Grammarly vs ProWritingAid – Which Is Better?

It’s hard to be right all the time. And nothing highlights that reality like following grammar rules and ensuring flawless messaging.

Even the best grammarians can’t keep up, not to talk of people with poor grammar.

Poor grammar affects your professionalism and kills your career prospects.

In one report from Harvard Business Review, companies won’t hire someone with poor grammar.

Luckily, there are reliable online grammar checkers to help you avoid grammatical errors. These grammar checkers show you errors that you’d otherwise miss.

Sometime back, we did a Grammarly comparison with WhiteSmoke. We also talked about the best Grammarly alternatives.

However today, we have picked another popular grammar tool called ProWritingAid. Like Grammarly, ProWritingAid also helps you write better but they have unique features.

That’s why we’ll be comparing these to help you decide what’s best for your situation. We’ll go through their features, pricing, similarities, differences, and so on.

So, let’s get down to business — Grammarly vs ProWritingAid what’s the best for you?

What Is Grammarly?

Grammarly helps you correct your grammar and also gives comprehensive feedback on your writing. The tool can be used to proofread and check for spelling and grammatical errors in your articles, blog posts, emails, and so on.

This grammar checker also detects mistakes like sentence structure issues and misused words. More so, it gives you suggestions on style changes, punctuation, spelling, and grammar — all in real-time.

Grammarly also allows you to:

• Check your writing for different genres
• Choose your preferred English dialect
• Adds new words to your personal dictionary

What Is ProWritingAid?

ProWritingAid is a style editor and grammar checker for content creators, writers, and so on. The software helps you optimize your word choices, remove errors, and edit punctuation and grammar. It also provides you with a detailed report to improve your writing.

ProWritingAid can also be used as integration to WordPress, Gmail, and Google Docs. The software also offers in-app articles, videos, quizzes, and explanations to help improve your writing.

Check out this interesting article: Best Hemingway App Alternatives

Plagiarism Checker

A plagiarism checker helps you find areas in your content where you’ve used someone else’s words, ideas, or thoughts. Let’s see how these tools function as plagiarism checkers.

Grammarly

You can easily run a plagiarism check on Grammarly’s editor. Clicking the tool’s plagiarism button allows it to compare your content to different academic papers and web pages. Grammarly also checks private databases for paragraphs and sentences published online.

If there are texts that need citations, Grammarly flags them. Even more, the tool provides links to the sources of the matching texts. Plus, you get an originality score for your content.

Also, Grammarly offers citation data for referencing in three different formats:

• Chicago Manual of Style
• APA
• MLA

Additionally, the tool provides corresponding links for citations on its suggestion card. The links automatically redirect you to online resources for citation models you can use for your text.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid checks your content against billions of academic papers, published works, and online pages.

The tool allows you to run plagiarism checks through its Microsoft Work addon and online editor.

Also, ProWritingAid’s algorithm checks your texts against offline and online sources. The software also highlights the parts of your work that are representations of someone else’s work.

ProWritingAid shows you where you used someone else’s words or ideas verbatim. You can also see the percentage of similarity to the person’s work. This helps you know where you can use quotations or where you need to paraphrase better.

Verdict

Both tools win here. They both offer plagiarism checkers that compare your work to billions of already-published content.

Grammar Checker

Finding and fixing grammatical errors in your text is important. Let’s see what these tools offer.

Grammarly

Grammarly has a sophisticated AI that corrects your grammatical errors, making your text more readable. This way, you can make a good impression on your readers, depending on your goals and audience.

Also, the tool checks your text for structure issues, misused phrases, and other errors that may affect your content. You can also apply suggested corrections to make your work error-free and polished.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid also uses AI to identify grammatical issues. This helps you improve the strength and style of your writing.

Verdict

Both tools win this one again. They both help you check your content for plagiarism.

Spelling Checker

There are tiny spelling errors in your text that you might have missed. Let’s see if these tools help you correct those errors.

Grammarly

Grammarly identifies spelling mistakes and even missing spaces after periods. The tool also provides different alternative words for the misspelled ones.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid helps you highlight misspelled words in your text. You can also view suggestions of replacements for those words.

