QuillBot
CE 93 free tierStudents and academics tightening text they have already written.
Entry plan · billed yearly$3.75 / seat
× 6 seats$22.50
Against your $180 ceiling−$157.50
Team cost$22.50 / mo
Verified
Reviewed by
Oleh Kem
Oleh KemPlans checked37 / 12 vendors
“Contact sales”8/37
Median entry$29.50/mo
Entry range$3.75-99
Publish a price11/12
Free tier5/12
Leader97 Surfer SEO
AI writing tools compared: pricing, long form and SEO features
Every figure here came from a vendor plan card, read one plan at a time, and scored for how much of the bill the vendor states before you pay. Grammarly and QuillBot are the awkward pair. Neither shows a recurring rate in public, so the figure on their rows is the one you meet once you have an account.
How much does an AI writing tool cost a month?
$29.50 a month is the midpoint here. The cheapest opening tier is $3.75, the dearest $99. An AI writing tool either drafts text from a brief or reworks text you already have. Those are two markets. One bills you for output, the other for how often you press the button.
- Eleven vendors here put a rate in public, AI21 among them on a token rate card with no seat price attached. Copysmith is not among them: the product stopped selling under its own name, and the figures still on its row are historical.
- The unit printed on a plan tells you which half of the category you are in. Generators price what comes out, in characters or credits. Editors price the act, a rewrite or a report run, and cap it by the day.
- Annual billing moves the price further here than the monthly grid suggests. ProWritingAid's Premium rate falls by two thirds on the year and Wordtune's Advanced halves. Sudowrite's Professional tier pays part of its discount in credits rather than dollars.
- Out of 37 plans read for this page, eight show no figure whatsoever. Those sit at the top of each lineup, on the enterprise and custom steps, and the only vendor with nothing priced anywhere is the one that stopped selling.
- Free tiers sit on both sides of the split. There are 5, and they ration differently: Wordtune's Basic allows ten rewrites a day, ProWritingAid's Free two runs of each report a day. Rytr's Free is a monthly character budget you can spend whenever you like.
Our weighting puts disclosure above user rating and keeps writing quality out of the ranking entirely. The exact weights sit on the methodology page.
01 / 07
AI writing tools ranked: SEO features, long form and collaboration
Columns run left to right: the free tier, then whether any tier is missing a price, then SEO tools, long-form support, collaboration, file upload, a browser extension and an API. Rows sit in ranking order.
Sorted by transparency scorePriced tiers 29 / 37Full disclosure 4 / 12
How to read this table
Reading the console
A tick in a column means the capability appears in the vendor's feature record. Treat it as presence, not as quality. An empty cell means nothing was recorded, which is weaker evidence than a vendor saying no. The price scale is logarithmic, so distance to the right is real money rather than layout. Our score comes from what a vendor discloses and how its users rate it, with writing quality left out on purpose, and that is how an editor ends up above a famous generator.
- Price axis
- One shared logarithmic axis, $3.75 to $999. A tick further right is genuinely dearer. The tall tick is the cheapest paid tier.
- Diamond
- A flat platform fee, billed per month, not per seat.
- Granted
- Listed on the vendor’s own pages on the verify date.
- Conditional
- Present, but some tiers carry no published price.
- Not on the record
- Absent from the recorded feature set. It means unlisted, not incapable.
