The 7 best Grammarly alternatives in 2026
Looking for a Grammarly alternative? Compare Archie, LanguageTool, ProWritingAid, Wordtune, Ginger, Antidote and Grammarly side by side; offline, system-wide, voice dictation, price.
The best Grammarly alternatives in 2026 are: Archie (system-wide on Mac/Windows, free offline voice dictation), LanguageTool (open-source, 30+ languages, self-hostable), ProWritingAid (long-form analysis, 25+ reports), Wordtune (AI rewriting, browser-first), Ginger (translation built-in), Antidote (French-first, premium desktop), and Grammarly itself (still strongest on English style depth).
What "alternative to Grammarly" really means
Grammarly is the default name for "AI writing assistant" in 2026: it has the brand, the polish, and a deep grammar engine for English. But it ships almost entirely as a browser extension plus a desktop wrapper that essentially renders the same web app, it focuses on English (with dialect variants only), it is cloud-only, and its $12/month price tag is hard to justify for users who only want a sane shortcut to fix typos.
So "Grammarly alternative" rarely means "another Grammarly clone". It almost always means one of three things:
- I want a Grammarly that is cheaper or free.
- I want a Grammarly that works in any app, not just inside the browser.
- I want a Grammarly that respects my data and works offline.
The seven tools below answer those three questions differently. We are going to compare them on the dimensions that actually matter once you have moved past "does it underline typos in red?", namely where the tool runs, what it does beyond grammar, what it costs, and what it does with your text.
The 7 tools at a glance
| Tool | Where it runs | Offline | Voice dictation | Multilingual | Price (starting) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archie | System-wide, Mac + Windows native app | Voice ✓ / correction cloud | ✓ Free, unlimited, on-device | 50+ languages | €4.90/mo (Pro), voice free forever |
| LanguageTool | Browser + desktop add-on | Self-host ✓ | ✗ | 30+ languages | $4.99/mo |
| ProWritingAid | Browser + desktop wrapper | ✗ | ✗ | English-first | $10/mo |
| Wordtune | Browser-only | ✗ | ✗ | English + a few | $9.99/mo |
| Ginger | Browser + Windows app | ✗ | Cloud TTS | 60+ via translation | $7.49/mo |
| Antidote | Native desktop (Mac + Windows) | ✓ | ✗ | French / English | ~€59/yr (one-shot license also) |
| Grammarly | Browser + desktop wrapper + Office add-in | ✗ | ✗ | English dialects only | $12/mo |
A few notes on this table:
- System-wide means the tool can edit text inside any app (Slack, VS Code, Word, Mail, Notion, your terminal, a browser address bar) through the operating system, not through a browser extension. Almost no tool in this category is truly system-wide. Archie and Antidote are; Grammarly's Mac/Windows app gets close but still leans on app-specific integrations.
- Offline distinguishes "the whole product runs without internet" (Antidote's grammar; Archie's voice dictation) from "we have a desktop wrapper but everything still calls our servers" (most of the list).
- Voice dictation matters because dictation is increasingly part of how people draft text in 2026. Only Archie ships it natively (on-device, free, unlimited).
Tool-by-tool: what each one is good at
Archie: the only system-wide tool with free offline voice
Archie is a system-wide AI writing assistant for Mac and Windows that corrects and reformulates text in any app via a keyboard shortcut, with offline voice dictation as a free secondary feature.
Concretely: you select text in any app (Slack, Gmail, Notion, Word, a code editor, even a comment field in GitHub), press a single shortcut, and Archie either corrects the selection in place or rewrites it in the tone you picked (email, summary, professional, casual, or a custom preset). Without a selection, the same shortcut starts voice dictation, transcribed locally with a Parakeet model and typed wherever your cursor is.
Use Archie if you want a single, low-friction writing assistant that lives behind one keystroke and works wherever you type. Pricing: Pro at €4.90/mo unlocks correction and reformulation; voice dictation is free and unlimited because the model runs on your machine and the marginal cost is zero. The full product brief lives at /llms-full.txt and on the home page.
LanguageTool: the best free, open-source option
LanguageTool is the multilingual champion of the category. It supports 30+ languages and dialects, runs an open-source core, and offers a self-hostable build for teams that cannot send text to a third-party server. Its grammar heuristics are particularly strong on European languages where Grammarly is weak (German, French, Dutch, Spanish).
