Grammarly is a writing assistant that fixes grammar, spelling and tone wherever you type, and it suits people who write in English all day: freelancers, marketers, support teams and non-native speakers. It has a free plan, and Grammarly Pro costs $12 a month only if you pay $144 for a year (checked 19 October 2026); I score it 7.0 out of 10. My angle is the bill: pay monthly and the same Pro plan costs $30, which is $360 a year, and since the company renamed itself Superhuman the pricing has a few new traps.
Disclosure: I don’t earn a commission from Grammarly. It does run an affiliate program, but I haven’t joined it, so every Grammarly link here is a plain link.
The receipt
Grammarly, itemised
| Line | What it comes to |
|---|---|
| Time | A few minutes to install; it then works inside Gmail, Google Docs, Word, Slack and your browser |
| Cost | $0 free; Pro $144 a year, $60 a quarter or $30 a month |
| Output | Reliable surface fixes; AI rewrites can sound generic, a common complaint |
| Real earning path | Proofreading and copyediting for small businesses, with Grammarly as a first pass |
| Overall | 7.0/10 |
Buy it or skip it?
Pay for Pro if you write client-facing text most days, English isn’t your first language, or you need the plagiarism check, and you’re happy to commit to a year up front.
Stick with Free or look elsewhere if you only write the odd email, you want month-to-month billing, or you mainly want long rewrites, which a general chatbot or a cheaper rewriter handles.
How I checked Grammarly’s prices, terms and ratings
I haven’t used Grammarly Pro for paid client work, so this review is built from documents rather than a long hands-on test. On 19 October 2026 I read the plans page, the help-center billing and prompt-limit articles, the Superhuman suite pages, the Terms of Service dated 29 October 2025, the privacy-training article, and the review pages on Trustpilot, G2 and Capterra, plus pricing pages for four rivals. Each part got a score out of 10:
| Area | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | 9/10 | Works in the apps people already use; Capterra reviewers rate ease of use 4.8 out of 5 |
| Output quality | 7/10 | Grammar and spelling catches are its strength; reviewers say AI suggestions can flatten a writer’s voice |
| Value for money | 6/10 | Fair at $144 a year, poor at $30 a month, and rivals charge less |
| Trust and support | 6/10 | Training on your text is on by default for individuals and payments are non-refundable |
| Overall | 7.0/10 | Average of the four |
If a price or term has changed since I checked, please tell me through the contact page and I’ll correct it.
Some background: Grammarly was founded in 2009 by Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko and Dmytro Lider. It bought Coda and the Superhuman email app, and in October 2025 the company renamed itself Superhuman; the Terms now name Superhuman Platform Inc., formerly Grammarly, Inc.
How much does Grammarly Pro really cost?
Grammarly Pro costs $144 a year, $60 a quarter or $30 a month per member, according to Grammarly’s own billing article. The plans page shows only “$12” without saying it is an annual average, so many reviews quote $12 a month as if you could pay that monthly. You can’t.
| Billing | Price per member | Cost over 12 months | Effective per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual | $144 a year | $144 | $12 |
| Quarterly | $60 every 3 months | $240 | $20 |
| Monthly | $30 a month | $360 | $30 |
Monthly billing costs 2.5 times as much as annual over a year. Quarterly sits in between and saves 40% against monthly.
The Superhuman bundle doesn’t change the monthly maths
The new Superhuman suite’s Pro tier is $12 a month billed annually or $15 billed monthly, but the help article adds: the annual plan includes Grammarly Pro, but on the monthly plan Grammarly Pro is “an optional add-on for an additional $15 USD / month.” So the $15 headline gets you to the same $30 if Grammarly is the thing you wanted.
Is Grammarly free, and what does the free plan leave out?
Yes, Grammarly has a free plan at $0 that checks spelling and grammar and shows you the tone of your writing. It also includes 100 AI prompts a month, roughly three a day. What it leaves out: the plagiarism check, the option to adjust tone rather than just see it, a style guide and a brand tone, and the extra AI prompts.
Two free extras are worth knowing about. Authorship, available on Free and Pro, records what you typed, pasted or wrote with AI help in Google Docs, Word and Canvas, and produces a report you can share. The AI detector is free with no sign-up; Grammarly claims 99% accuracy and the top spot on the RAID benchmark, while also stating that “no AI detector is 100% accurate.”
Where does Grammarly work, and what does Pro add?
Grammarly runs in Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Google Docs, Microsoft Word and Figma, in Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox, and on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. That reach is the main reason people keep paying. Pro adds plagiarism and AI-text detection, tone adjustment, one style guide, one brand tone and 2,000 AI prompts per member a month. Enterprise removes the caps.
Grammarly won’t tell you what to write about or how to rank it; that job is covered in my Surfer SEO review.
Grammarly’s own overview video shows the current AI features:
Does Grammarly train on what you write?
Yes, by default, if you’re on an individual account. Grammarly’s help center says Product Improvement and Training “is on for individual users by default” for Free, legacy Premium and single-user Pro. It is switched off automatically for Business, Education, Enterprise and Pro plans bought through sales, and admins of multi-user Pro bought online can turn it off for the whole organisation. Individuals can switch it off in their account privacy settings.
On ownership, section 7.1 of the Terms says you own your content, and section 4.1 counts AI inputs and outputs as your content. Grammarly gets a non-exclusive licence to run and improve the service. Organisations may use it only for internal business purposes, and logins can’t be shared. If you edit client documents under an NDA, switch training off first and check the NDA allows a cloud tool at all.