01Surfer SEONo free tierAll tiers pricedSEO tools listedLong form listedCollaboration listedFile upload not on the recordBrowser extension listedAPI listed$59flat97Alternatives to Surfer SEO
02QuillBotFree tierAll tiers pricedSEO tools not on the recordLong form not on the recordCollaboration not on the recordFile upload listedBrowser extension listedAPI not on the record$3.75/u93Alternatives to QuillBot
03RytrFree tierAll tiers pricedSEO tools not on the recordLong form listedCollaboration not on the recordFile upload not on the recordBrowser extension listedAPI listed$9/u92Alternatives to Rytr
04ProWritingAidFree tierAll tiers pricedSEO tools not on the recordLong form listedCollaboration not on the recordFile upload listedBrowser extension not on the recordAPI not on the record$30/u91Alternatives to ProWritingAid
05AI21 StudioUsage-priced, public rate cardNo free tier1 of 2 tiers unpricedSEO tools not on the recordLong form listedCollaboration not on the recordFile upload not on the recordBrowser extension not on the recordAPI listedSales only80Alternatives to AI21 Studio
06WordtuneFree tier1 of 4 tiers unpricedSEO tools not on the recordLong form not on the recordCollaboration not on the recordFile upload not on the recordBrowser extension not on the recordAPI not on the record$13.99/u76Alternatives to Wordtune
07GrammarlyFree tier1 of 3 tiers unpricedSEO tools not on the recordLong form not on the recordCollaboration listedFile upload listedBrowser extension listedAPI not on the record$30/u74Alternatives to Grammarly
08WritesonicNo free tier2 of 6 tiers unpricedSEO tools listedLong form listedCollaboration not on the recordFile upload listedBrowser extension not on the recordAPI listed$99flat74Alternatives to Writesonic
09SudowriteNo free tier1 of 4 tiers unpricedSEO tools not on the recordLong form listedCollaboration not on the recordFile upload not on the recordBrowser extension not on the recordAPI not on the record$19/u74Alternatives to Sudowrite
10JasperNo free tier1 of 2 tiers unpricedSEO tools listedLong form listedCollaboration listedFile upload listedBrowser extension not on the recordAPI listed$69/u65Alternatives to Jasper
11Copy.aiNo free tier1 of 2 tiers unpricedSEO tools listedLong form listedCollaboration listedFile upload not on the recordBrowser extension not on the recordAPI listed$29flat60Alternatives to Copy.ai
12CopysmithProduct discontinuedNo free tier0 of 1 tiers pricedSEO tools listedLong form listedCollaboration listedFile upload listedBrowser extension not on the recordAPI listedRetired0*Alternatives to Copysmith
GrantedSome tiers sealedNot on the recordCheapest paid seatFlat account fee, not per seat* score is user satisfaction alone: the vendor publishes no pricesScore ranks pricing transparency and user ratings, not capability. Capability is the grid.
12 vendorsMedian entry $29.50Coverage span 5 → 0 of sixSealed tiers 8 / 37
Scroll the console sideways to reach the remaining conditions.
02 / 07
Shortlist an AI writing tool by seat count and what it really costs
The shortlist ranks by what the plan actually costs your team, not by list price. Flat plans are folded into a per-team number so they compare like for like. Only vendors rated 85 and up are eligible.
Seats
6
Budget / seat
For 6 seats at $30 per seat, start with these
Ranked by monthly team cost, vendors rated 85 and up · Your ceiling for this team: $180 / mo
Rytr
CE 92 free tierSolo creators who want cheap short-form drafts in a set tone.
Entry plan$9 / seat
× 6 seats$54
Against your $180 ceiling−$126
Team cost$54 / mo
Surfer SEO
CE 97Writers paid to rank rather than to draft.
Discovery, flat account fee$59 / mo
6 seats, no per-seat charge+ $0
Against your $180 ceiling−$121
Team cost$59 / mo
Flat, not per seat. Past 16 seats it undercuts every per-seat plan here.
Not sure what to weigh? Five questions narrow it faster than the grid.Answer 5 questions
03 / 07
Every tool's plans, verdicts and the date we checked each price
Each row opens into the plans we read, with the limits attached to every tier. Order follows our score, not the price and not the size of the brand.
Transparency scorePricing transparency 60%User satisfaction 40%
Writers paid to rank rather than to draft. Surfer scores a draft against the pages already winning a query and meters you in documents: the $107 Standard plan and the $197 Pro plan share the same 360-document ceiling, so paying up buys prompt tracking and workspaces instead of volume.
Critical gapThe platform produces inconsistent AI content quality requiring extensive manual editorial oversight.
Plan table and expert take
Surfer SEO: expert take
The Unlimited on the top self-serve tier carries a fair-use asterisk, so it is a soft ceiling rather than none. Above it, Enterprise is a floor at $999 a month with custom limits, not a package you can price off the page.
