For most fiction writers, ProWritingAid is the stronger pick for revising a full manuscript. It has dedicated reports for pacing, dialogue, echoes and sensory detail, and it can open Scrivener projects. Grammarly is the stronger pick for quick, everyday polishing across many apps and devices, with more generative AI help. Many authors end up using one for manuscript revision and the other, or neither, for everything else.

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This guide compares the two tools as they stand at the time of writing (October 2026). It covers what each one does well for fiction, where each falls short, platforms, pricing models, AI features, privacy settings, and a checklist to help you choose. Neither tool replaces a human editor. Both can make your self-edit faster and cleaner before a manuscript goes to one.

• Different purposes. ProWritingAid is built around in-depth reports on a whole document. Grammarly is built around real-time suggestions wherever you type.
• Fiction-specific help. ProWritingAid has reports for pacing, dialogue, sensory detail, echoes and clichés. Grammarly focuses on correctness, clarity and tone rather than story craft.
• Different pricing models. ProWritingAid offers monthly, yearly and one-off lifetime plans. Grammarly offers a free tier and a Pro subscription. Prices change, so check both official pricing pages.
• Privacy settings matter. Grammarly’s product improvement and training setting is on by default for individual users, but you can switch it off. ProWritingAid’s help centre says it doesn’t use user text to train its algorithms.
• Use either tool with judgement. Both flag deliberate stylistic choices in fiction as errors. Accept suggestions one at a time, not in bulk.

At a glance

• ProWritingAid suits revising a full manuscript, with reports for pacing, dialogue, echoes and sensory detail.
• Grammarly suits quick everyday polishing across many apps and devices, with more generative AI help.
• ProWritingAid offers monthly, yearly and lifetime plans, while Grammarly offers a free tier and a Pro subscription.
• Grammarly’s product improvement and training setting is on by default for individual users, so check privacy settings first.
• The biggest mistake is accepting every suggestion, because both tools flag deliberate fiction choices as errors.
• Neither tool replaces a human editor, so test both on a real chapter and set your English variant first.

The short version: who each tool suits

If you mainly want to…	Better fit	Why
Revise a full novel chapter by chapter	ProWritingAid	No word limit on paid plans, and dedicated reports for repetition, pacing and dialogue
Work inside Scrivener projects	ProWritingAid	Its desktop app can open and save Scrivener projects
Clean up emails, social posts and blurbs on the go	Grammarly	Wide coverage across browsers, desktop apps and mobile keyboards
Get generative AI help with rewrites and tone	Grammarly	Its AI prompts and tone tools are central to the product
Pay once rather than subscribe	ProWritingAid	It sells lifetime plans as well as subscriptions
Catch basic errors for free	Either	Both have free tiers. ProWritingAid’s free tier caps each check at 500 words.

What each tool does for fiction

ProWritingAid: reports built for revision

ProWritingAid describes itself as having more than 25 writing reports. Several of them suit fiction directly:

• Pacing: helps you spot where a story’s pace may be dragging
• Dialogue: analyses your dialogue, including flagging odd dialogue tags
• Sensory: shows which senses you lean on, which helps if every scene is visual and nothing else
• Echoes and All Repeats: catch the same word or phrase used close together, a common problem in drafts written quickly
• Overused Words, Sticky Sentences and Clichés: flag filler, tired phrasing and words writers tend to overuse
• Consistency: checks spelling, capitalisation and hyphenation across the document, which helps with character and place names
• Chapter Critique: an AI feature that gives feedback on a chapter’s strengths and weaknesses, with daily limits that depend on your plan

ProWritingAid also sells Story Credits for larger AI analyses, including Manuscript Analysis, Plot Analysis, Character Analysis and a Virtual Beta Reader. Treat these as extra costs on top of the plan price.

Grammarly: correctness, clarity and tone wherever you type

Grammarly’s strengths are real-time grammar, spelling and punctuation corrections, clarity suggestions, and tone detection and adjustment. Its official plans page lists full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment and plagiarism and AI-text detection among the Pro features. It also gives each user a monthly allowance of AI prompts: 100 a month on the free plan and 2,000 a month per member on Pro. These help with blurbs, newsletters, ad copy and author bios as much as with manuscripts.

