In November 2022, OpenAI released its already legendary language model GPT-3.5 which has since undergone an update to a newer version called GPT-4. It made waves with its impressive generative AI technology. Its ability to produce coherent arguments and paragraphs made it a game-changer in various fields, including academic writing. The extensive scope of potential applications in this domain unlocked opportunities for implementing this groundbreaking technology in practice.
As a result, numerous AI-powered essay-writing services have emerged, including allegedly the industry leader, Caktus, an AI-based writing tool that uses machine learning algorithms to generate content for various types of writing, including essays, articles, and blog posts. This article reviews Caktus and explores its potential to generate quality student essays. See How We Test AI Essay Writers for more details about our testing approach.

Quick Overview
Cactus AI delivers well-written essays, and the service boasts numerous features. However, a limited free plan doesn’t allow to get a feel of most of them.
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Caktus Review: Mystery Shopping Experience
Caktus promotes the idea of working smarter, not harder, by employing the power of artificial intelligence to enhance our thinking processes. However, it is first essential to determine our expectations from an AI-generation tool benefiting from the miracles of its technological advancements. The question arises, how do we evaluate the effectiveness of an AI-powered system? What criteria should we use to assess its efficiency in generating grammatically correct, coherent, and plagiarism-free essays?
Keeping this objective in mind, our team initiates a mystery shopping project to evaluate AI text generators and gain insights into their functionality. We task each platform to generate a 550-word MLA-formatted personal narrative essay that conveys the feeling of gratitude. Then we evaluate each service for ease and speed of operation, affordability, and variety of services it provides.
Additionally, we examine the quality of the generated text in its unedited form and submit it for a thorough evaluation by Professor Sybil Low, who grades it according to current American college standards.
Professor Low only shrugs her shoulders when we ask her about what she expects from an AI-writing platform:

It’s something new every time. In my experience, AI-generated essays have shown varying quality. While the technology has the potential to produce coherent arguments and impressive language, there are often inaccuracies, logical fallacies, and limited depth of analysis. Additionally, the output of AI-generated essays tends to be formulaic and lacks the originality and creativity that human writing can offer. Many experts, Marcel Scharth from the University of Sydney, for example, doubt that AI tech will replace professional writers soon. It is important to approach these tools cautiously and use them only as aids in the writing process, rather than complete replacements for human-generated content.

Based on her detailed evaluation and our criteria of value for money, overall experience, and essay quality, we assign an A*Help score to each company.

Value for Money — 18/25
In 2023, few can be really impressed with mere text generation. It has quickly become a routine task for many, and new advances emerge to simplify our lives even more. Citation makers, paraphrasing tools, and text summarizers are just a few examples of the perks we can now enjoy besides generating a raw text. AI essay writing platforms that adopt the latest tech trends, supplement their leading offers with additional services, and offer flexible pricing will stand out among all others because all this significantly increases their value for money ratio. Let’s take a look at whether Caktus can impress us with its value proposition.
Caktus’ business model is clear. It’s not a free AI essay writer but it offers a trial period before trying its paid options. First, to get access to the trial mode, a user must actually subscribe to one of the two available plans: monthly ($9.99) or annual ($99.99). Then, the trial itself is limited to 5000 characters of generated content.

Customers have an abundance of extra services to choose from when using Caktus. You can opt to have a brand new essay written from scratch or have your existing piece enhanced with the Content Improver tool. In addition, Caktus offers to help you expand your idea with the Sentence Expander or extract the main points from a written article. The AP Style Formatting tool automatically converts your input, and Grammar Fixer polishes your language. Moreover, Caktus provides a range of business options, such as a personal LinkedIn bio enhancer, email responder, and cover letter writer.
Its wide choice of writing tools and affordable monthly plan should impress users and make Caktus a go-to for those seeking assistance with their essay-writing needs.


Overall Experience — 21/25
For people who lead a busy lifestyle, the luxury of spare time is rarely available, so they turn to online services with various needs that offer a quick and more convenient customer journey. It’s easy to imagine that this group of individuals will also be among the first users of AI essay-writing tools, and they will expect nothing less than a fast and effortless experience, similar to what they have grown accustomed to with other technologies.


Caktus should not become a disappointment for people with high demands for usability performance. While third-party account login is unavailable, registering is straightforward and requires only an email address. Once you’ve signed up, a light and airy interface catches your eye and further enhances your impression. Resembling a tablet menu, layout with icons and short descriptions of all features leaves no room for user confusion. This may be the reason why Caktus doesn’t offer any support options. However, we still believe customers would appreciate having some.
Text generation itself couldn’t be easier. All you need to do is type in your statement, topic, or prompt, and lines of sentences start emerging in front of your eyes. Our 519-word essay was ready in a minute. Next, the system allows you to export the result in an editable document within the Caktus interface, where you can add or remove specific paragraphs if necessary.
Caktus is committed to offering its users an effortless and user-friendly experience. With its appealing interface and powerful text generation capabilities, Caktus has already become a great AI essay-writing tool and possesses the potential to continue improvement.