Where Surfer SEO holds up
- Best SEO content optimizer
- Real-time content scoring vs competitors
- Highest rated in its category (4.8/5)
- Google Docs & WordPress integration
- Topical authority mapping
4.9CE scoreG2 4.8 · 543 reviewsCapterra 4.9Founded 2017Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | $59 | $49 |
| Standard | $107 | $99 |
| Pro | $197 | $182 |
| Peace of Mind | $323 | $299 |
| Enterprise | Not published | $999 |
Students and academics tightening text they have already written. The free pass stops at 125 words of paraphrasing at a time, and Premium lifts that while still capping the plagiarism checker at 25,000 words a month. QuillBot's rolling monthly rate only appears once you are signed in.
Critical gapThe model struggles with consistent tone adjustment and fails to evade AI detection.
Plan table and expert take
QuillBot: expert take
Team pricing runs by headcount band, opening at $3.75 a seat on the yearly Team plan and falling as the roster grows, which puts a group under the personal rate. The free tier meters by action too, with the summarizer stopping at 1,200 words.
Where QuillBot holds up
- Seven distinct paraphrasing modes to control tone and style
- Adjustable synonym slider for precise vocabulary control
- Integrates directly into Chrome, Word, and Google Docs
- Generous free plan with core paraphrasing and grammar tools
- Co-Writer combines research, writing, and citation in one UI
4.7CE scoreG2 4.6 · 77 reviewsCapterra 4.7Founded 2017Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| Premium | $19.95 | $4.17 |
| Team | Not published | $3.75 |
Solo creators who want cheap short-form drafts in a set tone. The $9 Unlimited plan removes the generation cap and moves the limit somewhere else: one tone match and one language, with the 35-plus languages held back for Premium. Its free tier hands over a monthly character budget and asks for no card.
Critical gapThe Saver tier imposes strict character limits that constrain long-form content output.
Plan table and expert take
Rytr: expert take
Unlimited generation still counts something: 50 plagiarism checks a month on the $9 Unlimited plan, 100 on Premium. Buying the year saves two months rather than a percentage, and it locks in twelve of them with no refund part-way through.
Where Rytr holds up
- Generous free plan with 10k characters/month
- Built-in plagiarism checker (powered by Copyscape)
- Unique 'Continue Ryting' feature for extending text
- One of the most affordable unlimited plans on the market
- Integrated SERP analysis for SEO-focused content
4.8CE scoreG2 4.7 · 819 reviewsCapterra 4.5Founded 2021Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| Unlimited | $9 | $7.50 |
| Premium | $29 | $24.16 |
Not a tool for anyone who wants one pass and a clean file. ProWritingAid is built for writers who read their own reports, from glue words to chapter critique. The free tier caps you at 500 words and two runs of each report a day, and Story Credits for manuscript analysis are bought separately from any plan.
Critical gapThe platform experiences frequent technical integration instability and compatibility failures during heavy, sustained document processing tasks.
Plan table and expert take
ProWritingAid: expert take
Three billing modes sit on one card at once: monthly, yearly and lifetime. The yearly column is the real offer, taking Premium Pro from $36 to $12 a month. Schools get a fourth route, with premium features free for K-12 organisations.
Where ProWritingAid holds up
- 20+ in-depth writing reports (Pacing, Dialogue, etc.)
- Deep integration with Scrivener, a key tool for authors
- Lifetime 'Premium' plan offers exceptional long-term value
- Customizable style guides and term bases for consistency
- Contextual thesaurus suggests words within your sentence
4.6CE scoreG2 4.5 · 48 reviewsCapterra 4.6Founded 2012Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| Premium | $30 | $10 |
| Premium Pro | $36 | $12 |
Above this line, no tier is missing a published figure. Below it, every record keeps something off the list.
Not something you open and type into. AI21 sells model access: rates are published per million tokens, seats do not enter the bill at all, and what you spend follows how much text your own software pushes through Jamba. The trial credits expire after a week.
Critical gapThe platform experiences frequent failure rates on basic auto-completion tasks compared to standard GPT-5 benchmarks.
Plan table and expert take
AI21 Studio: expert take
Billing is per token in and per token out, and output costs more than input on both Jamba models. A job that reads a lot and writes little costs a fraction of one that drafts, so the shape of the work sets the bill.
