Grammarly is the most popular writing tool in the world, with over 30 million daily active users. Most of those users are on the free plan, and most of them have wondered at some point whether upgrading to Premium is worth the money. Grammarly's marketing suggests it is. The grayed-out suggestions and "Premium" badges scattered through the free experience are designed to make you feel like you are missing something important.
But are you? This guide provides a detailed, honest comparison of exactly what Grammarly Free includes and what Premium adds. No vague claims about "advanced suggestions." Specific features, specific limitations, and specific situations where the upgrade makes financial sense versus where free is genuinely sufficient.
Quick Comparison Table
Before diving into details, here is the full feature comparison at a glance.
| Feature | Grammarly Free | Grammarly Premium | Grammarly Business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spelling correction | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Basic grammar | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Basic punctuation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Conciseness | No | Yes | Yes |
| Readability | No | Yes | Yes |
| Compelling vocabulary | No | Yes | Yes |
| Lively sentence variety | No | Yes | Yes |
| Confident writing | No | Yes | Yes |
| Politeness | No | Yes | Yes |
| Inclusive language | No | Yes | Yes |
| Formality level | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fluency | Basic | Full | Full |
| Tone detection | Basic label | Detailed with suggestions | Detailed with suggestions |
| Full-sentence rewrites | No | Yes | Yes |
| Tone adjustments | No | Yes | Yes |
| Plagiarism detection | No | Yes | Yes |
| Style guide | No | No | Yes |
| Brand tones | No | No | Yes |
| Analytics dashboard | No | No | Yes |
| Team management | No | No | Yes |
| Priority support | No | Yes | Yes |
| Browser extension | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop app | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile keyboard | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft Office add-in | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Docs integration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Price (monthly) | Free | ~$30/month | ~$15/member/month |
| Price (annual) | Free | ~$12/month ($144/year) | ~$15/member/month |
What Grammarly Free Actually Catches
Grammarly Free is not a demo or a trial. It is a functional grammar checker that catches a meaningful category of errors. Understanding exactly what it catches helps you evaluate whether its coverage is sufficient for your needs.
Spelling Errors
Grammarly Free catches standard misspellings and contextual spelling errors. It will flag "teh" as a misspelling of "the" and, more impressively, it will flag "there" when you meant "their" based on sentence context. This contextual spelling detection is one of Grammarly Free's genuine strengths and matches many paid tools.
The free tier handles proper nouns reasonably well, recognizing common names, places, and brands without flagging them as misspellings. It occasionally flags unusual proper nouns, but less frequently than most free alternatives.
Grammar Errors
The free tier catches what Grammarly categorizes as "critical" grammar errors:
- Subject-verb agreement: "The team are meeting" flagged for American English
- Incorrect verb tenses: "I have went" flagged as "I have gone"
- Pronoun errors: "Her and me went" flagged as "She and I went"
- Fragment sentences: Incomplete sentences flagged in most contexts
- Run-on sentences: Some run-ons caught, though detection is less thorough than Premium
- Article errors: Missing or incorrect articles in clear cases
- Double negatives: "I don't have no money" flagged appropriately
These categories represent the errors most likely to embarrass you in professional writing. If your primary concern is avoiding obvious mistakes in emails and messages, Grammarly Free covers the fundamentals.
Punctuation
Grammarly Free catches basic punctuation errors:
- Missing periods at sentence ends
- Missing commas in compound sentences (before coordinating conjunctions)
- Incorrect apostrophes in possessives and contractions
- Missing question marks on interrogative sentences
- Basic quotation mark pairing
It does not catch more nuanced punctuation issues like comma placement in nonrestrictive clauses, serial comma consistency, semicolon vs. comma decisions, or colon usage. These fall into the Premium tier.
Basic Tone Detection
Grammarly Free provides a tone label for your text, something like "Friendly," "Formal," "Confident," or "Neutral." This gives you a general sense of how your writing comes across. However, the free tier does not provide tone adjustment suggestions. It tells you your tone is "informal" but does not suggest how to make it more formal. That distinction matters because knowing your tone is one thing; knowing how to change it is another.
What Grammarly Premium Adds
Premium unlocks four categories of suggestions that the free tier blocks: clarity, engagement, delivery, and plagiarism detection. Each category contains specific features worth understanding individually.
Clarity Suggestions
Clarity is arguably the most valuable Premium category because it addresses the issues that separate adequate writing from good writing.
