Hemingway vs Grammarly

Quick Overview

Hemingway Editor and Grammarly are two tools largely focused on improving writing mechanics such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Neither of them can really serve as a sufficient essay checker free solution. Nonetheless, in terms of the variety of graded aspects as well as the quality of final evaluation results, Grammarly beat Hemingway by 1 point, becoming a better option in this pair. 

TOP services	Our verdict	AHelp Score	🔥 Updated July 2024
AHELP Essay Grader ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	Best essay grader	90/100	Get free access
Class X	Most detailed evaluation	69/100	Read review
Studyable	Best pricing	58/100	Read review
Smodin	Customizable options	57/100	Read review
Grammarly	Best grammar evaluation	53/100	Read review

	Hemingway	Grammarly
Best fit for	Those looking for a quick writing assessment for better readability and grammar correctness	Students needing help with grammar & spelling mistakes, as well as text flow improvement
A*Help Score	⭐⭐⭐ 52/100	⭐⭐⭐ 53/100
Grading Quality	⭐⭐ Hemingway is a helpful grammar fixer but it doesn’t provide sufficient grading. Its advantage is that it gives you commentary on your writing. Yet, its evaluation system is largely confusing and only includes the mechanics of writing.	⭐⭐ Grammarly can effectively review your work for grammatical errors and overall cohesiveness, offering a precise score for readability. However, this evaluation doesn’t fully suffice for comprehensive grading.
Value for Money	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hemingway’s standout feature is that it identifies weak language and allows making the text better with AI. Overall, the service can help with analyzing your essay across all kinds of criteria.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ One of Grammarly’s benefits is its free version, which provides a more limited assessment. Despite this, it still evaluates various criteria in your writing such as vocabulary, clarity & grammar.
Overall Experience	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Hemingway Editor is easy to use. It can be used without registration and quickly scan through texts, allowing to correct the found mistakes.	⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Grammarly provides a simple and quick work process without any interruptions

Both Hemingway and Grammarly are popular tools designed to help make the quality of any text better. Despite this similarity, they serve different purposes. The main difference is that while Hemingway focuses on improving readability by simplifying complex sentences and highlighting passive voice, Grammarly provides a more all-inclusive approach by checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, and overall text coherence. 

We decided to dig even deeper though and carried out a special mystery shopping project to see which service could serve as a viable option for essay checking. In the Hemingway App vs Grammarly comparison below you can see the results of our experiment.

Hemingway vs Grammarly: Comparing Value for Money

When it comes to value for money, Hemingway and Grammarly offer different benefits and limitations.

Hemingway is truly a promising tool for essay checking, primarily focusing on improving readability and correcting grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. One notable advantage of Hemingway is its ability to identify weak language and offer AI-driven suggestions for improvement. When it comes to essay checking though, the reality is that it doesn’t have a compelling grading system or help strengthen arguments and maintain content relevance to the discussed topic. As to the pricing for such a set of features, the service can be tried for free with a 14-day trial, after which users need to subscribe to monthly plans starting at $10/month. Despite its affordability, Hemingway’s value is somewhat limited for those seeking in-depth essay grading and content evaluation.

Subscriptions	Linguix	Grammarly
Free plan/trial	14-day trial without subscribing	Free plan with limited scope of analysis +7-day free trial with paid subscription
Monthly Plan	Individual 5k- $10/month Individual 10k – $15/month Team 10k – $15/user/month	Pro -$30/month Business – $75/month/ 3 users min
Annual Billing	Individual 5k- $100/year Individual 10k – $150/year Team 10k – $150/user/year	Pro – $12/month Business – $45/month/3 users min

Now, as to Grammarly, its Essay Checker seems to have a somewhat similar set of features. While it does not offer essay grading, it excels in grammar analysis, evaluating various aspects such as vocabulary, grammar, spelling, punctuation, readability, and engagement. So it seems like this tool, similarly to Hemingway, provides a great technical assessment of the writing without any examination of its content. Given its extensive features, Grammarly significantly improves writing quality. Yet, considering the cost of $30/month for full access, this tool seems to be a less viable option (especially if you are looking for that grade).