Where AI21 Studio holds up
- Jamba is AI21's own hybrid SSM-Transformer architecture, not a rebadged third-party model
- A 256K context window handles long documents and complex, long-form tasks in a single pass
- Task-specific APIs for summarization, paraphrasing, and grounded answers sit alongside the raw models
- Fine-tuning lets you adapt Jamba to your own domain and vocabulary
- Claimed token efficiency of up to 30% more text per token, which lowers the effective cost at scale
4.7CE scoreG2 4.6 · 196 reviewsCapterra 4.3Founded 2017Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Pay As You Go | $0.20 / 1M tokens | Not published |
| Custom Plan | Contact sales | |
Professionals who mainly rewrite short things, from emails to a paragraph that will not sit right. Wordtune's meter is daily, with ten rewrites a day on Basic and thirty on Advanced. That counter, not the feature list, is what pushes people to the top tier.
Critical gapThe software lacks offline capabilities and requires active browser extension connectivity.
Plan table and expert take
Wordtune: expert take
There are no refunds here, and the three-day trial asks for payment details before it starts. Against that, the annual toggle is the page default and halves the rate, taking Advanced from $13.99 to $6.99. Students and non-profits knock off more by asking support.
Where Wordtune holds up
- Offers multiple rewrite suggestions for a single sentence
- Spices feature adds examples, stats, or historical facts
- Maintains original meaning better than most rephrasing tools
- Seamless integration with Google Docs, Word, and browsers
- Generous free plan with 10 rewrites per day
4.7CE scoreG2 4.6 · 196 reviewsCapterra 4.5Founded 2018Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Free |
| Advanced | $13.99 | $6.99 |
| Unlimited | $19.99 | $9.99 |
| Business/Team | Contact sales | |
Teams after one consistent check across every app they type in. Free covers 100 AI prompts a month and Pro raises that to 2,000 per member. Grammarly's public pricing page carries no recurring rate, so you meet the real figure after signing in, and enterprise buyers get routed to Superhuman Go, a separate brand.
Critical gapThe engine occasionally misinterprets semantic context, necessitating manual review of all automated output.
Plan table and expert take
Grammarly: expert take
The public plans page shows the tier structure and no recurring price at all. The button it does show starts a trial, and the standing rate waits behind a sign-in wall. Education buyers get a discount that is mentioned only in the FAQ.
Where Grammarly holds up
- Integrates seamlessly across browsers, desktop apps, and mobile
- Real-time tone detection adjusts writing for specific audiences
- Comprehensive free version covers core grammar and spelling needs
- Style guide feature ensures brand consistency for business teams
- Plagiarism checker compares text against billions of web pages
4.8CE scoreG2 4.7 · 13,700 reviewsCapterra 4.7Founded 2009Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | Free |
| Pro | $30 | $12 |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
Not really a writing subscription any more. Writesonic's plan grid now sells AI-visibility tracking, counted in prompts and answers watched each day, with a monthly article allowance attached at the side. The $99 Starter Plan watches a single engine, and extra users cost more again.
Plan table and expert take
Writesonic: expert take
Agency pitch projects run one to seven days and then auto-pause, so that tier sells demos rather than retainers. Converting one into a standing project is a separate charge. Agentic workflows on non-Enterprise plans are limited trial runs.
Where Writesonic holds up
- Chatsonic pairs AI chat with live Google data and built-in image generation
- Audiosonic turns drafts into text-to-speech audio files
- Photosonic generates supporting AI art and stock-style images alongside the copy
- Brand Voice trains the model on your own style and tone for consistent output
- Runs current large language models under the hood, so the base writing quality holds up
4.8CE scoreG2 4.7 · 2,232 reviewsCapterra 4.7Founded 2020Verified July 16, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Starter Plan | $99 | $79 |
| Basic Plan | $249 | $199 |
| Growth Plan | $499 | $399 |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
| Agency Starter (Pitch Projects) | $250 | $200 |
| Agency Enterprise | Contact sales | |
Novelists who need a draft to keep moving. Sudowrite spends from a credit wallet. Its annual deal pays partly in units: the Professional tier more than doubles its monthly allowance, from 450,000 credits to a million. Only Max rolls unused credits forward, and heavier models drain the wallet faster with no published overage rate.
