Anyone who’s ever written anything knows that it’s nearly impossible to get it right the first time around. The saying goes that books aren’t written, they’re rewritten, and this is true of most writing – whether a report for your manager, a blog for a business, or an essay at university, that piece of writing is only perfected in the editing stage.
Luckily, there are an increasing number of online solutions that can help you with the editing process. In addition to common spelling corrections, a lot of these tools can also provide tips on how to increase readability by simplifying sentences, providing grammar ameliorations, and giving useful synonyms.
Hemingway is one of the most popular of these editing tools, and for good reason. Named after the famously precise and succinct writer, it helps millions of people around the world to increase the quality of their writing. It has a free and paid version, and can be used either as a separate tab that you paste your content in, or as an extension directly added to your word processor of choice.
While Hemingway is a great tool, it does promote a particular style of writing that won’t suit everyone. Thankfully, it’s not the only great tool out there, so in this article, we’ve compiled 10 great Hemingway alternatives, to help you take your writing to the next level.
Grammarly is one of the most popular alternatives to Hemingway. It has an excellent free option that can be used as an extension, and it uses AI-powered technologies to make the best writing suggestions possible.
While it was originally aimed at working professionals, it now also aims to provide specialised support for students.
Features
- Plagiarism checker: it compares text with over 16 billion academic and web pages in the Proquest database, great for students and academics.
- Tone detector: the tool can help you to write in a variety of different tones, making you sound more formal, friendly or informal depending on your requirements.
Pricing
Grammarly offers three main pricing plans.
Free: the free plan provides basic suggestions on grammar and spelling, for individuals.
Premium – $11.66 per month, billed annually: the premium option provides advanced writing feedback to individuals.
Business – $12.50 per user per month, billed annually: the business plan provides team usage statistics, from teams of 3 all the way up to 149.
Why Grammarly over Hemingway?
Grammarly is more user friendly than Hemingway, and the free version integrates seamlessly with whatever word processor you write on. If you’re looking for a slick option that makes quick and easily implementable suggestions, Grammarly is likely the option for you.
Ginger is another great AI grammar-checking tool that’s been around for 15 years now. It’s aimed at both professionals and students, and provides users with a wide variety of handy suggestions.
It can help users write in different writing styles, points out cases of misused words, and amends awkward sentence structures.
Features
- Translator: Ginger features a translation software that can handle over 40 languages. This can be especially helpful for those operating in multi-national markets.
- Grammar checker: it assesses text in real text in real time, providing actionable suggestions on grammar and punctuation.
- Personal trainer: while it won’t take you to the gym, the tool does have a very handy tool that can help individuals improve their English, especially beneficial for non-native users.
Pricing
Ginger has two main plans.
Free: the free version provides basic suggestions.
Paid – $29.96 per month: advanced suggestions and multiple additional features.
Why Ginger over Hemingway?
Ginger is a great solution that users may appreciate over Hemingway for its translation tool and live text predictions. It’s easy to use, and can be integrated into multiple different devices.
PaperRater is a great tool for putting the finishing touches on pieces of writing, with a special focus on proofreading based on statistical models. In addition to making structural and grammatical suggestions, it also has a plagiarism checker, making it especially useful for those in an academic niche.
Features
- Plagiarism checker: this feature marks PaperRater apart from the competition, making it especially useful if you’re writing on a subject that it’s extra important to not plagiarise on.
- Grammar and structure suggestions: the tool makes useful suggestions on how to improve the grammar of your piece
Pricing
PaperRater currently has two pricing plans:
Free: with the free plan, you get 50 submissions per month, and 10 plagiarism checks. You can only have 5 pages in each submission.
Premium – $14.95 per month: the premium plan ups those limits to 200 submissions per month, 25 plagiarism checks, and a length limit of 20 pages per submission.
Why PaperRater over Hemingway?
If you regularly need to use a plagiarism checker and don’t mind paying a little for your tool, PaperRater could be a great Hemingway alternative for you. It’s fast, has a nice layout, and can keep you out of trouble with your academic institution.
