Best Grammarly alternatives in 2026 (free, private, no AI)

The best Grammarly alternatives in 2026 are LanguageTool for multilingual writing, ProWritingAid for long documents and Harper if you want free checks that never leave your computer. For quick fixes Google Docs and Microsoft's built-in proofing tools cost nothing. Also, if you mostly need paraphrasing, QuillBot or Wordtune do that better than a classic grammar checker.

Which one fits depends on three questions. How much do you want to pay? May your text go to a cloud server? And do you want generative AI touching your writing at all? This guide sorts the Grammarly alternatives by price, privacy and AI. Prices come from each company's official pricing page as of October 2026.

Why people look for Grammarly alternatives

People look for Grammarly alternatives for one of four reasons. The first is price. Grammarly shows Pro at $12 on its plans page. The free plan stops at basic spelling, grammar and tone detection.

The second is AI. Grammarly Free now includes 100 AI prompts a month. Pro raises that to 2,000 and adds full-sentence rewrites. Some writers want that. But others want a checker that fixes commas and leaves their voice alone.

The third is privacy. Grammarly checks your text on its own servers. Its privacy FAQ says the data sits on AWS servers in the United States. Grammarly also says it doesn't sell your content. But it may use de-identified samples to improve its product unless you opt out.

The fourth is coverage. Grammarly now gives suggestions in 24 languages besides English, on every plan. But the feature is still labeled beta. So if you write mostly in German, Spanish or French, a tool built for several languages may serve you better.

Grammarly alternatives compared

This table compares the Grammarly alternatives by free plan, paid price, where each tool checks your text and whether it uses generative AI.

Two changes from the past year matter here. LanguageTool made its browser extension Premium-only in March 2026. Microsoft discontinued its Editor extensions for Chrome and Edge on October 31, 2025. Many older lists still recommend both as free browser checkers.

The best Grammarly alternatives in detail

Each of these Grammarly alternatives gets a short profile. You'll see who it suits, what the free version does and the main catch.

LanguageTool

LanguageTool is the closest all-round replacement for Grammarly, especially if you write in more than one language. It covers 30+ languages, with extra Premium checks for English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and Portuguese.

On the free plan you check text on LanguageTool's website, up to 2,000 characters per text field, with 3 AI rephrasings a day. By contrast, Premium raises the limit to 150,000 characters. The official pricing page showed no prices when we looked in October 2026, so see it for the price in your region.

There's one more option for technical users. LanguageTool's core is open source. So you can run your own server and keep your text on your network.

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid suits novelists, students and anyone who edits long documents. Beyond grammar it gives reports on style, pacing, repeated words and readability.

The free plan checks 500 words at a time and allows 10 rephrases a day. According to ProWritingAid's pricing page, Premium costs $30 billed monthly or $120 billed yearly ($10 a month). There's also a one-time lifetime license for $399. If you write books, that lifetime option is the main reason to pick it over Grammarly.

QuillBot

QuillBot is a paraphrasing tool first and a grammar checker second. Pick it if you rewrite sentences more often than you fix typos.

The free plan includes basic grammar fixes and paraphrases up to 100 words in 2 modes. QuillBot Premium costs $8.33 a month billed annually and unlocks 9 modes plus grammar checks in 6 languages. Still, paraphrasing changes your wording. If your school or client cares about AI use, check their rules before you rewrite whole paragraphs.

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor doesn't replace a grammar checker. Instead, it makes your writing clearer. It highlights long sentences, passive voice and complex words, which suits bloggers and anyone who writes for a general audience.

The online readability checker is free. Meanwhile, the desktop app, sold as Hemingway Editor 3 for Mac and Windows, costs $19.99 and doesn't include the new AI features. Hemingway Editor Plus adds AI rewrites. It starts at $100 billed annually ($8.33 a month) and comes with a 2-week free trial.

Harper

Harper is the best free Grammarly alternative if privacy matters to you. It runs on your device with no cloud round trips, no telemetry and no large language models, according to its website.

Plus, it's free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. Elijah Potter created it. In November 2024 Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, acquired Harper and Potter joined the team. Harper works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox, in a macOS desktop app and in editors like VS Code and Obsidian. Still, the catch is language support. Harper checks English only for now. As a rule-based checker it also gives fewer style and rewrite suggestions than paid tools.

