Grammarly vs LanguageTool
Grammarly scores 8.3 to LanguageTool's 5.2 among the AI writing assistants we rate, and is the better pick for 3 of the 4 kinds of buyer below.
Grammarly wins, 8.3 to 5.2
LanguageTool focuses on grammar and style checking, with no text generation, AI detection or humanizing feature; Grammarly offers all three. LanguageTool's Premium plan is $25.48 a month against Grammarly Pro's $30. LanguageTool states it does not train its AI on your writing at all, while Grammarly lets individual users opt out but defaults training on. Grammarly holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification; LanguageTool's business and privacy pages mention neither.
Pick Grammarly if you want AI text generation, detection and humanizing tools.
Pick LanguageTool if you want a cheaper plan with no AI training on your writing.
Best for
Who each one suits, decided on the criteria that matter to that buyer and the checked facts where the two differ.
- Checks for plagiarism: Grammarly yes, LanguageTool no
- Writes new text from a prompt: Grammarly yes, LanguageTool no
- Builds citations: Grammarly yes, LanguageTool no
- Monthly price, cheapest paid plan: Grammarly $30, LanguageTool $25.48
- Single sign-on: Grammarly yes, LanguageTool no
- SOC 2: Grammarly yes, LanguageTool no
- ISO 27001: Grammarly yes, LanguageTool no
- But LanguageTool leads on does not train AI on your writing: Yes against unless you opt out
How they score
Both are scored the same way, against the other AI writing assistants we rate, from facts on each vendor's own pages. Grammarly leads on 4 of 5 criteria.
Where they differ
Every point where the two vendors' published facts disagree, with a link to where each fact was read. "Not published" means the vendor does not say either way.
Published by only one of them
Where they match (7)
Pricing, plan by plan
Every plan each vendor publishes, monthly and yearly where both are offered.
Grammarly
LanguageTool
Pros and cons
From each tool's full review, written from the same checked facts.
Grammarly
- Grammarly works across an impressive range of platforms including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs.
- The plagiarism checker is built directly into the editor rather than being a separate export tool, a useful workflow for academic and content marketing use.
- Real-time grammar, spelling, and punctuation corrections remain reliable and are available even on the free plan.
- The Pro plan at $12/month billed annually unlocks full sentence rewrites, tone suggestions, and style clarity options at a competitive price point.
- Tone detection and brand voice features make it viable for enterprise teams managing content consistency across large organizations.
- Grammarly says it works across more than 500,000 apps and websites, making it one of the most broadly compatible writing tools.
- The free plan is significantly limited, though it does include tone detection and 100 AI prompts a month alongside basic grammar, spelling, and punctuation; most meaningful features still require a paid Pro subscription.
- Grammarly is now owned by Superhuman, which adds uncertainty about the product's long-term direction.
- Brand voice customization is heavily gated, with free users restricted to a single brand tone while unlimited options require an enterprise plan.
LanguageTool
- Supports grammar, style, and spelling checking across 30+ languages including multiple dialects, making it genuinely useful for multilingual users.
- Has been operational since 2003, predating most competitors including Grammarly, indicating long-term stability and refinement.
- Integrates across a wide range of surfaces including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, macOS, Windows, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird.
- Picky Mode offers an adjustable level of style critique, letting writers choose how aggressively the tool pushes back on their writing.
- The AI paraphraser has five rewriting modes (general, formal, concise, fluent and simple) for sentence-level refinement.
- Personal dictionary feature allows technical writers and specialists to add field-specific terms, reducing false positives.
- Style Guide feature at Premium and Teams levels enables organizations to enforce custom writing rules consistently.
- The tool is narrower in scope than competitors like Grammarly, which may disappoint users expecting a full-featured writing assistant.
- AI functionality is limited to sentence-level paraphrasing and is not a content generation platform, which will confuse users expecting Jasper-like capabilities.
- Advanced features like the Style Guide are locked behind Premium and Teams pricing tiers, limiting value for free users.
- Depth of checking may not match the breadth of language support, meaning multilingual users could find suggestions inconsistent across languages.
- Users with specialized vocabularies face friction until they manually build out their personal dictionary to avoid repeated false corrections.
Grammarly vs LanguageTool: common questions
Which is better, Grammarly or LanguageTool?
Grammarly scores 8.3 and LanguageTool 5.2 out of 10 among the AI writing assistants we rate. Grammarly is ahead on what it helps with, where it works, teams and control and privacy and security.
Is Grammarly or LanguageTool cheaper?
Grammarly's cheapest paid plan is $12/mo (Pro plan, billed annually) and LanguageTool's is $4.99/mo (Premium, 2-year plan). Compare what each plan includes below before going on price alone.
What can Grammarly do that LanguageTool cannot?
On the facts both vendors publish: checks for plagiarism, writes new text from a prompt, builds citations, detects AI-written text, rewrites AI text to read as human, phone keyboard that checks as you type, single sign-on, sOC 2 and iSO 27001.