Wordtune is another great editing assistant that takes things a step further. In addition to making grammar and spelling suggestions, the tool can make a variety of potentially very useful sentence suggestions. It’s well priced (with a free option as well) and if you get along with the suggestions, you might find it an incredibly useful AI powered writing tool.
Features
- Tone changer: the tone changer allows you to make your writing either more formal or more casual, depending on who the reader will be.
- Rewrite: if you’re just generally unhappy with the way a sentence looks, you can ask the tool to rewrite it for you, until you find an option that you do like.
- Shorten and expand: the shorten and expand features help you to expand on more complex topics, or shorten sentence lengths if you need to be succinct.
Pricing
Wordtune has three main pricing plans:
Free: in addition to general suggestions, you get up to 20 rewrites per day.
Premium – $9.99 per month, billed annually: unlimited rewrites, unlimited tone changes, unlimited shortens and expansions.
Premium for teams – contact Wordtune: the same feature access as premium, but with specialised billing structures for teams.
Why Wordtune over Hemingway?
People who want a tool that makes additional suggestions on how to write their sentences may get along very well with Wordtune. You can change the tone, expand, shorten, all for a very affordable sum per month.
I’ve done a full review of Wordtune if you’re serious about opting for a tool like this as a Hemingway alternative altogether.
INK For All is an AI-powered writing assistant that goes a long way beyond just pointing out the odd spelling error here and there. Using GPT-3 technology, it not only points out suggestions but can also produce SEO content. As a result, for writers who need to focus on optimising their content for digital platforms, which let’s face it is most of us, that makes it a very attractive tool indeed.
Features
- Long form editor: the long-form editor in the tool lets you put key-phrases and keywords into a box, and it’ll tell you how to optimise the content to target that key phrase.
Pricing
INK For All currently has three different pricing plans:
Free: 50 sign up points, 10 articles per month, and all 65 of the INK web tools.
Pro – $35 per month: 50,000 AI words per month, unlimited articles.
Pro unlimited – $99 per month: unlimited word, articles, and SEO AI content scoring.
Why INK For All over Hemingway?
For those working in the marketing world who want to create content that’s easily optimised for digital channels, INK For All will be a great option. The free option provides all your standard editing options, while the paid for options offer an incredibly wide variety of SEO tools to get your content ranking as high as possible.
LanguageTool is a useful general purpose editing software solution that a wide variety of writers can benefit from using. Unlike a lot of the other options on this list, it isn’t really optimised for a single purpose – great if you need help with a wide range of writing tasks, but perhaps not ideal if you work in a niche like marketing and need targeted support.
Features
- Picky mode: picky mode can be activated if you really need to write something that’s watertight grammatically – good if you’re writing for a picky boss.
- Mother tongue: for non-native writers, you can tell the tool your mother tongue and it’ll look for common errors that speakers of your language might make.
Pricing
Language tool has three main pricing plans:
Free: basic functions checked, up to 10,000 characters.
Premium – $19.99 per month, or $4.99 per month billed annually: enhanced suggestions on up to 100,000 characters.
Business – depends on number of users: user management, team style guide and team dictionary.
Why LanguageTool over Hemingway?
With its mother tongue options and support in over 25 languages, LanguageTool is a great alternative to Hemingway for those who frequently need to write in a language other than their mother tongue.
ProWritingAid is an editing assistant aimed at helping a wide range of writers, from novelists to marketing professionals.
Features
- In depth reports: as the name suggests, ProWritingAid provides more than just simple suggestions. The main feature is that it provides in depth reports, giving readability scores and suggestions on minutiae like sentence length.
- Writing score: like Hemingway, ProWritingAid provides a writing score, but with more specific and actionable information on how to increase that score.
Pricing
There are two main pricing plans for ProWritingAid:
Free: basic writing suggestions, available as an extension on most browsers.
Premium – $20 per month: no word count limit, and a wide variety of additional style suggestions
Why ProWritingAid over Hemingway?
ProWritingAid, unlike a lot of online editing solutions, doesn’t have a word limit. This makes it an ideal alternative to Hemingway for novelists, as you can post an entire manuscript, without having to edit it in multiple separate chunks.