Conciseness: Premium identifies wordy constructions and suggests tighter alternatives. "Due to the fact that" becomes "because." "In order to" becomes "to." "At this point in time" becomes "now." These suggestions are consistently accurate and can reduce word count by 10 to 20 percent in typical business writing without losing meaning.
Readability: Premium flags sentences that are difficult to parse and suggests simpler alternatives. This overlaps partially with what Hemingway Editor does, but Grammarly provides specific rewrites rather than just highlighting the problem.
Fluency: While Free offers basic fluency checks, Premium provides comprehensive fluency suggestions that address awkward phrasing, unnatural word order, and stilted constructions. This is particularly valuable for non-native English speakers.
Engagement Suggestions
Engagement suggestions help your writing capture and hold reader attention.
Compelling vocabulary: Premium suggests replacing bland words with more specific, vivid alternatives. "Good" might become "effective," "impressive," or "exceptional" depending on context. These suggestions are generally appropriate, though you should evaluate each one rather than accepting blindly, as the suggested word sometimes has a slightly different connotation.
Lively sentence variety: Premium identifies passages where sentences follow the same structure repeatedly and suggests variations. If five consecutive sentences start with "The," Premium flags this pattern and suggests restructuring some sentences for more engaging rhythm.
Delivery Suggestions
Delivery covers how your writing is received by readers, focusing on tone and interpersonal dynamics.
Confident writing: Premium identifies hedging language like "I think," "maybe," "sort of," and "perhaps" and suggests more assertive alternatives when appropriate. This is useful for professional communication where confidence matters, though it sometimes removes appropriate uncertainty.
Politeness: Premium detects phrasing that might come across as blunt or demanding and suggests more polite alternatives. "Send me the file" might be rephrased as "Could you please send me the file?" This is valuable for email communication where tone misinterpretation is common.
Formality level: Premium lets you set a formality goal (informal, neutral, formal) and flags text that does not match. An email using casual language when your goal is formal writing gets flagged with specific suggestions for more formal alternatives.
Inclusive language: Premium flags potentially non-inclusive language and suggests alternatives. "Mankind" might be flagged with "humankind" as an alternative. "Handicapped" might be flagged with "person with a disability" as a suggestion. These suggestions follow current style guide recommendations.
Tone Adjustments
Beyond detecting tone (which Free does), Premium allows you to actively adjust your tone. You can select a desired tone (professional, casual, friendly, confident, etc.) and Grammarly provides specific sentence-level suggestions to shift your text toward that tone. This goes beyond simple word swaps to include sentence restructuring.
Full-Sentence Rewrites
One of Premium's most visible features is the ability to suggest complete sentence rewrites. Rather than flagging a single word or phrase, Grammarly presents an entirely rewritten version of a sentence that is clearer, more concise, or better suited to your selected tone. You can accept the rewrite with one click or reject it.
The quality of rewrites is generally good but not flawless. Approximately 80 percent of suggested rewrites improve the original sentence. The remaining 20 percent either change the intended meaning slightly, remove useful nuance, or introduce a slightly different tone than intended. Always read rewrites carefully before accepting.
Plagiarism Detection
Premium includes a plagiarism checker that compares your text against billions of web pages and academic databases. It identifies passages that match existing published content and provides links to the source material.
The plagiarism checker is useful for:
- Students verifying their papers before submission
- Content writers checking that their work does not accidentally echo source material too closely
- Marketers ensuring originality in campaigns
It is not as comprehensive as dedicated plagiarism tools like Turnitin, which have deeper academic database access. For general use, Grammarly's plagiarism detection is adequate. For academic settings where plagiarism carries serious consequences, a dedicated tool provides more thorough coverage.
What Premium Catches That Free Misses -- Real Examples
Abstract feature descriptions only mean so much. Here are concrete examples of text that Grammarly Free passes without comment but Premium flags with suggestions.
Example 1: Wordiness
Original text: "In light of the fact that the quarterly results demonstrated a significant improvement in comparison to the previous quarter, it would be advisable for the team to maintain the current strategic approach going forward."
Free tier: No suggestions. The sentence is grammatically correct.
Premium suggestion: "Since quarterly results improved significantly from last quarter, the team should maintain its current strategy." (Reduces 35 words to 16 while preserving all meaning.)
Example 2: Passive Voice and Clarity
Original text: "The decision was made by the committee that the project would be delayed until the budget was approved by the finance department."
Free tier: No suggestions. Grammatically correct.