In summary, Hemingway offers a budget-friendly solution focusing on readability and basic error correction, making it suitable for those who need to quickly polish their text. Grammarly, although more expensive, provides a broader range of features that improve the technical quality of writing. So, here your choice will mostly depend on your priorities.

	Hemingway	Grammarly
Value for Money	14/20	16/20
Pricing & Subscriptions	5/5	4/5
Grading Aspects	9/12	10/12
Grading Platform	0/3	2/3

Comparing Overall Experience: Grammarly vs Hemingway

Convenience is a highly important aspect when it comes to online services. As we used both tools, we can now give you our perspective on the Grammarly vs Hemingway user experience.

Working with Hemingway Editor is quite straightforward. You have the option to register for a free trial or use the platform without registration, albeit with some limitations. Opting for the free trial provided a fuller experience. Note though, that there is no grading form on the platform, only a field to paste text for analysis. On the bright side, even this allows to upload and export text, which significantly streamlines the work process. Additionally, the desktop app option can make the user experience even more seamless. 

Using Grammarly, we also enjoyed the convenience of the solution. It is accessible as both a browser extension and a desktop app, and setting up a personal account is simple and quick. Similarly to its competitor, this platform allows for easy uploading and downloading of files. However, like Hemingway, Grammarly does not provide a grading form, only a field for analyzing writing quality. This is the only aspect that takes away a few points from its overall convenience. Despite this, Grammarly’s extensive features and ease of integration with various platforms contribute to a highly user-friendly experience.

Thus, in general, both services proved to be greatly convenient and offered a simple work process.

	Hemingway	Grammarly
Overall Experience	18/20	18/20
Website experience	14/15	13/15
Support	3/3	3/3
Accessibility	1/2	2/2

Hemingway vs Grammarly: Which is Best for Essay Grading? 

We have mentioned a couple of times already that neither of the services provided sufficient paper grading since they serve more for the purposes of technical improvement of writing. Yet, they still evaluated the two of our essays for us: a well-written and poorly-made one. So let’s take a look at which one was better. 

The first thing that Hemingway Editor does is improve text clarity by suggesting changes for hard-to-read sentences and weak vocabulary. It allows users to specify the type of text, such as technical, to tailor readability assessments. However, during our evaluation, the platform marked many typical academic sentences as ‘hard to read,’ even in a well-written essay. The scoring system was also unclear, as a poorly written essay received a high score and a “good” mark, while a well-crafted paper got a lower score and an “ok” comment. This inconsistency, paired with the lack of content analysis or overall feedback, makes Hemingway more suitable as an online proofreader rather than an essay checker. 

Similarly, Grammarly also focuses on grammar and mechanics rather than comprehensive essay grading. It identifies spelling and grammatical errors and suggests improvements for clarity. While this makes your text mechanically sound, it does not give you a proper review of your work. As a result, Grammarly functions more as a grammar fixer than an essay checker, lacking the ability to provide a fair and all-inclusive assessment of academic papers.

To sum up this aspect, neither Hemingway nor Grammarly offers a proper essay grading solution. The only advantage that the first service has is comments on writing issues and improvement. So consider looking for alternative platforms, if you are in need of a complete essay grading service.

	Hemingway	Grammarly
Grading Quality	20/60	19/60
Essay Grade	Good – 16, “ok” Bad – 7, “good”	Good – 91 pts Bad – 75 pts
General feedback with strong/weak points	👍 Okay	❌ Doesn’t provide
Essay structure	❌ Doesn’t provide	❌ Doesn’t provide
Topic focus	❌ Doesn’t provide	❌ Doesn’t provide
Cohesiveness	👎 Not great	✅ Perfect
Spelling and Grammar	✅ Perfect	✅ Perfect
Citations	❌ Doesn’t provide	❌ Doesn’t provide

Overall Winner

Having weighed all the pros and cons, we can see that there’s really only a slight difference between Hemingway Editor and Grammarly. Still, the second one scored 1 point higher on the A*Help scale, mostly because it provides more feedback on the writing and how to improve it for better readability. Generally, though, we can’t call either of them to be a perfect solution for checking your essay.

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