Grammarly and QuillBot are the two names everyone mentions when their writing needs help — but they do almost opposite jobs. Grammarly is an editor that sits on top of wherever you already write and fixes your own words as you type. QuillBot is a rewriter: you paste text in, and it says the same thing in different words. Pick the wrong one and you will pay for features you never use. Here is how they actually compare in 2026.
What Each Tool Actually Does
Grammarly lives inside your browser, Google Docs, Word and email. It underlines grammar and spelling mistakes, tells you how your tone reads, and on the paid plan rewrites whole sentences with a click. It also records how you wrote with a feature called Authorship, and it now sits inside the Superhuman suite alongside Coda and Superhuman Mail. QuillBot starts from the other end. Its core is the paraphraser — nine or more modes on the paid plan, with a synonym slider that controls how far the rewrite strays from the original. Around it sit a summarizer, a translator, a citation generator for APA, MLA and Chicago, a plagiarism checker and an AI detector. In short: Grammarly fixes your sentences. QuillBot replaces them.
Price: QuillBot Wins on Cost
On list price, QuillBot is cheaper on every billing cycle. Grammarly Pro costs $12 a month when billed annually — $144 up front — or $30 month to month, with a 7-day free trial. QuillBot Premium costs $8.33 a month when billed annually — $99.95 up front — or $19.95 month to month, with a 3-day money-back guarantee. That is about $44 less a year for QuillBot on annual billing. Watch the billing trap on both: paying month to month costs more than double the annual rate for Grammarly, and more than double for QuillBot too. Prices are US list prices checked in October 2026 and can vary by region and promotion, so confirm the checkout price before you pay.
Free Plans: Both Are Genuinely Useful
You may not need to pay for either. Grammarly's free plan covers unlimited spelling and grammar checks, tone detection and 100 AI prompts a month — enough for most everyday emails and documents. QuillBot's free plan paraphrases up to 125 words at a time in two modes and summarizes up to 1,200 words. Paying for Grammarly adds full-sentence rewrites, plagiarism and AI-text detection and 2,000 AI prompts a month. Paying for QuillBot removes the paraphrasing limit, unlocks all the modes and adds 25,000 words of plagiarism checks a month plus 6,000-word summaries. If you only need one of those jobs, the free tier of the other tool may already cover it.
The Verdict: Which One Should You Pay For?
Buy Grammarly Pro if you write original work all day — emails, reports, essays — and your main problem is mistakes in your own writing. It works everywhere you type, which is the feature you will actually feel every day. Buy QuillBot Premium if your real job is rewording: turning one product description into five versions, shortening long reports, or rewriting and citing sources for assignments. Students and researchers get more from QuillBot; professionals who write in a second language get more from Grammarly. If you do both jobs daily, owning both costs about $20 a month on annual billing — the only case where two subscriptions make sense. And whichever you pick, neither tool checks your facts, so check every claim that matters before you publish it.
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