The tool also provides different English versions like Canadian, Australian, American, and British English. So, depending on the version you choose, the tool checks your text and highlights misspelled words.

Verdict

Both ProWritingAid and Grammarly are winners. Both tools help you find spelling errors and provide you with correct suggestions.

Find Repeated Words

For your text to be concise, you need to get rid of repeated words.

Grammarly

Grammarly helps you replace or remove repetitive and filler words from your text. The tool also provides you with substantive words to replace overused phrases. This helps your writing have a greater impact on your target audience.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid helps you find repetitive words within your text. Even more, it finds repeated sentence starts, whether they are in the same paragraph or not.

Verdict

Both tools help you find repeated words within your content. They both win this one.

Writing Reports

Reports on your text help you see where your content needs improvement.

Grammarly

Grammarly provides you with performance reports that help you know how easy it is to read your text.

The tool provides reports using four metrics. They include:

Readability Score

Grammarly uses readability scores to measure how easy it is for your target audience to read your content. The tool has a 60 or higher starting goal, with 60 representing the average reading level of a 13-year-old American.

Text Scores

The tool measures your text score from one to 100. This score is based on how many types of suggestions were found in your text and how your content compares to others with the same goals.

The higher your score, the fewer the suggestions the tool made.

Vocabulary

This section depends on the rare and unique words in your text. Unique words represent how many different words you used in your text compared to other users. On the other hand, rare words represent the percentage of words in your text that are not common English words.

These scores help you see if you need more variety in your vocabulary.

Word Count

The word count section includes speaking time, reading length, character and word count, and the number of sentences in your text. They help you tailor your speeches, blog posts, or emails to your target audience.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid checks your text and shows you areas for potential improvements. You also have access to reports that focus on specific parts of your text. These reports provide you with quick fixes for polishing short texts.

You can also access in-depth reports that show you more areas where you can improve your writing.

ProWritingAid’s writing reports make you aware of your mistakes — helping you better your writing style.

The tool also provides you with style reports that highlight areas to fix for better readability. These include areas with emotional tells, repeated sentence starts, passive verbs, and so on.

You also have access to reports on overused words. The tool flags and gets rid of phrases and words that writers overuse.

Additionally, ProWritingAid provides readability reports that use readability tools to check your texts. The software highlights sentences that seem hard for your readers to understand.

Verdict

Grammarly wins this round. Though both tools provide writing reports, Grammarly uses more metrics to analyze your text.

Tone Detector

With the tone detector, you can ensure that the way your text sounds fits the right audience.

Grammarly

Grammarly allows you to choose your preferred tone, whether concerned, formal, or friendly.

The tool analyzes your capitalization, punctuation, phrasing, and word choice to identify your content’s tone. Even more, you have access to suggestions to make your text clearer, more engaging, professional, and polished.

With Grammarly’s browser extension, you can assess how your text might sound to your readers and refine your tone to fit your target audience.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid does not support this feature.

Verdict

Grammarly is the winner here. It identifies the tone of your text and provides suggestions on how to make it better.

Integrations/Plugins

Integrations and plugins help you edit where you write, saving you time and effort. So, let’s look at the integrations these grammar checkers offer.

Grammarly

Grammarly has a plugin that integrates with different platforms, websites, and emails. The Grammarly plugin also integrates with browsers like Edge, Firefox, Safari.

The tool also has a desktop app that resembles its online text editor. This app allows you to save and create documents on the cloud. You can also decide to copy and paste your content to the app for editing.

Grammarly also has a plugin that you can download on your desktop for Microsoft Word.

Grammarly’s plugin does not integrate with other desktop apps apart from Microsoft Outlook and Word. You can install Grammarly’s Office add-in to check your content on Word and Outlook.

Also, Grammarly has a browser extension for apps, like Slack, that have web versions.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid provides you with an online word editor and a downloadable desktop version.

The platform also has a browser extension that works with different email providers and web pages.

With ProWritingAid’s browser extension, you can edit whatever and wherever you write online. Even more, the extension integrates with WordPress, Facebook, Gmail, and so on.

This extension is available for Microsoft, Safari, and Firefox. You can check your grammar and spelling on your favorite websites in real-time.

