Grammarly used to be simple: it caught your typos and grammar mistakes. That clarity made it a must-have tool for anyone who writes professionally.

Then generative AI happened. Now Grammarly is trying to be a writing assistant AND an AI writer AND a tone detector AND who knows what else. After using the current version extensively, I have thoughts.

What Grammarly Still Does Best

The core grammar and spelling checking remains excellent. This is Grammarly’s competitive moat, built over years of training on billions of corrections. No other tool catches errors as reliably.

Contextual suggestions have improved substantially. Grammarly now understands that “their” vs “there” depends on meaning, not just pattern matching. It catches subject-verb agreement issues that spell-check misses. It flags passive voice when active would be stronger.

The browser extension is still the killer feature. Write an email, update LinkedIn, post a comment—Grammarly watches everything and catches mistakes before you embarrass yourself. This ambient protection justifies the subscription for many users.

Tone detection genuinely helps. Grammarly analyzes your writing and shows whether it comes across as confident, friendly, formal, or concerning. Before sending a tricky email, I’ll check the tone analysis to make sure I’m not accidentally sounding aggressive or uncertain.

The New Generative AI Features

Grammarly added GrammarlyGO, their generative AI assistant. You can ask it to rewrite paragraphs, draft content from prompts, or adjust the tone of existing writing.

Here’s my honest assessment: it’s fine, but not special.

The rewrites are competent. Ask GrammarlyGO to make something more concise, and it will trim the fat. Ask for a more formal tone, and it adjusts appropriately. The quality is roughly on par with what you’d get from ChatGPT or Claude.

The problem is that everyone now has access to powerful AI writing tools for free or cheap. GrammarlyGO doesn’t offer anything unique enough to justify choosing it over alternatives.

Where GrammarlyGO does add value is context persistence. It learns your writing style over time (if you opt in) and can maintain consistency across documents. This matters for brand voice and professional communication. Generic AI tools start fresh each session.

Pricing Breakdown

Grammarly Free: Basic grammar and spelling, limited suggestions.

Grammarly Premium: $12/month (billed annually) for full grammar checking, tone detection, plagiarism checker, and GrammarlyGO with limited monthly prompts.

Grammarly Business: $15/user/month for team features, style guides, and analytics.

The free tier is genuinely useful. I’d recommend it to anyone. The question is whether Premium’s extras justify $144/year.

Who Should Pay for Premium

Yes, get Premium if:

You write professionally and reputation matters. Client emails, published articles, important documents—the cost of a typo or awkward phrasing exceeds the subscription cost.

You’re a non-native English speaker. Grammarly’s suggestions help you sound natural in ways that self-editing can’t.

You’re learning to write better. Grammarly explains why it suggests changes. Over time, you internalize the patterns and improve your baseline writing.

Skip Premium if:

You’re a confident writer who mostly catches your own errors. Free Grammarly handles the basics; you don’t need hand-holding.

You already have ChatGPT Plus or Claude. The generative features overlap significantly. Use dedicated AI tools for drafting and Grammarly Free for error catching.

You write primarily in a specialized domain. Grammarly sometimes “corrects” technical terminology or industry jargon. The more specialized your writing, the more you’ll fight against its suggestions.

Grammarly vs. The Competition

Grammarly vs. ProWritingAid: ProWritingAid offers more detailed style analysis and reports, making it popular with fiction writers. Grammarly is faster and more seamless for everyday business writing. I prefer Grammarly for emails and documents, but ProWritingAid for longer creative work.

Grammarly vs. Hemingway: Hemingway focuses specifically on readability and conciseness. It’s free for web use and does that one thing well. Grammarly is broader but less focused.

Grammarly vs. Built-in AI: Microsoft Editor and Google’s writing suggestions have improved dramatically. For users deep in those ecosystems, the built-in tools might be enough. Grammarly’s advantage is working across all platforms consistently.

Grammarly vs. ChatGPT: ChatGPT is better for generating content from scratch or major rewrites. Grammarly is better for polishing existing writing without changing your voice. Use both.

The Integration Advantage

Grammarly works in 500,000+ apps through its browser extension and desktop apps. This ubiquity is valuable.

I write in Notion, email in Gmail, communicate in Slack, draft in Google Docs. Grammarly follows me everywhere. That consistency builds habits—I’ve internalized always having a safety net for my writing.

The Microsoft 365 integration is particularly polished. Grammarly Premium works directly in Word and Outlook, catching errors in real-time without switching contexts.

Mobile is acceptable but not great. The Grammarly keyboard works, but phone keyboards are already compromised experiences. I don’t rely on it.

What Grammarly Gets Wrong

Overconfidence in suggestions. Grammarly sometimes flags perfectly acceptable phrasing as problematic. It’ll suggest changes that make writing more generic or strip away intentional style choices. You need to know when to ignore it.

The plagiarism checker is limited. It checks against web content, not academic databases. For serious plagiarism concerns, use dedicated tools like Turnitin.

Performance impact. The browser extension occasionally slows down web apps, especially text-heavy ones like Notion or Google Docs. I’ve had to disable it temporarily when editing large documents.

Privacy considerations. Grammarly processes your text on their servers. For highly sensitive content, that’s worth considering. They claim not to sell data, but everything you write flows through their systems.

The Verdict

Grammarly remains the best grammar-checking tool available. The core product—finding and fixing writing errors—is mature and reliable.

The generative AI additions (GrammarlyGO) are competent but unnecessary if you already use other AI tools. They feel bolted on rather than essential.

My recommendation: Use Grammarly Free for the browser extension and basic checking. Upgrade to Premium if you write professionally and the extra polish justifies $12/month for you. Skip the generative AI features and use dedicated AI tools for that work.

Rating: 7/10. Still the best at its core function, but the product has become unfocused trying to compete with AI writing tools. I wish Grammarly would double down on being the best grammar checker rather than a mediocre everything-tool.

For catching errors and polishing professional writing, nothing beats it. That’s still worth something.