Premium suggestions: Flags passive voice three times. Suggests: "The committee decided to delay the project until the finance department approved the budget."
Example 3: Tone and Formality
Original text: "Hey, just wanted to check in about the report. Any chance you could get it to me by Friday? That would be awesome."
Free tier: Detects tone as "Informal." No suggestions for change.
Premium suggestions (set to Formal): Flags "Hey" as too informal, suggests "Hello." Flags "just wanted to check in" as hedging, suggests "I am writing to inquire." Flags "any chance" as too casual, suggests "Would it be possible." Flags "awesome" as too informal, suggests "greatly appreciated."
Example 4: Inclusive Language
Original text: "Each employee should submit his timesheet by Friday."
Free tier: No suggestions.
Premium suggestion: Flags "his" as potentially non-inclusive. Suggests "their" as a gender-neutral alternative: "Each employee should submit their timesheet by Friday."
Example 5: Sentence Variety
Original text: "The market expanded rapidly. The company hired new staff. The product line grew. The revenue increased. The investors were pleased."
Free tier: No suggestions. Each sentence is grammatically correct.
Premium suggestion: Flags repetitive sentence structure (all follow Subject-Verb-Object pattern with "The" as the opening word). Suggests restructuring some sentences for variety.
When Premium Is Worth It
Not every writer needs Premium. Here is an honest assessment of when the upgrade makes financial sense.
Premium Is Worth It If You...
Write professionally every day. If your job involves writing emails, reports, proposals, or content daily, Premium's clarity and tone features save time and improve quality consistently. At 12 dollars per month (annual plan), it costs less than 50 cents per working day.
Are a non-native English speaker in a professional context. The fluency suggestions, full-sentence rewrites, and tone adjustments help non-native speakers produce text that reads naturally. This is one of Premium's strongest use cases.
Submit academic papers regularly. The plagiarism checker, clarity suggestions, and formality controls directly address academic writing needs. Check first whether your university provides Grammarly Premium through an institutional subscription.
Write client-facing content. Freelancers, marketers, and consultants whose writing directly represents their professional competence benefit from every improvement Premium offers. A polished proposal wins more business than a merely correct one.
Manage a team that writes. Grammarly Business adds style guides and brand tones on top of Premium features, ensuring consistent voice across team members.
Premium Is NOT Worth It If You...
Only write short, casual emails. If your daily writing consists of brief emails and chat messages, Grammarly Free catches the errors that matter. You do not need tone adjustment for a two-sentence Slack message.
Write primarily in a non-English language. Grammarly only checks English. If most of your writing is in another language, LanguageTool provides multilingual support at a lower price.
Already have strong editing skills. If you are a professional editor or an experienced writer who catches your own clarity and tone issues, Premium's suggestions may be redundant with your existing skills.
Are on a tight budget. At 12 to 30 dollars per month, Premium is a real expense. If money is tight, the combination of Grammarly Free and Hemingway Editor (free) provides good coverage at no cost. You miss the premium suggestions, but you catch the most important errors.
Grammarly Premium Pricing Breakdown
Understanding Grammarly's pricing structure helps you minimize costs if you decide to upgrade.
Current Pricing (As of Early 2026)
| Plan | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost | Per-Month (Annual) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Premium (Monthly) | ~$30 | N/A | $30 |
| Premium (Annual) | N/A | ~$144 | ~$12 |
| Business (Annual) | N/A | ~$180/member | ~$15/member |
The annual plan saves roughly 60 percent compared to monthly billing. If you are going to use Premium, commit to the annual plan unless you want to test it for a single month first.
Discounts and Promotions
Grammarly regularly offers promotional discounts:
- New user discounts: 40 to 60 percent off the first annual subscription are common
- Student discounts: Grammarly occasionally offers student pricing, though availability varies
- Seasonal promotions: Black Friday, back-to-school, and New Year promotions typically offer the deepest discounts
- Institutional access: Many universities, companies, and organizations provide Grammarly Premium or Business through institutional licenses. Check with your school or employer before purchasing individually.
Money-Back Guarantee
Grammarly does not offer a free trial of Premium. However, a 7-day money-back guarantee lets you test Premium features with a safety net. If you decide within 7 days that Premium is not worth the cost, you can request a full refund.
Cancellation
Annual subscriptions cannot be cancelled mid-term for a prorated refund after the 7-day window. Monthly subscriptions can be cancelled at any time, and you retain access through the end of the billing period.