Also, ProWritingAid offers add-ons that integrate with Google Docs and Microsoft Word. The ProWritingAid Microsoft Word plugin integrates directly with word processors. But, this integration is only supported by Word on Windows computers.

To edit MS Word documents on a Mac computer, you need to download the ProWritingAid desktop app. This desktop app also allows you to save, edit, and open Scrivener projects and retain your formatting. Plus, it works with other formats like Markdown, HTML, Rich Text, and Open Office.

The ProWritingAid desktop app is available for Windows and Mac.

Verdict

Both tools are winners in this round. They both have desktop apps and browser extensions. This way, you can edit your text wherever you write it.

Design & Interface

A grammar checker needs to have a user-friendly interface if you’re going to take full advantage of its features. Let’s find out how easy-to-use Grammarly and ProWritingAid interfaces are.

Grammarly

Grammarly comes with a clean online editor. You copy and paste your content in the editor or upload documents using an upload button. Better still, Grammarly can be added to Chrome as an extension.

Also, Grammarly easily identifies errors and breaks them into categories. You can click on the errors to view the suggestions.

This tool also has a Chrome plugin that connects with online forms automatically. This allows you to check your grammar on the go.

ProWritingAid

Compared to Grammarly, ProWritingAid is not as clean.

Your errors are shown on the left side of the tool’s editor. Plus, you need to click on a small arrow and hover over lines of texts to see suggestions. This process makes the tool a bit tacky.

Verdict

Grammarly wins this round. The tool has an easy-to-use interface. Plus, it comes with a Chrome extension and plugin that lets you edit your texts on the go.

Presentation

How a grammar checker shows you results is quite important. Let’s see how these two tools present results after checking your text.

Grammarly

Grammarly does a real-time compact check of your content smoothly and in a user-friendly way. The tool checks consistency, stylistic elements, sentence flow, grammar, and so on, all at once.

Also, Grammarly tells you the categories of each error while you’re editing. These categories include engagement, clarity, correctness, and so on.

This tool also gives you access to other stylistic error categories like

• Word choice
• Inappropriate colloquialisms
• Delivery, and so on

Grammarly also tracks your grammar over time. The tool keeps track of your common mistakes, which helps you improve your grammar over time.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid presents results on style and grammar checks in a report-based manner.

The tool gives you the option to check your entire content at once — they call it real-time checks. But, typically, you have to run separate reports for each kind of error.

Though this is different from how Grammarly works, this report-style presentation gives you more control over your editing process. Also, this is especially useful if you write fiction.

ProWritingAid also allows you to create combo reports. This gives you more customization options and more granular checks.

This tool also offers 20 different types of reports that include style and grammar reports and dialogue and pacing tag checks.

ProWritingAid also allows you to add a personalized style guide. This is useful when you’re writing content for a profession with industry-specific jargon.

Verdict

Grammarly wins here. The tool checks your content and presents results in an easy-to-understand manner. Plus, for added simplicity, it categorizes each error in your text.

Customer Service & Support

You might come across some issues while using these tools. Let’s take a look at the customer support options they have.

Grammarly

Grammarly provides customer support via email. If you want to solve issues on your own, they also have a help center with articles on:

• Billing and subscription
• Account basics
• Resolving issues
• Other tips and tutorials

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid offers support via a contact form. You fill the form, and a member of their customer support team gets in touch with you.

For users that want to handle things themselves, the tool has a FAQ section on;

• API
• Browser extensions
• Desktop app
• Purchases and payment
• Online editor, and so on

Verdict

Grammarly wins this one. Aside from email, the tool also provides support with a repository of helpful resources.

Pricing

Pricing is an essential factor when considering grammar checkers. Let’s compare the prices of these tools.

Grammarly Pricing

Grammarly has three pricing plans.