On refunds, section 8.10 is blunt: payments are non-refundable, and the help center says refunds happen only where the law requires them. Plans renew automatically at the then-current price; cancelling keeps access until the period ends.
Why do Grammarly’s ratings disagree so much?
Because Trustpilot’s TrustScore isn’t a plain average of its star shares. On 19 October 2026 Grammarly had a TrustScore of 3.1 from 10,475 reviews, yet 68% of those reviews were 5-star and 17% 4-star, so 85% were positive and only 9% were 1-star. A simple average of those shares would be about 4.3. Grammarly had replied to 44% of negative reviews.
The negative reviews cluster around billing: charges after a trial, refunds refused, and one reviewer reporting that an annual renewal roughly doubled. Others complain about pop-ups covering the cursor and Superhuman Go appearing without them knowingly installing it. Positive reviews praise the free checker and helpful support.
Business review sites are warmer. G2 showed 4.7 out of 5 from 14,081 reviews, and the Grammarly Business listing on Capterra showed 4.7 from 7,225 reviews, with ease of use at 4.8 and customer service at 4.5. Capterra’s cons mention generic or overly formal suggestions and false flags.
Strengths and weak spots
What works
- Works in nearly every app where you write
- Free plan is useful on its own, with 100 AI prompts a month
- Authorship reports and a free AI detector
- Plagiarism and AI-text detection on Pro
- Training is off by default on business plans bought through sales
What doesn’t
- $30 a month if you won’t commit to a year
- Payments are non-refundable under the Terms
- Training on your text is on by default for individuals
- AI suggestions can flatten your voice, reviewers say
- Pro gets only one style guide and one brand tone
Is there a cheaper Grammarly alternative?
Yes. LanguageTool, QuillBot and Wordtune all cost less per year than Grammarly Pro on annual billing, and ProWritingAid’s cheaper Premium plan undercuts it by $24. They don’t do quite the same job, so match the tool to what you write.
| Tool | Price checked 19 Oct 2026 | Per year | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grammarly Pro | $144/yr, $30/mo | $144 | Checking everywhere you type |
| ProWritingAid | Premium $120/yr or $30/mo; Premium Pro $144/yr; lifetime from $399 | $120 | Long-form and fiction style reports |
| LanguageTool | €59.89/yr, €39.90/quarter, €19.90/mo | €59.89 | Writing in several languages |
| QuillBot | Premium $8.33/mo billed annually | $99.96 | Paraphrasing and summarising |
| Wordtune | Advanced $4.89/mo, Unlimited $6.99/mo, billed annually | $58.68 | Sentence rewrites on a budget |
If you need help with spoken content rather than written text, my Otter.ai review and Descript review cover transcription and editing, and the Canva review covers design copy and graphics.
Should you pay for Grammarly Pro?
Pay for it if writing is a daily part of your job and you can pay annually. At $30 a month it matches ProWritingAid’s monthly price and costs far more than LanguageTool. Start on Free, switch training off in your privacy settings, and only upgrade once you keep wanting the plagiarism check or more prompts. Set a reminder before any trial ends, because the Terms don’t promise a refund.
Can you earn money with Grammarly?
Not by itself, but it is a sensible first pass in a proofreading service. My separate guide works through the rates editors charge, a sample month in numbers and the rules around student work.
Related reading: Beautiful.ai review · How to make money with Surfer SEO
Grammarly questions people ask
Is Grammarly free?
Yes. The free plan costs $0 and checks spelling and grammar, shows your tone and includes 100 AI prompts a month, but it has no plagiarism check and no tone adjustment.
Is Grammarly Pro worth it?
It is worth it for people who write every working day and pay annually at $144. At $30 on monthly billing it costs as much as or more than every rival I compared, so start on Free and upgrade only if you keep hitting its limits.
How much is Grammarly per month?
$12 a month only on annual billing, which is $144 up front. Monthly billing is $30 and quarterly is $60, which works out at $20 a month.
Can Turnitin or teachers tell if I used Grammarly?
Basic spelling and grammar fixes are not generally treated as AI writing, but Grammarly’s generative features can be. Turnitin has said traditional grammar checks don’t trigger its detector, while some universities ban the generative AI functions inside grammar checkers, so check your institution’s policy.
Can I get a refund from Grammarly?
Usually no. Section 8.10 of the Terms says payments are non-refundable, and the help center says refunds are issued only where the law requires them; App Store purchases go through Apple.
Does Grammarly use my writing to train its AI?
Yes, by default on individual accounts. You can switch Product Improvement and Training off in your account privacy settings, and it is off automatically on Business, Education, Enterprise and sales-bought Pro plans.
Update log: 19 October 2026: first published, with prices checked that day.
Sources
- Grammarly plans
- Grammarly help: How much does Grammarly Pro cost?
- Superhuman help: Introducing the Superhuman suite
- Superhuman plans
- Superhuman help: You’re out of prompts
- Superhuman help: Product Improvement and Training Control
- Superhuman help: Can I get a refund?
- Grammarly Terms of Service (effective 29 October 2025)
- Where Grammarly works
- Grammarly Authorship
- Grammarly AI detector
- Grammarly about page
- Trustpilot: Grammarly reviews
- G2: Grammarly reviews
- Capterra: Grammarly Business reviews
- BetaKit: Grammarly rebrands to Superhuman
- SiliconANGLE: Grammarly acquires Superhuman
- EdSurge: Can using a grammar checker set off AI detection?
- ProWritingAid pricing
- LanguageTool subscriptions
- QuillBot Premium
- Wordtune plans
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