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Last checked October 15, 2026

Best Free Alternatives to Grammarly (2026)

Grammarly checks grammar in the browser, desktop, and mobile keyboards, and sells tone and generative rewrites on Pro. It is now part of Superhuman. The free plan still catches a lot of typos.

WritersStudentsMarketersPrice checked

What Grammarly costs

Grammarly Pro is $30 per member/month, $60 per member per quarter, or $144 per member/year ($12/month average).

Official support docs describe those three terms. Pro replaced the old Business plan and allows up to 149 seats before extra seat pricing. Regional currency can differ at checkout.

Grammarly website·Pricing source

Ranked by Drop-in score

How we rank

#1 is the highest-scoring alternative that is not sponsored. A featured listing, when one is sold, is labeled and sits after #1.

  1. 68
    #1Open source

    LanguageTool

    Grammar checking in the browser, in office apps, and on your own server.

    Last checked October 15, 2026 · LGPL-2.1 (core)

    WebMacWindowsLinuxiOSAndroidSelf-host
    Cost and detailsMigration guideWebsite
  2. 60
    #2Open source

    Harper

    An offline English grammar checker, Apache-2.0.

    Last checked October 15, 2026 · Apache-2.0

    MacWindowsLinuxWeb
    Cost and detailsWebsite
  3. 44
    #3Open source

    Vale

    A MIT prose linter for style guides and CI.

    Last checked October 15, 2026 · MIT

    MacWindowsLinux
    Cost and detailsWebsite

Feature by feature

Full is the whole job. Partial is a real version with a gap. Missing means it does not do this. Not checked counts as zero in the score.

FeatureLanguageTool#1 · 68Harper#2 · 60Vale#3 · 44
Grammar and spellingWeight 10FullPartialEnglish grammar and spelling, with a smaller rule set than Grammarly.Missing
Style suggestionsWeight 7PartialPicky mode and style rules exist. They are narrower than Grammarly's rewrites.PartialFullStyle is the whole product, driven by rules you maintain.
Tone detectionWeight 5MissingMissingMissing
Browser extensionWeight 8FullFullMissing
Desktop and office integrationWeight 6PartialDesktop app and office add-ins. Not a system-wide keyboard like Grammarly's mobile one.PartialEditor integrations, not a full office suite add-in.PartialEditor and CI integrations, not a consumer writing assistant.
Languages beyond EnglishWeight 6FullPartialEnglish is the focus.Partial
Offline or private checkingWeight 7PartialFull privacy means self-hosting. The public cloud sees the text you check.FullFull
Self-hostingWeight 6FullFullFullRuns locally. There is no service.
Plagiarism checksWeight 4MissingMissingMissing

Real cost

LanguageTool

Free tier
The browser extension and a public checker are free, with rate limits. Premium removes those limits.
Hosted plan
Premium is a paid subscription. The current price was not copied from LanguageTool in this check. Unverified.
Self-hosting
Moderate. A Java server. Basic rules run without extra data. Large n-gram datasets improve suggestions and take disk. Approximate server cost: $5–15/mo. Unverified estimate.

Harper

Free tier
The checker is free and local.
Hosted plan
No hosted price recorded.
Self-hosting
Easy. It runs on the device. There is no server cost. Approximate server cost: $0.

Vale

Free tier
The CLI is free.
Hosted plan
No hosted price recorded.
Self-hosting
Not a self-hosted product. A local command-line tool. Nothing to host.

Top pair

Switch from Grammarly to LanguageTool

Install the LanguageTool extension, turn off Grammarly, and self-host the server if the text should not leave your network. Tone rewrites and plagiarism checks do not come along.

Read the migration guide

Questions