Paper Quality — 43.5/50
Finally, the most intriguing part of our experience is assessing the quality of work. Even though AI-powered writing services are widely recognized, they are still mysterious contenders in the academic writing industry, and engaging with them is much like going on a blind date. Will the content be surprisingly good, with ideas brighter than your own, or will it fall flat, leaving you disappointed and regretful? Despite the ambiguity, the possibility of both contentment and frustration makes it an exciting experience.
The tool generates different parts of the essay simultaneously and arranges them into paragraphs according to the coherence and logical progression of the narrative. Manual editing can be done within the platform’s integrated word-processing tool. As for the formatting options, Caktus offers only the AP Format, so if any other style is required, a user will have to do it on their own.
The prepared document was sent to professor Low for her professional grading. The result of 90.2/100 was strikingly good. There was no criticism of the paper’s formatting, which deserves attention. However, the length of the paper was slightly inadequate, indicating that a bit more content could have been added to enhance the storytelling. The mechanics, particularly spelling and punctuation, received outstanding scores of 100%, but some areas could have benefited from wider word choice (89%). Regarding reasoning and logic, the essay received a decent score of 82%.
Find a more in-depth description of the paper’s score below:
SCORE: 90.2 Document formatting is great! |Observations:| {Integrity}: 100%. {Length}: Just a tiny bit short (97%)—try to write a bit more. {Mechanics:} 97% (spelling 100%, grammar 97%, punctuation 100%, word choice 89%). {Citation formatting:} ungraded. {Reasoning, logic:} 82% (efficiency 51%, acuity 100%, clarity 100%, objectivity 79%).
Professor Low is always generous for her detailed expert feedback:

The essay does an excellent job of reflecting on the people who have helped the author along their journey and acknowledging the role that difficult times have played in shaping their perspective.
There are a few areas for improvement I’d like to point out. While AI writing software touches on the importance of gratitude, the essay would benefit from a more explicit thesis statement that clearly outlines the main argument. Additionally, a more robust introduction that captures the reader’s attention and provides more context for the personal narrative that follows would only make a reader more involved. I’d also enjoy having some specific examples to illustrate the author’s points. For instance, the importance of the “little things in life” is mentioned, but nothing is provided about what those might be. Adding more details and examples would help to make the essay more engaging and relatable for the reader.

In summary, the paper has its strengths and is generally well-written in terms of language and style, but it lacks consistency and proper character development.
Paper score: 90.2/100
⭐ Parameter | ✅ Personal Essay |
Paper score | 90.2/100 |
Creation time | 1 min |
Number of words | 519 words |
Conclusion
Caktus AI is impressive. It’s perfect for students with its multiple essay writing tools and services related to writing and editing. The quality of work is quite high, even with minor manual editing, which proves this service is deservedly listed among the best AI-powered essay generators.

Сaktus Specs
Website experience
Aesthetic Interface | Yes |
Easy-to-use platform | Yes |
Simple Essay creation flow | Yes |
Trying before registration | No |
Full time to generate essay | 1 minute |
Wordcount limits | unlimited |
Support | |
Guides | No |
Support chat/phone | Yes |
Services | |
AI chat | No |
Research assistant | No |
In-text citations | Yes |
Reference finder | Yes |
MLA and APA Citations | Yes |
Grammar check | Yes |
Plagcheck | No |
Free trial | |
Free trial/plan | Yes |
Limits | 5000 characters |
Subscription & Limits | |
Monthly plan | $9.99 monthly |
Annual plan | $99.99 annually |
Text Creation Options | |
Generate | Yes |
Rewrite | Yes |
Rephrase | Yes |
Summarize | Yes |
Text Formatting | |
Format | Plain text |
Outline | No |
Structure | Paragraph structure |
References | Yes |
Formatting | AP |
FAQ
Caktus Reviews
All services listed on our website, including Caktus went through a well-planned multilayered inspection. We collect assorted types of data through mystery shopping, analyze it, and represent it as an A*Help score. Additionally, we carefully review independent users’ feedback on Reddit, Sitejabber, Reviews.io, and Trustpilot to ensure the highest credibility.
Is Caktus a Scam?
The service proved its functionality by following our instructions and completing the required task. Caktus also demonstrated high reliability and efficiency throughout our experience of interaction with the platform. Therefore, we can affirm the platform’s proficiency in generating written content and refute any claims that it is a fraudulent service.
Is Caktus Legit?
Based on our comprehensive evaluation of Caktus, we can conclude that it is a legitimate platform for generating written content. The platform has also received positive reviews from numerous satisfied customers, further attesting to its legitimacy and reliability.
Is Caktus Safe?
Although Caktus exploits an artificial intelligence language model, it operates like a standard online service, adhering to typical terms and conditions, privacy, and other established policies. As such, it is an entirely secure company in the online realm.
Is Caktus Trustworthy?
This platform has a positive reputation among customers who have used its services, and our review also serves as first-hand evidence of the platform’s dependability. Caktus is an absolutely trustworthy service.
Is Caktus a Good Service?
We’ve examined all the important characteristics of Caktus as an AI essay-writing tool. According to our evaluation, the platform received 84.5/100 pts of A*Help score. It also leads our TOP-10 list of best AI text generators. All this indicates that Caktus is a good service for producing artificially generated content.
Is Caktus Free?
No, Cactus is not a free service. Two subscription plans are offered: monthly ($9.99) and annual ($99.99). There is also a free trial period allowing users to test the platform before making a commitment.
Can Caktus write my College Paper?
Caktus is a good tool to help improve your academic writing by supplementing ideas, providing vocabulary variety, and choosing an appropriate tone. While there may be an impression that it’s capable of writing college papers from scratch, it’s important to remember that submitting the generated texts as original work is considered academic misconduct. Users should take the generated content only as a starting point or reference to create unique writing pieces.
Does Caktus have Anti-Plagiarism Features?
As of writing, the platform does not offer any plagiarism detection plugin, software, or any other mechanism. However, there are many third-party alternatives that you can explore if necessary.
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