When to Upgrade -- Decision Framework
Use this framework to decide whether and when upgrading to Premium makes sense for your situation.
Step 1: Use Free for Two Weeks
Before considering Premium, use Grammarly Free for at least two weeks on all your regular writing. Pay attention to the grayed-out Premium suggestions. Count how many appear in a typical day of writing. If you see 0 to 2 Premium suggestions per day, free is likely sufficient. If you regularly see 5 or more, Premium addresses real gaps in your writing.
Step 2: Evaluate the Types of Premium Suggestions
Not all Premium suggestions are equally valuable. Grammarly shows you the category of each blocked suggestion (Clarity, Engagement, or Delivery). If most blocked suggestions are Clarity-related, Premium is likely worth it because unclear writing has real professional consequences. If most are Engagement-related (vocabulary and sentence variety), the value depends on whether your writing needs to be engaging or merely correct.
Step 3: Calculate the Value
If you write professionally, estimate how much time Premium would save you per week. If it saves 30 minutes of editing per week and your time is worth 30 dollars per hour, that is 60 dollars in monthly value against 12 dollars in monthly cost. The math works overwhelmingly in Premium's favor for professional writers.
If you are a student, calculate whether Premium costs less than alternative services. One session with a writing tutor costs 30 to 50 dollars, roughly equivalent to one to three months of Premium. If Premium reduces your need for tutoring, it pays for itself.
Step 4: Check for Free Access
Before paying, exhaust free options:
- Check if your university provides institutional Grammarly access
- Check if your employer provides Grammarly Business licenses
- Check for current promotional pricing
- Check if Grammarly has a referral program with credits
Alternatives at Similar Price Points
If you decide Grammarly Premium is worth paying for but want to compare options before committing, several alternatives offer overlapping features at competitive prices.
ProWritingAid Premium (~$10/month annual)
Advantages over Grammarly: Deeper style analysis with 25-plus reports, lifetime license option (~$400 one-time), Scrivener integration, better for long-form writing.
Disadvantages: Slower processing, fewer platform integrations, steeper learning curve, less polished interface.
Best for: Writers who prioritize style depth over convenience. Authors and academics.
LanguageTool Premium (~$5/month annual)
Advantages over Grammarly: Multilingual support (30-plus languages), lower price, better error explanations, open-source foundation, local processing option.
Disadvantages: Less comprehensive English-only analysis, fewer platform integrations, less detailed tone suggestions.
Best for: Multilingual writers, budget-conscious users, privacy-focused writers.
QuillBot Premium (~$10/month annual)
Advantages over Grammarly: Strong paraphrasing and rewriting features, useful for generating alternative phrasings.
Disadvantages: Grammar checking is less accurate, no plagiarism checking, fewer style suggestions, less comprehensive platform support.
Best for: Writers who need paraphrasing more than grammar checking.
Microsoft Editor (included in Microsoft 365, ~$7/month)
Advantages over Grammarly: No additional cost if you already pay for Microsoft 365, deep Word and Outlook integration, improving rapidly.
Disadvantages: Not available as a standalone product, weaker detection than Grammarly in most categories, limited to Microsoft ecosystem.
Best for: Existing Microsoft 365 subscribers who want grammar checking without additional expense.
| Tool | Annual Cost | Grammar Accuracy | Style Analysis | Plagiarism | Platforms | Tone Adjustment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grammarly Premium | ~$144 | Excellent | Good | Yes | Extensive | Yes |
| ProWritingAid | ~$120 | Very Good | Excellent | Yes | Good | Limited |
| LanguageTool Premium | ~$60 | Very Good | Good | No | Good | Limited |
| QuillBot Premium | ~$120 | Good | Limited | No | Limited | No |
| Microsoft Editor | ~$84 (365) | Good | Moderate | No | Microsoft only | Limited |
Grammarly Premium for Specific Use Cases
Different writers need different features. Here is a detailed breakdown of how Premium performs for specific roles and writing contexts.
For Students
Verdict: Worth it for college students, optional for high school.
The features students use most are clarity suggestions (which help improve essay quality), the plagiarism checker (which catches accidental similarity before submission), and formality controls (which help maintain academic register).
High school students writing occasional essays typically do not produce enough volume to justify the cost. Grammarly Free combined with school writing resources covers basic needs. College students, especially those taking writing-intensive courses, see more consistent value. Graduate students benefit the most because their writing is evaluated more critically and the stakes of errors are higher.
