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Artificial intelligence writing tools allow users to generate volumes of high-quality content in a fraction of the time it would take to write manually. To accomplish this, AI writing tools use a combination of AI algorithms, natural language processing, and machine learning techniques, all of which work together to generate text that reads as if it was written by a human.
We tested the top AI writing software to see how it compares on features, pricing, and relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see how well it meets a variety of common use cases. Here are our picks for the best AI writing tools in 2024:
Comparing the Top AI Writing Tools
The following chart shows at-a-glance how each of the AI writing tools compare on key features, pricing, and availability of a free version.
Vendor
Best For
Built-In Plagiarism Checker
Grammar Checker
Free Plan
Starting Price
Copy.ai
Beating writer’s block
No
No
Yes
$49 per month or $432 per year
Rytr
Copywriters
Yes
No
Yes
$9 per month or $90 per year
Quillbot
Paraphrasing text
Yes
Yes
Yes
$8.33 per month
Frase.io
SEO teams and content managers
No
Yes
No
$15 per user, per month, or $144 per user, per year
Anyword
Blog writing
Yes
Yes
No
$49 per user, per month, or $468 per user, per year
Grammarly
Grammatical and punctuation error detection
Yes
Yes
Yes
$30 per month, or $144 per year
Hemingway Editor
Content readability measurement
No
Yes
Yes
Free
Writesonic
Blog content writing
No
No
Yes
$948 per year
AI Writer
High-output bloggers
No
No
No
$29 per user, per month
ContentScale.ai
Creating long form articles
No
No
No
$250 per month
Copy.ai
Best for Beating Writer’s Block
Copy.ai is an artificial intelligence writing tool designed to help marketers, business owners, and copywriters create various forms of content, including website copy, sales landing pages, email, and social media and blog posts. A boon to content marketers, Copy.ai can automatically conduct SEO research and produce content briefs for writers, streamlining the production process and giving writers guidance.
Another distinctive feature is the thought leadership tool, which automatically turns raw transcripts from interviews with experts into a variety of content assets, including blog posts, social media posts, and newsletters. This dramatically reduces the time it takes to manage content repurposing. The AI writing tool also lets you easily generate copy that aligns with your organization’s persona.
Copy.ai’s in-platform AI chatbot acts as a writing assistant to help beat writer’s block by aiding with brainstorming. For example, I asked it to give me 10 Instagram post ideas for fashion week—it delivered 10 useable ideas I could use as the basis for my social posts. These features enable your team to create and distribute more high-quality content at a lower cost than before.
Copy.ai’s templates page gives a range of options for different content types.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Content matches brand tone and voice
Can sometimes get detected as AI content
Low learning curve and easy to use
Lacks full-length article writing feature
Pricing
Free: Up to 2,000 words per month
Starter: $49 per month or $36 per month billed annually for one seat, unlimited words
Advanced: $249 per month or $186 per month billed annually for up to five seats
Enterprise: Call for quote
Key Features
More than 90 copywriting tools included
Allows you to save and reuse key information via its Infobase feature
Streamlines SEO content research and brief creation
Automates content repurposing
Chat feature enables sales and marketing teams to interact more naturally with AI
Easy content brainstorming
Automated sales email writing
Supports 25 languages
For an in-depth guide to the best AI detection tools, read our guide: AI Detector Tools
Rytr
Best for Copywriters
Rytr is an AI-powered writing tool capable of producing copywriting content on various topics. It’s one of the best AI writing tools for commercial copywriting jobs, where copywriters can use it to automate the creation of post and caption ideas, paragraph content, SEO meta titles, emails, call to actions, replies, and other less complex copywriting assets.
The platform also supports more than 40 other use cases, including generating blog ideas and creating job descriptions. In addition, paid users can create their own use cases by training Rytr for their specific needs.
I tested Rytr out for copywriting and asked it to write me a call-to-action for “A knee pad that protects middle-aged gardeners from hurting themselves.” In response to my prompt, it provided the following two variants:
“Safeguard your knees, garden with ease.”