Grammarly doesn’t have reports aimed at story craft, such as pacing or sensory balance. For fiction, it works best as a line-level checker rather than a developmental one. The company behind Grammarly renamed itself Superhuman in October 2025, according to widely reported coverage of the change. The Grammarly product continues under its own name, and you will see both names in its help pages.

Side-by-side comparison

Feature	ProWritingAid	Grammarly
Core approach	In-depth reports on a full document, plus real-time checking	Real-time suggestions as you type, plus AI prompts
Fiction-specific reports	Yes: pacing, dialogue, sensory, echoes, clichés and more	No dedicated story-craft reports
Free plan	Yes, with a 500-word limit per check and daily caps on some features	Yes, with corrections and 100 AI prompts a month
Paid plans (at the time of writing)	Premium and Premium Pro, billed monthly or yearly, or as a one-off lifetime purchase	Pro subscription. Enterprise plans are priced through sales.
AI features	Rephrase, Sparks, Creative Nudges, Chapter Critique, and Story Credit analyses	Generative AI prompts, full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment and AI agents
Where it works	Web editor, desktop app, Google Docs, Microsoft Office, browser extensions and its “Desktop Everywhere” tool	Browser extensions, Windows and Mac desktop apps, Microsoft Office, Google Docs, and iOS and Android
Scrivener	Opens Scrivener projects in its desktop app on a Premium licence	No direct Scrivener project support. Works through its desktop app in many programs.
English variants	General, British, US, Australian and Canadian English	American, British, Canadian, Australian and Indian English
Other languages	English only, according to its help centre	Its help centre lists suggestions in a range of languages beyond English
Training on your writing	Help centre says user text isn’t used to train its algorithms	Product improvement and training is on by default for individual users, and can be switched off in settings

Pricing models compared

At the time of writing (October 2026), ProWritingAid’s official pricing page lists Premium at US$30 billed monthly, or US$120 billed yearly (US$10 a month). It lists Premium Pro at US$36 billed monthly, or US$144 billed yearly (US$12 a month). Lifetime plans are US$399 for Premium and US$699 for Premium Pro. Its pricing page says yearly and lifetime plans come with a 3-day money-back guarantee and monthly plans are not refundable.

At the time of writing, Grammarly’s official plans page lists Pro at US$12 a month, with a free trial on offer. Paying month to month generally costs more than the headline rate, so check the billing period shown when you check out. Business-level plans are priced through Grammarly’s sales team.

Prices change, both tools run frequent discounts, and local prices and taxes vary by country. Use these figures to compare the pricing models, not as a quote. Check both official pricing pages on the day you buy. Also check whether the price shown is per month billed yearly, or truly monthly.

Working out the real cost

Before you buy, think about how long you will use the tool. A lifetime plan only saves money if you keep using the tool for several years, and if the features you rely on stay included. A subscription is easier to cancel if your needs change. If you only revise one or two books a year, buying a month of access when you need it, or relying on a free tier between books, may cost less than a yearly plan.

Privacy and your manuscript

An unpublished manuscript is valuable, so check how each tool treats your text before you paste in a full novel.

• Grammarly: its help centre explains that a Product Improvement and Training setting controls whether your content can be used to train its models and improve the product. It is on by default for individual users, who can switch it off at any time in their privacy or data settings. On Enterprise, Education and sales-purchased accounts it is off by default.
• ProWritingAid: its help centre says it doesn’t feed your text into the AI that generates Sparks suggestions and doesn’t use any user text to train its algorithms. It has separate help articles on the Critique report and data safety.

Policies change, so read each company’s current privacy policy and settings yourself. If a publishing contract, ghostwriting agreement or client confidentiality clause covers your manuscript, check that it allows you to use third-party AI tools.