Critical gapThe platform limits style parameter adjustments to a 40 percent threshold.
Plan table and expert take
Sudowrite: expert take
Everything runs off one wallet, and no free tier sits under it. The way in is the $19 Hobby & Student plan, $10 on the year. The annual cut stays near half up the whole ladder, so the monthly column is the expensive read.
Where Sudowrite holds up
- The Story Engine generates a full novel outline from a simple idea
- Canvas gives you visual brainstorming and plot mind-mapping in one view
- Craft-specific tools for Show-not-Tell and pacing analysis, not just generic drafting
- The Rewrite tool offers multiple thematic variations, like leaning into inner conflict
- Routes to current large models like GPT-5.x and Claude for varied outputs
4.6CE scoreG2 4.5 · 90 reviewsCapterra 4.4Founded 2020Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Hobby & Student | $19 | $10 |
| Professional | $29 | $22 |
| Max | $59 | $44 |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
Marketing teams that need campaign assets in one brand voice. Jasper prints no plan cards, and the only public number, $69 for Pro or $59 on the year, is buried in the FAQ text where the plan cards should be. Business shows nothing at all, and its GEO Hub and Agents burn credits over the seat price.
Critical gapThe platform revokes access to historical content credits immediately upon subscription expiration.
Plan table and expert take
Jasper: expert take
Pro's $59 headline needs a year up front. Month to month the same Pro plan is $69, and there is no published price for adding a teammate at all: the billing FAQ answers that question by pointing at another FAQ.
Where Jasper holds up
- Brand Voice feature learns and mimics your specific style guide
- Deep integrations with Surfer SEO for on-page optimization
- Campaign builder creates cohesive assets from a single brief
- Extensive library of 50+ specialized marketing templates
- Built-in plagiarism checker ensures content originality
4.8CE scoreG2 4.7 · 1,268 reviewsCapterra 4.8Founded 2021Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | $69 | $59 |
| Business | Contact sales | |
Go-to-market teams that want short-form output running through repeatable workflows instead of a prompt at a time. The $29 Chat plan is capped at five seats and covers chat projects. Everything above it is Enterprise with no published figure, and workflow runs consume credits that the plan allowance does not include.
Critical gapThe platform lacks native real-time social trend data ingestion.
Plan table and expert take
Copy.ai: expert take
Unlimited Words means unlimited in chat, and the workflows people buy this for run on credits instead. More credits are settled with Enterprise, not by a self-serve top-up. The annual toggle takes Chat from $29 to $24, the whole public ladder.
Where Copy.ai holds up
- Infobase feature learns your brand voice for consistent output
- Pre-built automated workflows for content creation at scale
- Chat by Copy.ai offers real-time search data for topical content
- API access enables integration with existing marketing stacks
- Go-to-market platform with specific sales and marketing playbooks
4.6CE scoreCapterra 4.5Founded 2020Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Chat | $29 | $24 |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | |
No longer sold under this name. Copysmith folded into its parent company's platform, the pricing page routes to a demo request, and any figure still attached to the name is historical. Teams generating bulk product copy today end up buying one of the sibling products under the same owner, each priced on its own.
Critical gapThe platform enforces strict generation limits and restricted output options for users.
Plan table and expert take
Copysmith: expert take
There is nothing to buy under this name now. The pricing URL redirects to the homepage and the only route left is a demo request. Older figures still in search results were never carried into our record: a price nobody can pay is not a price.
Where Copysmith holds up
- Bulk product description generation via CSV upload
- Direct integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce & BigCommerce
- Team collaboration features with workflow management
- Built-in plagiarism checker ensures content originality
- API access for custom content creation workflows
4.5CE scoreG2 4.4 · 13 reviewsCapterra 4.3Founded 2020Verified July 8, 2026
| Plan | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| Copysmith Platform | Contact sales | |
04 / 07
Compare any two writing tools: plans, word limits and our score
vs
What the records say
For 6 seats, QuillBot bills $22.50 / mo and Surfer SEO bills $59 / mo, $36.50 / mo between them.