“Safeguard your knees, garden in comfort.”
When I changed the tone from “convincing” to “humorous,” it generated two more options that were not useable out-of-the-box but were still useful for ideation:
“Kneel with confidence, gardenlords!”
“Unleash your inner knee-jerk green thumb!”
Overall, Rytr its a useful AI writing tool for copywriters who want to streamline their writing process and come up with more ideas for a variety of content types.
Rytr’s copy generator environment lets you set the variables for how it acts on your prompts.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Built-in plagiarism checker
Limited support for low-tier plans
20 writing tones to choose from
Can sometimes generate cliches and nonsense text
Pricing
Free: Up to 10,000 characters per month
Saver: $9 per month, or $90 per year; up to 100,000 characters per month
Unlimited: $29 per month, or $290 per year
Key Features
Content outline and brief generator
Chrome extension for improving your writing
Business idea generator
Supports copywriting frameworks like AIDA (Attention–Interest–Desire–Action) and PAS (Problem–Agitation–Solution)
Serves as keyword extractor and generator
Creates SEO meta descriptions
Writes calls-to-action
To see top AI software in several categories, see our guide: Best Artificial Intelligence Software
QuillBot
Best for Paraphrasing
QuillBot is an AI-powered writing assistant that, unlike most AI writing tools, focuses on helping you paraphrase and summarize texts. This makes it great for content marketers who often have to write repetitive copy with slight variations across their different content assets or even within the same blog post. For example, instead of writing “automate your administrative accounting tasks” five times, they could use QuillBot to spin that into five different variations.
It also functions as a citation generation tool, making it somewhat useful for academics—but it may not be the best tool for writing essays and research papers, as its output doesn’t consistently pass AI detection tools.
One of QuillBot’s standout features is the ability to choose from nine modes of paraphrased output. You can select from natural, academic, simple, creative, shortened, expanded, and more. As an example, when I prompted it with “The shift to agriculture took thousands of years” in academic mode, the output read, “The transition to an agrarian society spanned several millennia.”
Overall, I found the tool helpful for the outwardly simple but cognitively-taxing task of coming up with new ways to express your ideas in writing.
QuillBot’s paraphrasing environment lets you choose from nine styles of writing you’d like it use.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Supports up to 23 languages
Only two modes and 125 words input on the free plan
Can create custom modes
Manual intervention is often needed
Pricing
Free: Limited capability
Premium: $19.95 per month, $13.33 per month billed semi-annually, and $8.33 per month billed annually
Team: Varies depending on the number of users
Key Features
Offers Chrome and Word extensions for grammar checking
Can create source citations in various styles, including APA, MLA, and Chicago
Nine paraphrasing modes
Language translator capability
See the very best of today’s generative AI tools: Top Generative AI Apps and Tools
Frase.io
Best for SEO Teams and Content Managers
Frase.io is an AI writing tool designed to help you generate content, provide suggestions for better writing, and optimize articles for SEO. SEO teams and content managers use its templates and outline builder to automatically produce article structures that align with the intent of the searcher, and as a result, increase the chances that the article will rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Frase’s keyword optimization feature will identify important keywords while you write, make suggestions about how frequently to use them, and track how often they are used in the copy. In addition to keyword tips, it also tells you the ideal number of headings, words, links, and images your articles should have to outrank the competition.
Many of the SEO managers I’ve worked with have used Frase, and I’ve found it especially helpful for optimizing articles for SEO. Watching the SEO “topic score” go up as I make edits is motivating and lets me know I’m on the right track.
The Frase user interface provides detailed information keyword use while you write.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Topic research and SERP analysis capability
Lacks a free plan
Optimize existing content to improve rankings
A bit too much emphasis on keywords (which have grown less important)
Pricing
Trial: $1 for five days
Solo: $15 per user, per month, or $144 billed annually
Basic: $45 per user, per month, or $456 billed annually
Team: $115 per month, or $97 billed annually, for three users; $25 per month for each additional seat
Frase also offers a Pro Add-On that allows unlimited AI content for $35 per month, but does not offer a free plan.