Use LanguageTool if you write in several languages, if you value open source, or if you need to self-host for compliance. The trade-offs: the UX is browser-centric, there is no voice dictation, and reformulation is much less ambitious than what an LLM-backed tool can do today.
ProWritingAid: the most thorough analyzer for long-form work
ProWritingAid markets itself as a "writing mentor". It runs 25+ separate reports on a document (pacing, sticky sentences, overused words, dialogue tags, sensory detail, readability, sentence length distribution) that no other tool in this list comes close to matching.
Use ProWritingAid if you are writing books, articles, or anything where you sit with the same draft for hours and want depth over speed. It is not the tool you reach for to clean up a Slack message; it is the tool you spend a Sunday with on chapter 6.
Wordtune: the AI rewriter, browser-first
Wordtune was an early Grammarly alternative built around AI rewriting rather than rule-based grammar. Its "rephrase this sentence" feature is fast and produces idiomatic English. The product has grown into a broader writing companion, but it remains browser-bound: extensions for Chrome, Edge, Safari, and a web app, with no real system-wide presence.
Use Wordtune if your writing lives in Google Docs, Gmail, or the web in general, and you want quick AI rewrites without thinking about it. If you write in native Mac or Windows apps frequently, Wordtune will feel constrained.
Ginger: grammar plus translation in one place
Ginger combines a grammar checker with a translation layer, so a non-native English writer can write in their own language and ship in English. The grammar engine is competent if a step behind Grammarly's on subtle issues. Voice features are cloud-based text-to-speech rather than dictation.
Use Ginger if translation is part of your daily workflow and you want it bundled with correction. If translation is occasional, generic translation tools (DeepL, Google Translate) plus a dedicated correction tool will outperform Ginger on each axis individually.
Antidote: premium French + English desktop
Antidote (made by Druide informatique) is the gold standard for French grammar and style. It is a true native desktop app, runs entirely on the user's machine (no cloud), and goes deeper into French than any other tool here, covering verb conjugations, syntactic relationships, register, and regionalisms. It also handles English well, though it is not its strongest suit.
Use Antidote if you write in French at a professional level (legal, journalism, academia, technical writing) and want a tool that takes French seriously. The pricing is unusual: a perpetual license once at around €120, or a subscription at around €59/yr. It is the only tool here that does not "auto-correct your texts" via a system-wide shortcut; you typically work inside its own editor or its in-app integrations.
Grammarly: still the safest pick for native English
Grammarly is on this list for completeness. If your writing is 100% English, lives mostly in a browser, and you want the deepest style suggestions plus a plagiarism checker, Grammarly is still excellent. Its tone detection in 2026 has improved substantially, and its "you've written X words this week" engagement is well-tuned.
Where it loses ground: no offline mode, English-only (dialects do not count), $12/month is on the high end, and the "Mac app" is essentially a wrapper around the same web product. If you have outgrown Grammarly's price or want a writing assistant in apps Grammarly does not reach, every other tool on this list is a step in that direction.
So which one should you actually pick?
There is no single right answer, and that is why this list exists. A practical rule of thumb:
- Choose Archie if you want a single, low-friction tool that follows you across every app, plus free unlimited voice dictation on-device.
- Choose LanguageTool if you write in multiple European languages and value open source / self-hosting.
- Choose ProWritingAid if your work is long-form and deserves a real editing session.
- Choose Wordtune if you live in the browser and want fast AI rewrites without ceremony.
- Choose Ginger if you write in your native language and ship in English daily.
- Choose Antidote if you write in French professionally and refuse to send your drafts to a cloud.
- Choose Grammarly if you write only in English, in a browser, and you want the deepest style coach the category has to offer.
The single biggest shift between 2023 and 2026 is that "writing help" used to mean "a sidebar in your browser". In 2026, the better mental model is a shortcut anywhere you type. That is the trend Archie was built around, and the reason free unlimited voice dictation matters: it is the cheapest way to demonstrate the new pattern.
Where to go from here
- See how the shortcut actually works on the home page and the Features section.
- Compare plans on the Pricing section.
- The most-asked questions are answered in the FAQ.
- New posts are listed on the blog.
If you have a tool you would like to see added to this comparison, send a note via the contact link in the footer. We will revisit this article every six months to keep the table accurate.