How to choose: a decision checklist

1. List what you write most. Long-form fiction points towards ProWritingAid. Lots of short marketing copy and messages points towards Grammarly.
2. Check where you write. Scrivener users should test ProWritingAid’s desktop app on their own computer, as its Windows and Mac guides are separate. Writers who move between phone, browser and email may prefer Grammarly’s coverage.
3. Decide how much AI you want. If you want help rewriting and brainstorming, compare the AI allowances on each plan. If you want feedback without generated text, look at the report-based features.
4. Set your English variant. Choose British or Australian English if that is what you write, so the tool doesn’t “correct” colour to color.
5. Test on a real chapter. Run the same chapter through both free tiers or trials. Note how many suggestions you would actually accept.
6. Check privacy settings on day one. Decide whether to switch off any training or product improvement setting before you upload a manuscript.
7. Compare the total yearly cost. Include any credits or add-ons you would buy, and compare against how often you actually revise.
8. Remember the next step. Plan your editing budget so a software subscription doesn’t replace a human editor where one is needed.

Common mistakes to watch out for

• Accepting every suggestion. Fiction breaks rules on purpose. Fragments, dialect, repetition for rhythm and a character’s voice can all be flagged as errors. Judge each one.
• Flattening voice. Heavy use of tone and rewrite features can make every character sound the same. Use them on blurbs and copy more than on dialogue.
• Running every report at once. Work through a few reports per revision pass, such as repeats first, then pacing, then line-level style. Fixing everything in one go invites new problems.
• Ignoring the language setting. A US-English setting on a British or Australian manuscript creates hundreds of false flags.
• Forgetting the AI disclosure rules. If an AI tool writes text that goes into your book, check your publishing platform’s rules. KDP’s content guidelines distinguish AI-generated content, which must be disclosed, from AI-assisted editing, which doesn’t need to be.
• Treating software as an editor. Neither tool judges plot logic, character arcs or whether a scene earns its place.

For a structured approach to revision, read our self-editor’s guide to professional-quality writing. To see how editing software fits alongside formatting, AI and other services, see how to choose the right author tools. When you are ready for a human editor, finding the right editor explains the different types of editing and how to choose one. Writers comparing AI assistants for drafting and brainstorming can read Claude vs ChatGPT for authors. Once your manuscript is clean, Atticus vs Vellum vs Kindle Create covers the formatting step.

Sources this guide draws on: ProWritingAid’s official pricing page, writing reports page, Scrivener best-practices article and help centre articles on data and AI training; Grammarly’s official plans page and support articles on English variants, supported languages and the Product Improvement and Training control; news coverage of the October 2025 rebrand of Grammarly’s parent company to Superhuman; and Amazon KDP’s content guidelines on AI-generated and AI-assisted content. Details were checked in October 2026 and may change.

Frequently asked questions

Is ProWritingAid or Grammarly better for novelists?

For revising a full manuscript, ProWritingAid usually suits novelists better, because its reports target fiction problems such as pacing, dialogue tags, echoes and sensory balance. Grammarly is better at fast line-level correction and tone across many apps. Test both on the same chapter before you decide.

Can I use ProWritingAid and Grammarly together?

Yes, but running both at once in the same document can clutter the screen with overlapping suggestions. Many writers use ProWritingAid for manuscript revision passes and Grammarly for emails, newsletters and social posts. If budget matters, start with one paid plan and the other’s free tier.

Does Grammarly work in Scrivener?

Grammarly doesn’t open Scrivener projects directly the way ProWritingAid’s desktop app does. Some writers use Grammarly’s desktop app while writing, or copy text out to check it. If Scrivener is your main tool, test your exact setup during a free trial.

Do these tools use my writing to train AI?

ProWritingAid’s help centre says it doesn’t use user text to train its algorithms. Grammarly has a Product Improvement and Training setting that is on by default for individual users and can be switched off in your account. Check both companies’ current policies, because they can change.

Is the ProWritingAid lifetime plan worth it?

It can be if you expect to revise books with the tool for several years, because the one-off price is roughly three years of yearly Premium billing at current list prices. It is less useful if you write rarely or want to keep your options open. Check what the lifetime plan includes and excludes, such as Story Credits, before you buy.

Will these tools make my book sound like AI wrote it?

Not if you use them selectively. Report-based feedback and spelling or grammar fixes leave your voice intact. Accepting large AI rewrites, especially of dialogue and narration, is what tends to flatten voice. Keep generative features for marketing copy, and revise your story in your own words.

Both tools are good at what they were built for, and the right choice depends on what you write and where you write it. Test them on a real chapter, set your English variant and privacy settings first, and budget for the human editing that software can’t replace.