Key Features
Automated content briefs and outlines
Content SEO topic scoring capability
AI written SEO-optimized copy
Suggestions on keyword optimization
Google Search Console (GSC) integration
For a detailed look at a leading AI tool, see our guide: ChatGPT: Understanding the ChatGPT ChatBot
Anyword
Best for Copywriting Performance Analysis
Anyword is an AI writing tool that uses machine learning algorithms to generate content and analyze the performance of your copy across various channels. What distinguishes the tool is its Copy Intelligence functionality, which analyzes all of your previously published content to determine which messaging works best on your website, ads, socials, and email channels while clueing you into opportunities to improve your copy.
Its Target Audience feature lets copywriters and marketers define their ideal readers down to their key problems and desires. The AI writing tool will then take this into account when creating and analyzing content.
I found Anyword’s templates extremely helpful for prompting the AI writer to create content that fit my needs. In addition, its self-guided wizards walked me through the information I needed to provide the tool for it to write a blog post or ad campaign for my needs.
Anyword’s templates view lets you choose the type of content you want it to create.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Copy intelligence capabilities
Word limits
User-friendly interface with lots of templates
Costly for individuals on a budget
Pricing
Starter: $49 per user, per month, or $468 billed annually
Data Driven: $99 per month, or $948 billed annually for three users
Business: $499 per month, or $5,988 billed annually for three users
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Key Features
Supports up to 30 languages
Google Chrome extension available
More than 100 performance-driven templates
Integrates with Grammarly
Analyzes copy performance
Identifies ways to enhance your content
Adheres to your brand guidelines and target audience data
Grammarly
Best for Grammatical and Punctuation Error Detection
Grammarly is a popular AI writing app that helps you improve your writing by checking for grammatical and spelling mistakes and offering suggestions for enhancing clarity, tone, conciseness, and style. It can be used in a wide range of contexts, including writing emails, reports, essays, or social media posts.
Grammarly can be used as a browser extension, a desktop application, or a mobile app. It’s free to use with limited features, or is available with additional functionalities as a premium subscription.
I’ve found Grammarly’s free version to be extremely useful as an AI editing tool. When I use it to run a final grammar and spelling check on a finished article, it inevitably catches mistakes and offers solutions to fix them. I also use it when writing emails to get the tone right. For example, when emailing a new client, I like to make sure the tone is confident and upbeat—Grammarly’s tone detector helps me achieve that goal.
Grammarly grammar checker is easy to use and effective for a wide range of applications.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Helps improve writing style
Some suggestions misalign with your desired voice or style
Free version is sufficient for most writers and editors
Free plan doesn’t have advanced clarity features
Pricing
Free: Free version lacks some high-end features
Premium: $30 per month, or $144 billed annually
Business: $25 per month, or $300 billed annually
Key Features
Real-time grammar correction
Generative AI assistance
Plagiarism checker
Advanced clarity suggestions
Writing tone detector
Checks grammar, spelling, and punctuation
Hemingway Editor
Best for Content Readability Measurement
Named after a writer known for his concise and simple prose, Hemingway Editor is a writing tool that helps you enhance the clarity, grammar, and readability of your written work. It analyzes text and provides various readability suggestions while highlighting lengthy, complex sentences, excessive adverbs, passive voice, and hard-to-read phrases.
It also assigns a readability score based on the grade level required to understand the text. If the score is too high, content writers can tweak the highlighted sentences to lower the grade level. It is available both as a web-based application and as a desktop app.
I’ve used Hemingway in various capacities and I find that it does its main job of measuring content readability extremely well. Its passive voice detector is my favorite part of the tool.
That said, one of the risks of using an AI editing tool like Hemingway is that, if you follow its suggestions without thinking, you may edit all the rhythm, flow, and personality out of your writing, leaving you with text that’s plain, lifeless, and stilted and suited for a grade level well below your target. Overall, though, I’ve found it a useful tool for making sure blog content is clear and easy to understand while streamlining the editing process.
Hemingway’s Editor interface offers a wide range of improvements to suit your target audience.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Helpful color coded suggestions
May not align with your writing style
Simplifies editing process
Can lead to overly simplistic prose
Pricing
The platform is free to use.
Key Features
Improves writing clarity and conciseness
Provides a readability score
Offers alternative word suggestions
Detects passive voice and excessive adverbs
Highlights hard-to-read sentences
To see a comparison between two leading AI tools, read our guide: ChatGPT vs. Google Bard
Writesonic
Best for Blog Content Writing
Writesonic uses artificial intelligence technology, specifically natural language processing (NLP), to provide content generation services. It’s one of the best AI writing tools for creating full blog posts.
Writesonic’s AI can generate text based on prompts and user input. In the case of creating a blog post, the wizard will ask you to input information such as article length, keywords, number of headings, topic, and references. Once you’ve approved of the outline, it’ll generate a blog post following these instructions as well as SEO optimization best practices.
While it can be a helpful resource for automated content creation, the quality of generated content may vary, and human editing is often required to ensure accuracy and coherence.
Writesonic’s Library dashboard view is easy to use and provides detailed information at a glance.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
One-click WordPress export
Lacks advanced editing features
Supports up to 30 languages
Not great for tech articles
Pricing
Free: 25 generations per month
Standard: $948 billed annually
Professional: $2,388 billed annually
Advanced: $4,788 billed annually
Key Features
Supports GPT 3.5 and GPT 4
AI article and blog writer
Article rewriter
Sentence expander
Text summarizer
Story generator
Landing page generator
AI Writer
Best for High-Output Bloggers
AI Writer is designed to generate full-length articles in minutes, making it great for high-output bloggers, affiliate marketers, and other people who need articles fast. The platform lets you tailor the AI’s writing to your specific needs by selecting from a long list of recommended keywords for your topic or by manually inputting your chosen keywords. It also suggests sub-topics for your article and helps you structure your content with headings. The tool even cites its sources, displaying journalistic responsibility.
Significantly, it helps you choose topics about which to write. While exploring the platform, I found its topic generator helpful for coming up with article topics using a seed keyword—after prompting with “cold calling,” for example, I received a long list of article keywords and their associated traffic. I then selected Research and Write, a one-click article feature for Cold Calling Leads, and within minutes, I had a basis for a new 600-word article on the topic.
Compared to other AI writing tools, AI Writer’s blog content creation was incredibly quick. However, a note on quality—although AI Writer’s articles are typically well-written, SEO-friendly, and factually correct, they could benefit from a writer’s touch. When I took another pass to add personality, anecdotes, actionable insights, and personal experiences to the copy, it became more appealing to readers and search engines.
AI Writer Research & Write dashboard lets you enter a topic to generate article ideas.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Provides a list of citations for information verification
Requires extensive editing of the generated content
SEO-friendly content generation
Generated text can be cliche and plain
Pricing
Basic: $29 per user, per month
Standard: $49 per month for three users
Power: $375 per month for 10 users
Key Features
AI text generator
SEO editor
One-click article writer
Topic generator based on seed keywords (with traffic estimate)
Can publish to WordPress
Email composer
Text rewording capability
ContentatScale.ai
Best for Creating Long-Form Articles
Those looking for an AI writing tool to automatically create long-form articles (over 2,000 words) may find ContentatScale features suitable. After plugging in your topic and further context, it will automatically generate body text, headers, subheaders, a title, bulleted lists, a call to action, and other content elements necessary for effective long-form SEO articles. Not only will it write the blog post—it will also help you come up with ideas, outlines, and relevant keywords in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it manually.
The platform claims to pass AI detection tests, indicating that its generated content mimics human writing and is not easily distinguishable from human-written content. ContentatScale also offers an AI detector solution that ranks as one of best reviewed AI detector tools. Overall, it can be helpful for streamlining the long-form content writing process.
ContentatScale’s project dashboard keeps track of your content generation projects in a single place.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Provides content optimization tools
Users report bugginess and lots of edits required
Specializes in long-form content
Expensive compared to the other best AI writing tools
Pricing
Trial: Seven days; $39.99
Solo: $250 monthly for eight posts
Starter: $500 per month for 20 posts
Scaling: $1,000 per month for 50 posts, or $1,500 per month for 100 posts
Key Features
Keyword, YouTube, podcast, file, blog outputs
Unique Voice AI Training options
AI detection capability
Natural language processing analysis
How to Choose the Best AI Writing Software for Your Business
Choosing the best AI writing tool for your business depends on your AI writing needs and your budget. Our “best-for” use cases are a good starting point to help you decide. In addition, here’s a little more information to help you narrow down your choice:
Copy.ai and Rytr are best for copywriters and social media managers looking to create short-form content and marketing copy.
AI Writer, Anyword, and Writersonic are solid options for those looking to create blog posts at scale.
Frase can help you optimize your content for SEO.
Grammarly and Hemingway are great options for checking grammar, spelling, and style in your AI-generated content.
QuillBot and Writesonic may be the best for paraphrasing.
Other factors to consider when choosing the best AI writing tools for your business include features, content quality, user interface, and customization options. Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be an either-or choice—these tools can be used together for better quality content. For example, you can use QuillBot to paraphrase Anyword’s AI-generated text, Grammarly to correct spelling and punctuation errors, and the Hemmingway App to improve readability.
How We Evaluated the Best AI Writing Tools
We weighed the best tools across five categories. Each category has subcategories that helped us evaluate and compare the AI writing tools.
Feature Set | 30 percent
We assessed the writing capabilities of each tool, including its grammar and spelling correction, sentence rephrasing, and content generation capabilities. We looked for tools that provided accurate and high-quality writing suggestions.
Quality of Output | 25 percent
We evaluated the accuracy and coherence of the generated content produced by each AI writing tool. Tools that could generate clear, well-structured, and error-free content received higher scores.
Cost | 20 percent
We examined the different pricing plans offered by each AI writing tool. This included evaluating the cost of the tool on a monthly or annual basis, as well as any additional fees or hidden costs. We compared each tool’s cost to its value, looking for tools that offer a high level of functionality for a reasonable price.
Support | 15 percent
We assessed the availability and responsiveness of customer support channels, such as email, live chat, or phone support. Prompt and helpful customer support is essential for users who may encounter issues or need assistance with the tool. We also considered the availability of resources and documentation, such as user guides, tutorials, or knowledge bases.
Ease of Use | 10 percent
We looked for tools that have an intuitive and user-friendly interface, allowing users to navigate and utilize the tool’s features easily.
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Is there a free AI writing tool?
There are plenty of free AI writing tools for content creation, editing, and paraphrasing, including some of those reviewed in this guide. While many of the AI writing tools’ advanced features are restricted to paid users, some writers will find the feature sets in the free plans sufficient for their needs.
How can companies benefit from AI writing tools?
Companies can benefit from AI writing tools by using them to streamline the content creation and editing process across various marketing channels, from social media to SEO blog content. These tools can automatically generate content, help with brainstorming, and suggest edits to improve your copy. Overall, AI writing tools help businesses improve efficiency and increase content marketing output and quality.
Will the content created by AI writing tools seem robotic?
The output of AI writing tools will not have the compelling quality of writing created by human writers. After all, AI writing tools are merely generating text—they’re not thinking, considering personal anecdotes, or making unique connections between ideas. Ultimately, the output of AI writing tools need a human touch to create quality writing.
Bottom Line: Top AI Writing Tools Improve Efficiency
This guide highlights our recommendations for the best AI writing tools to help with your writing needs, but they may not fit every use case perfectly. AI is a tool that can help with idea and content generation and quality improvement, but the best results still require a skilled human touch. When used properly, these tools can boost efficiency and are likely to continue driving changes in any market sector that relies on written content.
Read next: for more assistance with your projects, read our analysis of the best AI chatbots and the top conversational AI tools.
