Grammarly vs Hemingway Editor: In-Depth Comparison

I had to write a chunk of essays in college, and I was toying around with useful Android apps for students. Procrastination led to essays piling up, and I had to take them down one by one, often over the weekend. It was then that I took to apps like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to ease up the editing process.

I bet other students and young professionals can feel the pressure I experienced as the submission deadline approaches, and you need your submissions to be error-free and impressive. Thankfully, I used both alternatively and realized the stark differences between them.

Grammarly is a modern grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism detection tool.

Visit Grammarly

The Hemingway Editor aims makes your written work free of complicated and dull words by pointing out the use of adverbs and passive voice and asking you to rewrite wordy sentences.

Visit Hemingway Editor

Here, we compare these two for their design, features, availability, and pricing to find out which one could prove to be a useful tool for your writing arsenal.

Grammarly Interface and Design

Grammarly has done a fine job with integrating its features into a singular editor. It helps you get rid of basic grammatical errors and typos from your writing, minimize redundancy and improve your word flow and sentence structure.

After you create a Grammarly account, you can log in and arrive at the dashboard from where you can access the editor, edit your profile, and download apps. There is a search box on the top to ease up the document search process after you have created a lot of documents.

Earlier this year, Grammarly introduced a major design update to its platform. The new update aims to make your work more productive and goal-oriented. Editing is informative on Grammarly as it highlights your mistakes in great detail. You get a performance score to show how well your writing fares against Grammarly’s standards. The performance score breaks down your text to show exact word count, besides showing you the reading and speaking time and your readability score. There is also an option to download a PDF report of your writing.

Hemingway Editor Interface and Design

Hemingway Editor app’s design is crisp. You do not have to create an account to access it. The homepage itself is an editor. You can switch to the distraction-free writing mode where the suggestions disappear. Once you have finished your writing, you can switch back to the Edit mode to fix your writing errors.

With Hemingway, you get a readability score as well. The score is based on the number of errors that you have managed to fix.

It also shows detailed word count and the reading time for your writing. Other than that, there is a Help and Feedback section, and a link to download the desktop app. That is it.

Grammarly Features

Grammarly aims to improve your writing by fixing grammar and improving sentence structure. It comes with many features to customize your editing experience.

Here are the features which Grammarly offers.

Setting Language Preferences

With Grammarly, you can switch between American, British, Australian, and Canadian English. Once you have selected your desired English version, Grammarly will remember that and will point out if you are swaying from your preferred language selection.

The language selection page also highlights the basic difference between these languages.

Personal Dictionary

Grammarly has an inbuilt personal dictionary. You can add words to this dictionary to improve your Grammarly experience. Grammarly will remember the words you add, and it will stop flagging them as misspellings.

This feature comes as a boon if there’s a particular noun which Grammarly flags all the time.

Uploading Documents

Grammarly lets you upload documents to its platform. You can upload a document from the dashboard or the editing screen. Once you have uploaded the document, you can begin your editing right away.

Here, user-friendliness wins against the rigorous process of copying-pasting.

Downloading Documents and Printing

Once you complete your editing, you can download or print the document. The option to do so comes inbuilt in the editor. Downloading and re-saving, then locating documents can otherwise be cumbersome.

The download and print features make Grammarly an office-ready app.

Setting Goals

Writing has several styles. It may fall under domains such as technical writing, academic writing, and business writing. Besides, the purpose of a piece of text may also be to inform, describe, convince, or to tell a story. The writer may be writing for a general, knowledgeable, or an expert audience. The writing style may be formal as well as informal. The emotion used may be mild or strong. All these factors invite for a lot of intricacies.

Grammarly lets you set these goals and recommends changes accordingly. You can access these features from the editor and save these settings for future. You can also ask Grammarly to show you these goals before you begin writing a new document.

Do note that the ability to choose writing domains is a premium feature.

Human Proofreading

Human Proofreading comes with a Grammarly Premium subscription. This feature is of great help when you are short on time and want to make sure that your writing is free of errors. However, Grammarly proofreaders do not reorganize, restructure, or rewrite your sentences. The turnaround time can be instant, or it may take up to 24 hours.

Plagiarism Check

Grammarly comes with an inbuilt plagiarism checker. With one click, you can instantly come across copies of your writing on the web. The plagiarism checker is a premium feature.

Hemingway Editor Features

Unlike Grammarly, Hemingway Editor does not entirely focus on improving your grammar and sentence structure. It focuses on helping you write short and crisp sentences by avoiding passive voice, adverbs, and providing simpler alternatives to phrases.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Ernest Hemingway wrote the short story above. It precisely highlights the use of crisp words to make a sentence. He wastes no words. The Hemingway Editor aims just for that.

Here are some of the features of Hemingway Editor.

Inbuilt Text Editor

Hemingway has an inbuilt text editor which makes it an efficient writing platform.

You have the option to change headings, bold and italicize your text, and add quotes, bullet points, numbers and links to your writing.

Distraction Free Writing Mode

While writing, a lot of red marks on the screen can be a turnoff. Hemingway Editor has an option to switch to Write mode which takes away its suggestions while you are writing, providing you a distraction-free writing space. After you complete writing, you can switch back to the Editor mode to fix your errors.

Works Offline

With the Hemingway app, you do not need an active internet connection. Hemingway downloads and saves its algorithms locally. This feature lets you work anywhere, unlike Grammarly which is internet dependent.

Publish Directly to WordPress and Medium

With Hemingway, you can directly publish to WordPress and Medium – two popular content platforms. You can make your writing go live or have them saved as a draft.

Web-Ready Writing

The Hemingway app with its effective formatting tools lets you write for the web. Once you are ready to publish, you can export your writing as HTML or Markdown for your CMS.

Import and Export Features

Hemingway lets you export your writing into PDF, Word, and Text files. It also lets you import documents to the platform and begin editing immediately without having to hassle through copying and pasting.

Working with Colleagues

You can save an edited document in the Hemingway app with highlighted changes. This feature works great if you have to revert with changes and recommendations.

Do note that some of the features mentioned here are exclusive to the Hemingway app which is a paid download.

Grammarly Premium Pricing and Availability

Grammarly is available on the web, Windows, Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. The Microsoft Office app integrates with Word and Outlook and works as an add-on.

The Google Chrome and Firefox plugin work almost everywhere, except online editors like Google Docs. Grammarly also has a keyboard app for Android and iOS.

While the apps are free to download, you will need Grammarly’s Premium subscription to unlock the extra features.

Download Grammarly Keyboard for Android

Download Grammarly Keyboard for iOS

Grammarly Premium starts at $29.95 per month but can be reduced to more than half if you choose a quarterly or annual plan. Grammarly Business starts at $15 per month per user and you need to have a minimum of three team to purchase it.

Hemingway App Pricing and Availability

Hemingway with limited features is available on the web for free, and the full version with a capability to work offline can be purchased for MacOS and Windows. Hemingway Editor can be purchased for Windows and Mac at $19.99. It is a one-time, lifetime purchase.

Which Is Better: Grammarly or Hemingway Editor?

Both Grammarly and Hemingway editors are great tools to tighten up your writing. Grammarly has a clean interface, and its ability to adapt to various writing domains is convenient. However, being a subscription-based service, its lack of offline support can be quite hindering.

Hemingway, on the other hand, can work offline if purchased and is much cheaper compared to Grammarly. However, Hemingway may not highlight as many glaring errors as Grammarly does.

So, if you are moderately confident about your writing, I think Hemingway is the app for you. Otherwise, Grammarly’s free version is your best bet.