checked for spelling, grammar and tone before you send them, and Grammarly knows your spelling style and your own words.

On Pro (EUR 12/month): full-sentence rewrites (Grammarly rewrites a whole sentence for you), tone adjustment (changes how formal or friendly a text sounds), unlimited personalized suggestions, plagiarism and AI detection (checks whether text is copied or written by AI), and 2,000 AI prompts per month per member.

Strengths and limitations

The strength is that it is present without being a destination. You do not open Grammarly, you write and it is there, and that is why people keep using it when standalone checkers get abandoned.

The limitations deserve stating plainly. Suggestions trend toward safe, conventional prose, so accepting everything produces flatter writing than you started with. Real-time checking means a tool watching what you type across applications, which is a decision to make deliberately for confidential work. And the AI detection feature on Pro is best treated as a signal rather than a verdict, since no detector in this category is reliable enough to accuse anyone with.