1. Free Plan

This plan is free and you can access features like:

• Grammar checks
• Spelling checks
• Punctuation checks

2. Premium Plan

This plan starts at $11.66 per month, and you get to enjoy:

• Features in the free plan
• Fluency
• Formality levels
• Multiple word choices
• Advanced suggestions
• Plagiarism checker
• Tone adjustment
• Sentence rewriting for better clarity

3. Business Plan

This plan starts at $12.50 per month for each member. It is also suitable for teams of up to 149 members. Plus, it gives you access to:

• Features in the Premium plan
• SAM Single sign-on
• Centralized billing
• Admin panel
• Style guide
• Priority email support

These prices might change over time. Kindly visit the Grammarly pricing page for information.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid offers three general pricing plans. They include

1. Free Plan

This plan is free and gives you access to ProWritingAid features like:

• A summary report of key errors
• Up to 19 writing reports
• 500 words count limit
• Online use only

2. Premium Plan

This plan has three subscription packages. They are:

• Monthly Subscription — $20 per month
• Yearly Subscription — $79 per year
• Lifetime Subscription — A one-time payment of $399

The Premium Plan gives you access to:

• All the features of the free plan
• No word count limit
• Access to the desktop version
• Integrations for Scrivener, Chrome, Google Docs, and Microsoft Word

3. Premium Plus Plan

The tool also offers three Premium Plus pricing plans. These plans come with the Premium pricing plan features and include 60 plagiarism checks per year.

• Monthly Subscription — $24 per month
• Yearly Subscription — $89 per year
• Lifetime Subscription — A one-time payment of $499

These pricings can change with time. So, visit the ProWritingAid website for more information.

Verdict

ProWritingAid wins this one. The tool’s yearly subscription is cheap compared to that of Grammarly.

Grammarly & ProWritingAid Similarities 

Let’s have a look at some features that Grammarly and ProWritingAid have in common.

• Both tools help you check for plagiarism.
• They check for grammar and spelling errors.
• Grammarly and ProWritingAid offer a free plan.
• Both tools have a browser extension.
• ProWritingAid and Grammarly offer multiple integrations.

ProWritingAid vs Grammarly Differences 

Let’s look at the features that set these tools apart.

Features	Grammarly	ProWritingAid
Pricing	Grammarly Premium starts at $11.66 per month. No yearly subscription option.	ProWritingAid Premium starts at $20 per month, with yearly and lifetime subscription options.
Customer support	They offer customer support via email. Plus, they have a help center with different helpful articles.	ProWritingAid offers a contact form and a FAQ section for support.
Tone detector	Grammarly analyzes your text to identify the tone. It also provides suggestions on how to make it more engaging.	Doesn’t provide tone detection.

Advantages 

These grammar checkers come with their individual benefits. Let’s take a look.

Grammarly

• The software underlines incorrect words and lets you edit your writing in real-time.
• Grammarly is user-friendly. Beginners can use it without any tutorial or training.
• The tool offers quick checks for your writings.
• Grammarly also provides account-based document storage.
• The tool also allows you to add new words to your dictionary

ProWritingAid

• ProWritingAid supports a wide range of features.
• The tool provides multiple reports for improvements based on your writing.
• ProWritingAid also supports multiple integrations.
• The software offers yearly subscriptions

Disadvantages 

Like every other tool, ProWritingAid and Grammarly have their own cons. Let’s go through them.

Grammarly

• The tool catches wrong errors sometimes.
• The free version is limited. You have access to only spelling and grammar checks.

ProWritingAid

• The tool can be a bit slow, especially when checking a large part of the text.
• ProWritingAid doesn’t have a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
• You only have access to the plagiarism checker when you subscribe to the premium plan.

Final Thoughts: ProWritingAid vs Grammarly

Well, there you have it! We’ve made an informative, feature-by-feature comparison of two grammar checkers — Grammarly and ProWritingAid.

Both tools undoubtedly have excellent features. But, for this one, we’re going with Grammarly as the winner.

Grammarly helps you correct and examine your content. The tool also highlights all the mistakes in your text within seconds of copying and pasting the content into Grammarly’s editor or using the software’s native feature in other text editors.

Additionally, the software helps you identify tiny grammatical and spelling errors. Plus, it tells you when you overlook punctuations where they are needed.

Moreover, aside from its plagiarism checker characteristics, Grammarly helps you proofread your content. Even better, the tool offers a free plan that gives you access to some of its features.