PerfectIt is an interesting writing assistant that’s designed to point out inconsistencies within a piece of work. As a result, it’s aimed more at technical writers than every day marketers and blog writers. If your subject matter needs to be written in a watertight manner with zero room for inconsistency, then it’s a tool that’s worth looking into.
Features
- House style sheets: the app features a variety of style sheets, such as GPO style, WHO style and United Nations style, to help writers remain consistent with their in-house style guidelines.
- Formatting styles: you can set various formatting preferences, and it’ll provide suggestions to help keep you consistent on issues like italics, Oxford commas and chemical elements.
Pricing
PerfectIt has a free trial and two paid pricing plans:
Free trial: 14 days access to all tools.
Single/Team – $70 per year per user, from 1-39 users: complete access to all tools.
Enterprise – from $25 per year per user, for 40+ users: complete access to all tools.
Why PerfectIt over Hemingway?
If you’re a technical writer writing about a complex subject that requires complete consistency, PerfectIt might be a very appropriate alternative to Hemingway. Such writers might include academics, lawyers and medical professionals.
Linguix is a great editing tool that also doubles up as a plagiarism checker. It has a customisable style guide, making it an attractive solution to writers who need to write original pieces for a location that has relatively strict editorial guidelines.
Features
- Plagiarism checker: for those who’re concerned about missing important citations, Linguix has a built in plagiarism checker that can pull up any copied content – great for students and academics.
- Secret Mode: the tool also has a handy secret mode, that you can activate if you don’t want a particular piece of writing to be saved to your account.
Pricing
Linguix has a few different pricing plans available:
Individual – free: grammar and punctuation suggestions, and all Linguix Apps.
Personal PRO – $5 per month, billed annually: advanced suggestions with an aim of achieving higher conversion rates, unlimited use of the content writer.
Team – $20 per user per month, billed annually: team management, brand voice control, quality and writing performance reports.
Why Linguix over Hemingway?
Linguix is a great alternative to Hemingway for those in the academic niche, due to its integrated plagiarism checker. It also has handy features for teams, helping to maintain a similar tone and achieve brand consistency.
Finally, we have Slick Write, another general-purpose proofreading service that analyses writing to look for grammar mistakes, spelling issues and inappropriate sentence structures.
Features
- Flows: It provides a coloured flow chart that aims to provide insight into how well your writing flows. While some find it a little hard to navigate, once you’ve gotten used to the format, it can be very useful indeed.
- Statistics sheet: Slick Write can also show a lot of your writing statistics in an easily interpretable sheet. Like Hemingway, it provides information on subjects such as passive voice, propositional phrases, and gives a readability score.
Pricing
Unlike most of the other options on this list, Slick Write does not have a paid option. It’s purely free, so while it may lack some of the sophistication of other options, at least you’ll never be out of pocket.
Why Linguix over Hemingway?
If you’re operating on a budget and want a proofreading option with a high word limit that provides a wide range of data, then it’s worth giving Linguix a go. While some find it hard to analyse that data, it can definitely provide some valuable insights into your writing style, on subjects such as functioning words, adverbs and vocabulary variety.
So, which one is best?
As you can see, there’s a wide range of potential alternatives that you can use if you don’t quite get along with Hemingway. While there are some general purpose ones that aim to provide wide ranging writing support in a similar manner to Hemingway, most of them are designed or at least optimised to help a certain type of writer. As a result, it’s impossible to say which one is best.
If you’re a technical writer who needs to write in a logically consistent manner, then it’s worth checking out PerfectIt. Its unique ability to point out inconsistencies can be massively beneficial to a wide range of professionals, particularly academics and those in technical fields such ad medicine and law.
For marketing professionals, it might be worth giving INK For All a try. While it may be a little more expensive than some of the other options, it can significantly increase the efficacy of your organic marketing efforts.
Luckily, most of the options on this list have a free plan. Even the couple of options that don’t offer a permanent free plan do have free trials, meaning that you can give all of them a go before committing financially. If you write about different topics on a regular basis, you might find that you can benefit from using multiple options.
For more of these sorts of alternatives guides and in the spirit of testing popular tools that are like the ones you’ve already heard of for your writing processes, we have some similar articles that you’ll find interesting:
