Start with a fact that has not filtered through to most comparison articles: Grammarly the company no longer exists under that name. On 29 October 2025 it rebranded corporately to Superhuman, keeping Grammarly, Coda and Superhuman Mail as product names underneath. The clearest evidence is not the announcement but the plumbing — grammarly.com/privacy-policy now redirects to superhuman.com/legal/privacy-policy.
That matters here for one reason: the privacy terms governing your writing are now Superhuman’s, and they are worth reading. More on that below.
What they cost
| Product | Free tier | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Grammarly | Mistakes, tone, 100 AI prompts | Pro $12/month, 2,000 AI prompts |
| ProWritingAid | 2 line-editing runs/day (500 words), 10 Rephrases, 3 Creative Nudges, 3 Sparks | Premium $30/mo monthly; $100/year list (currently $90); Lifetime $399. Premium Pro $36/mo; $120/yr list; Lifetime $699 |
| Hemingway | Free web editor | Editor 3 desktop $19.99 one-time (no AI); Plus 5K $100/year; Plus 10K $150/year |
Two cautions on those figures. ProWritingAid’s yearly prices are sale prices — a “Storyteller’s Sale” banner takes 25% off, so $90 is really $100 and $108 is really $120. The lifetime prices showed no discount during the same sale. And Grammarly’s page states $12 a month with no billing basis at all — no monthly-versus-annual toggle, no small print. It could be an annual-equivalent rate. Check at checkout before assuming.
All three now meter AI
This is the structural change in the category and none of them advertises it prominently. Nobody sells unlimited AI at the individual tier any more.
- Grammarly meters “AI prompts” — 100 free, 2,000 on Pro. Unlimited exists only on Enterprise.
- ProWritingAid meters per day: Rephrases, Creative Nudges, Sparks and Chapter Critiques each have their own daily allowance.
- Hemingway meters “AI sentences per month” — 5,000 on the $100 plan, 10,000 on the $150 plan.
If you write a lot, work out your monthly volume before choosing. Hemingway’s 5,000 sentences and Grammarly’s 2,000 prompts are not the same unit and neither maps cleanly to “words”.
Whether they train on your writing — the answers are opposite
This is buried in every case and it is the most important difference between them.
Superhuman (Grammarly): training is opt-out, controlled by a setting. The policy states you can decide whether Superhuman uses your content to train its AI models by adjusting the training controls in your account settings, and that it restricts its AI service providers from training their models on user content. The default is what you should check.
ProWritingAid: never, and it says so flatly. Its help centre states “We never use your data or your writing to train our AI models or algorithms,” and that any record of your text is removed from its servers after analysis — excepting documents you deliberately save in the Web Editor.
Hemingway: never sold, never used for training. Its stated position is that it will never sell your data, let others use it to train an AI, or use it for advertising.
If you write anything confidential — client work, unpublished manuscripts, legal or medical material — that distinction should outrank every feature comparison on this page.
Where each one runs
Grammarly is the broadest — browser extension, desktop app, Word and Google Docs integration — and that ubiquity is most of what you are paying for. ProWritingAid also integrates with Word, Google Docs, Scrivener and the major browsers, and is the only one of the three built with long-form fiction in mind, with Chapter Critiques and Creative Nudges aimed squarely at novelists.
Hemingway is deliberately narrow. The free web editor does one thing — highlights long sentences, passive voice, adverbs and complexity — and does it without an account. Editor 3 at $19.99 one-time is the only permanent purchase in this comparison, and it explicitly excludes the AI features. For a writer who wants a readability check and nothing else, that is a fair deal and a rare one.
What we would pick
- Confidential writing: ProWritingAid or Hemingway. Both state outright that they do not train on your text; Grammarly makes it a setting.
- You write everywhere and want it to just appear: Grammarly. Its integration coverage is the widest.
- Long-form fiction: ProWritingAid — and consider the $399 lifetime rather than $100 a year if you are committing.
- You just want tighter sentences: Hemingway’s free web editor, or $19.99 once for the desktop app. Skip the subscriptions entirely.
- Heavy AI use: count your volume first. Every one of these now has a ceiling.
Prices read from each vendor’s pricing page in September 2026, with sale prices distinguished from list prices. Privacy positions quoted from Superhuman’s privacy policy, ProWritingAid’s help centre and responsible-AI page, and Hemingway’s stated terms.
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