Surfer SEO charges a flat account fee, so it undercuts QuillBot from 16 seats up.
Surfer SEO carries 5 of the 6 capability columns on the record; QuillBot shows 2.
Users side with Surfer SEO: 4.8 on G2 against 4.6 for QuillBot.
QuillBot runs a free tier to start on; Surfer SEO does not.
Both publish every tier they sell.
Pick Surfer SEO for: Writers paid to rank rather than to draft.
Pick QuillBot for: Students and academics tightening text they have already written.
Surfer SEO
CE 97 · G2 4.8Published plans, US$/mo
Discovery$59
Pro$197
EnterpriseNot published
Team of 6$59 / mo
Verified July 8, 2026
QuillBot
CE 93 · G2 4.6Published plans, US$/mo
FreeFree
Premium$19.95
TeamNot published
Team of 6$22.50 / mo
Verified July 16, 2026
Both price lists on the category axis
Surfer SEO
QuillBot
Where they differ
Only Surfer SEO has on the record
- SEO tools
- Long form
- Collaboration
- API
Only QuillBot has on the record
- $0 tier
- File upload
05 / 07
AI writing questions: monthly against yearly, free limits, team bills
Why is the monthly price double the yearly one for the same plan?
Because the monthly rate here is what you pay for staying flexible, and the gap is unusually wide. ProWritingAid's Premium plan drops from $30 to $10 a month on the yearly deal. Wordtune's Advanced halves. Grammarly's Pro plan is $30 month to month and $12 on the year, and the second figure is the one people quote at each other.
At what point do you outgrow a free AI writing tier?
Sooner on the editing side, because those free tiers are rationed by the day. Wordtune's Basic gives ten rewrites a day. ProWritingAid's Free stops at 500 words and two runs of each report a day. QuillBot's Free paraphrases 125 words per pass. Generators ration by the month: Rytr's Free hands you 10,000 characters to spend whenever you like.
What is the monthly bill for a team of six writers?
It depends whether seats are the unit at all. Copy.ai's $29 Chat plan caps at five seats, so a sixth writer means a second plan or the Enterprise tier, which carries no figure. Surfer's $107 Standard plan includes three seats. QuillBot prices its Team tier down as members join, on annual billing only. Work out what a seat means on each plan before you multiply.
Which is cheaper over a year, Grammarly or QuillBot?
QuillBot, though the comparison only works on annual rates. QuillBot's Premium plan is $4.17 a month on the year, and you only see its rolling monthly rate after signing in. Grammarly's Pro is $12 on the year, and its public plans page prints no recurring figure at all. Two of the better-known names here treat the monthly price as account-holder information.
Why is the cheapest seat on this page a team plan?
Because personal plans are priced for one person and team plans are priced to grow. QuillBot's Team plan starts at $3.75 a seat on a yearly plan and steps down again as members join, which lands it under its own personal Premium rate. Copy.ai's $29 Chat plan covers five seats for one price. If two or three of you write, price the team tier before the personal one.
What else lands on the bill after the subscription?
Credits, mostly. ProWritingAid sells Story Credits for manuscript analysis separately from every subscription. Jasper's Business tier runs GEO Hub and Agents on credits that the seat price does not cover. Copy.ai's workflow runs consume credits whose rate is published nowhere. Caps survive upgrades too: QuillBot's plagiarism checker stops at 25,000 words a month even on Premium.
Is paying for an AI writing tool worth it for a freelancer?
Only if a free limit is what slows you down. A freelancer rewriting a few emails a day never reaches Wordtune's Basic ceiling. One drafting client can eat Rytr's 10,000-character free month in a couple of sittings. Run a normal week on the free tiers and see which counter runs out, because that counter is what the paid plan actually sells.
How do you tell a drafting tool from an editor before you pay?
Read the unit on the plan card. Drafting tools count what comes out, so Rytr sells characters a month and Sudowrite sells a credit wallet. Editors count what you do to text that already exists: Wordtune allows so many rewrites a day, ProWritingAid so many report runs. If the number on the card is an allowance per day, the tool expects you to arrive with a draft.
Do you wind up buying two tools when ranking is part of the job?
If ranking is the job, yes. The generators do not score a draft against the pages already winning the query, and that is a separate purchase with a separate unit: Surfer meters you in documents, not words. A generator's plan tells you how much text you can make. It says nothing about whether that text can rank.
What does a token rate card buy in a writing tool?
Access to the model, not an app to write in. AI21 publishes its rates per million tokens on a Pay As You Go plan with no seats attached, so what you spend tracks what your own software sends through it. Everything else in this category sells a seat, a credit wallet or a daily allowance. A rate card is cheaper to start and harder to forecast.
Does paying more get you better writing?
Usually it gets you more of what you already had. Surfer's Standard and Pro plans share the same 360-document ceiling, so stepping up buys prompt tracking and workspaces instead of volume. On our record ProWritingAid's Premium and Premium Pro carry an identical feature list at different prices. A higher tier here mostly lifts a limit, and lifting a limit is not writing better.
The cost of changing your mind on a yearly AI writing plan
What the monthly figure buys you is the right to leave, and in this category that right is expensive. The catch sits on the other side of the discount. Rytr and Wordtune both take the year up front and do not return the unused part, and Wordtune's three-day trial wants a card before it starts.
So the sensible order is backwards from the way these pages are laid out. Work out the annual rate first, then picture the tool turning out wrong in month three. Month to month, that costs one payment. On the year it costs everything left in it, and ProWritingAid's Story Credits stop being refundable after the first few days.
Two AI writing tools that now sell something else
Copysmith no longer sells under its own name. The product folded into its parent company's platform, its pricing page routes to a demo request, and the figures still attached to the name are historical. Writesonic has moved too: its plan grid counts prompts and answers tracked inside AI search engines, with an article allowance attached at the side.
Both are worth a second look before you shortlist. Read what a plan meters before you read what it costs. When the units on the card are prompts watched or documents scored rather than words produced, the thing on sale is not the thing the category name promised.
The verdict on AI writing toolsSigned review · Updated
The question is not which of these writes better. It is whether you are filling a blank page or repairing one that is already full, because the two wings count different things. One meters what you produce. The other meters what you do in a day.
Whichever wing you land in, treat the monthly figure as the softest thing you will read here. Yearly rates here fall to a fraction of it, and two vendors will not show a monthly rate at all until you have an account. Read the rank as a disclosure grade: it rewards showing the yearly rate beside the monthly one, and marks down the two that hide it until you have signed in.
MethodWe read 37 plans across twelve vendors, counted what each meter actually counts, and dated every figure .
DisclosureCollection is tool-assisted; every verdict is written and signed by a human analyst.
06 / 07
Not sure which? Answer one, take a shortlist.Pick the line that sounds like your team. Each one opens the vendor built for it.
Writers paid to rank rather than to draftSurfer SEOStudents and academics tightening text they have already writtenQuillBotSolo creators who want cheap short-form drafts in a set toneRytrNot a tool for anyone who wants one pass and a clean fileProWritingAidNot something you open and type intoAI21 StudioProfessionals who mainly rewrite short things, from emails to a paragraph that will not sit rightWordtuneStill weighing it? Answer 5 questions, take a shortlist.
07 / 07
Read next: cost guides for AI writing tools, plus related categories
Related categoriesProject ManagementSEO ToolsWebsite BuildersEmail MarketingAI ProductivityCRMCompare two vendorsSurfer SEO vs QuillBotQuillBot vs RytrRytr vs ProWritingAidProWritingAid vs AI21 StudioAI21 Studio vs WordtuneWordtune vs GrammarlyStill unsureAnswer 5 questions → a shortlistAll categories
How this review is made. Prices are read from vendor pricing pages and re-checked on the dates shown against each product. Condition columns reflect the feature set recorded on the vendor’s own pages on that date. ComparEdge sells no AI writing tools and takes no vendor payment for placement. Where a vendor publishes nothing, this page says so rather than estimating. Ranking is by transparency score: pricing transparency 60%, user satisfaction 40%. What a product can do is shown in the condition columns and carries no weight in the number.