Grammarly vs QuillBot: grammar checker or paraphraser?

Grammarly vs QuillBot at a glance

What each one is

Grammarly is a writing assistant that underlines mistakes and suggests clearer wording as you type, across most apps and websites. It has added AI text generation (prompts), tone adjustment and full-sentence rewrites, and its parent company now sells it to businesses as part of Superhuman Go. See our Grammarly review.

QuillBot started as a paraphrasing tool: paste text and it rewrites it in a chosen style, such as Standard, Fluency, Formal, Academic or Simple. It has grown into a suite with a grammar checker, summarizer, translator, citation generator, plagiarism checker, AI detector, "humanizer" and AI chat, aimed largely at students and content writers.

Because the feature lists now overlap so much, the useful question is not "which has more tools" but "which tool do I reach for most". If most of your time goes into writing new text and you want it correct and clear, that's a checker, and Grammarly's is more complete. If most of your time goes into reworking text that already exists (sources, notes, drafts, translations), that's a rewriter, and QuillBot is built around it.

Grammar and proofreading

Grammarly's checking is its core product and the area where widely shared user feedback rates it highest: it catches spelling, grammar and punctuation issues, flags unclear or wordy sentences, detects tone, and keeps citations consistent. Because it runs in the background in your browser, Word, Google Docs and desktop apps, you don't have to copy text anywhere. QuillBot's grammar checker handles common errors well and gives advanced recommendations on Premium, but you usually work in QuillBot's own editor or extension, and it's not as thorough on style.

Paraphrasing and rewriting

QuillBot is the specialist. Its paraphraser offers more than 10 modes on Premium, a synonym slider to control how much changes, and side-by-side comparison of original and rewritten text. The free plan limits paraphrasing to 100 words at a time in 2 modes. Grammarly Pro rewrites full sentences with one click and adjusts tone, which is great for polishing your own writing, but it's less suited to reworking a long passage in a different style.

AI writing

Grammarly includes AI prompts for generating and rewriting text: 100 a month on Free and 2,000 per member a month on Pro. QuillBot includes an AI chat and summarizer, with usage limits that vary by feature. For longer drafting, a general assistant does more; see Claude vs ChatGPT and our ChatGPT review.

Pricing as of October 2026

From Grammarly's plans page and QuillBot Premium. QuillBot's annual price was shown as 58% off its monthly price, and Grammarly Pro offers a free trial. Monthly billing costs more for both, and both offer education pricing.

Privacy

Both process your text on their servers, so anything you check is sent to the company. Grammarly's Enterprise plan adds confidential mode, data loss prevention, audit logs and bring-your-own-key encryption; QuillBot's Team plan lists data controls. For confidential documents, check each company's privacy policy and your employer's rules before pasting text in, and turn the browser extension off on sensitive sites.

For students

Students are a core audience for QuillBot. Its summarizer helps with long readings, the citation generator formats references, and the paraphraser can help when you're struggling to put an idea in your own words. Used carefully, that's legitimate help; used to disguise copied or AI-written text, it can break academic integrity rules. Grammarly is useful for students too, mainly as a proofreader for essays and emails, and it keeps citations consistent.

Whichever you use, check your school's policy on AI and paraphrasing tools, cite your sources, and keep your drafts, which show your own work if a question ever comes up.

For professionals and teams

For people who write all day at work, Grammarly is usually the better fit because it works inside email, documents and the browser without copying and pasting. Teams can share style guides, brand tones and snippets, and enterprise customers get SSO, SCIM, data loss prevention and analytics. QuillBot's Team plan focuses on usage metrics, user management and central billing, and suits content teams that rewrite and summarize a lot.

If your company has rules about sending text to outside services, ask before installing either browser extension, since both process what you type on their servers.

Accuracy and your own voice

No checker is perfect. Both tools sometimes flag correct sentences, miss real errors, or suggest changes that alter what you meant, especially with technical terms, names, dialect and creative writing. Grammarly lets you set goals for audience and formality and add words to a personal dictionary; teams can add a shared style guide. QuillBot's modes and synonym slider control how far a rewrite moves from your original.

The common complaint about both, in widely shared user feedback, is that accepting every suggestion can make writing sound bland and generic. Treat suggestions as options, not instructions, and read the result aloud. For non-native English writers, Grammarly Pro's fluency suggestions and QuillBot's translator are both frequently mentioned as helpful.

Strengths and weaknesses

Choose Grammarly if... choose QuillBot if...

Counting words for an assignment? Try our character counter and reading time calculator.