Wordtune

Wordtune focuses on rewriting and tone. It suits emails and short texts where you want a few options for the same sentence.

The free plan gives you unlimited spelling and grammar checks plus 10 rewrites a day. On Wordtune's plans page Advanced costs $4.89 a month and Unlimited $6.99 a month, both billed annually.

DeepL Write

DeepL Write is a good pick for non-native English speakers who want natural phrasing. It comes from the company behind the DeepL translator.

You can try it for free on the web. DeepL Write Pro costs €6.99 per user a month, billed annually. DeepL says it stores Pro texts only as long as needed to process them and never uses them to train its models. That promise is made for Pro, so check the terms before you paste private text into the free version.

Google Docs and Microsoft's built-in tools

If you only need basic spelling and grammar fixes, you may already have them. Google Docs checks spelling and grammar as you type. Similarly, Microsoft Word has its own proofing tools.

Microsoft now points former Editor extension users to the proofing tools built into Microsoft Edge. These options are free, but they're also the most basic. For example, they won't explain your mistakes or give style advice the way Grammarly does.

Free Grammarly alternatives and their real limits

Most free Grammarly alternatives come with limits. So it helps to know where each one stops before you rely on it.

• Harper is free with no limits, but English only.
• Google Docs, Word and Edge check spelling and grammar for free, with no style suggestions.
• LanguageTool's free plan works only on its website, with a 2,000-character limit per text field.
• ProWritingAid's free plan checks 500 words at a time.
• QuillBot paraphrases 100 words at a time for free.
• Wordtune allows 10 rewrites a day on its free plan.

As a result, for most people the best free setup is Harper in the browser plus Google Docs or Word for longer documents.

Grammarly alternatives without AI

If you want a checker that never runs your text through a generative AI model, a few Grammarly alternatives fit. This matters to writers who want to keep their own voice and to students who worry about AI rules.

Harper is the cleanest option because it uses rules instead of large language models. LanguageTool started as a rule-based checker. Its core still works that way, although Premium adds AI rephrasing. Hemingway Editor 3, the desktop app, doesn't include the newer AI features.

Still, rule-based tools catch fewer subtle issues than AI tools. In return they won't rewrite a sentence you didn't ask them to change.

Is Grammarly safe? Where your text goes

Grammarly is a legitimate company and says it doesn't sell user content. On its Trust Center Grammarly says you can stop it from training on your text. To do that, turn off Product Improvement and Training in your account settings.

Whichever tool you choose, the bigger question is where it checks your text. Most grammar checkers send it to a server, so the text leaves your computer every time you type. That's fine for a shopping list. But it matters more for contracts, medical notes or unpublished work.

This diagram shows which tools keep your text on your device and which send it to the cloud.

Offline and open source grammar checkers

Only a few Grammarly alternatives work without sending text anywhere. Harper does all its checks on your computer with no extra setup. A self-hosted LanguageTool server keeps text on a machine you control, but you'll need some technical skills to run it. Both are open source, so anyone can check what the code does.

ChatGPT and other AI chats instead of Grammarly

An AI chat can be one of the simplest Grammarly alternatives. In fact, many people already use one to proofread. Paste your text, ask it to fix grammar only and keep your wording. That works for one-off emails and short pieces.

But a chat has two downsides. First, it doesn't underline mistakes as you type, so you copy text back and forth. And it may change meaning or tone even when you ask it not to, so read every change. Cloud chats also send your text to the provider's servers, the same as Grammarly.

Proofread with a local AI model in your browser

If you like the AI chat approach but don't want your text on someone else's server, a local model is the middle ground. Sigma is a free browser built on Chromium with Eclipse, a local AI model that runs on your device. It works offline, so your prompts stay on your computer.

To proofread, open the local AI chat in Sigma, paste your text and ask Eclipse to fix grammar without changing your wording. It's free. And nothing leaves your device. Sigma also works with Chrome extensions, so you can add a checker like Harper for live suggestions.

Be clear about the limits though. Eclipse doesn't underline mistakes inside other websites the way Grammarly does. Besides, its speed depends on your computer. And like any AI model it can change meaning, so check its edits. It's available on Windows and macOS.