Before paying individually, check whether your school provides institutional Grammarly access. Over 3,000 educational institutions worldwide provide Grammarly to students and faculty at no additional cost. This is the single most common way students access Premium without paying.
For Freelance Writers and Content Creators
Verdict: Almost always worth it.
Freelancers sell their writing. Every quality improvement translates directly to professional reputation and, eventually, rates. Premium's clarity and engagement suggestions help produce polished first deliverables that require fewer revision rounds with clients.
The tone adjustment feature is particularly valuable for freelancers who write across multiple niches and need to switch between casual blog voice, professional business tone, and authoritative expert positioning. Maintaining the right voice for each client is easier with Grammarly flagging when your tone drifts.
At 12 dollars per month annually, Premium costs less than a single revision cycle with most clients. If it prevents even one round of revisions per month, it has paid for itself.
For Business Professionals
Verdict: Worth it if writing is a significant part of your role.
Email is the primary writing output for most business professionals. Grammarly Premium's tone detection and formality controls directly address the most common email writing failure: sending a message that reads differently than you intended. The difference between a collaborative suggestion and a passive-aggressive demand often comes down to word choices and sentence structures that Premium catches and Free does not.
For professionals who write reports, proposals, or client communications, the clarity features eliminate the wordiness and passive constructions that make business writing tedious. A well-written proposal does not just avoid errors; it communicates competence and professionalism that directly influence business outcomes.
For Non-Native English Speakers
Verdict: One of the best investments you can make.
Premium's full-sentence rewrites are transformative for non-native speakers. Instead of receiving individual word corrections that you may not know how to implement, you see how the entire sentence should read in natural English. Over time, exposure to these rewrites builds your intuition for English patterns.
The fluency suggestions address exactly the issues that mark text as non-native: unusual word order, awkward collocations, and phrasing that is technically correct but sounds unnatural. These are the hardest errors for non-native speakers to self-detect, and they are precisely the errors that Premium catches most reliably.
Consider LanguageTool Premium as an alternative if budget is a primary concern. At approximately 5 dollars per month, it provides similar ESL-specific features with better error explanations, though Grammarly's correction accuracy remains higher.
For Social Media Managers
Verdict: Free is usually sufficient.
Social media posts are short, casual, and ephemeral. The errors that Grammarly Free catches, obvious grammar and spelling mistakes, are the only ones that truly matter in social media contexts. Tone adjustments and clarity refinements are less important when your audience expects informal, conversational language and your posts disappear from feeds within hours.
The exception is social media managers handling brand accounts where every post reflects the company's professionalism. In that context, Premium's tone consistency and brand voice features (available in the Business tier) provide genuine value.
Common Complaints About Grammarly -- Honest Assessment
No tool is perfect, and Grammarly receives several recurring criticisms that deserve honest evaluation.
"Grammarly Makes My Writing Generic"
This complaint has merit. Grammarly's suggestions tend toward standard, safe constructions. If you have a distinctive writing voice, accepting every Grammarly suggestion can sand down your style into something bland and indistinguishable. The solution is to treat Grammarly as an advisor, not an authority. Accept corrections for clear errors. Evaluate style suggestions individually and reject those that diminish your voice.
"Premium Suggestions Are Not Always Better"
True. Approximately 15 to 20 percent of Premium suggestions either change your intended meaning, introduce a different tone than you want, or replace perfectly good phrasing with marginally different alternatives. The tool's AI does not fully understand your intent, your audience, or the context surrounding your document. Always review suggestions rather than bulk-accepting them.
"The Upsell in Free Is Aggressive"
Also true. Grammarly Free shows grayed-out Premium suggestions specifically to make you feel like you are missing important corrections. This is effective marketing but poor user experience. The reality is that most of those grayed-out suggestions are style refinements rather than error corrections. Your text is not riddled with hidden errors; it could be slightly more polished.
"Grammarly Stores My Text"
Grammarly processes your text on its servers and stores it in your account history. The company states it does not sell user data and provides the ability to delete your history. However, for genuinely sensitive documents (legal, medical, financial, classified), processing text through any cloud service introduces risk. Consider LanguageTool's local processing mode or Hemingway Editor (which processes text in your browser) for sensitive content.
"Grammarly Slows Down My Browser"
The browser extension can consume significant memory and processing power, particularly on pages with large text fields or multiple text inputs. If you notice performance issues, disable the extension on sites where you do not need it and enable it selectively when editing important text. The desktop app typically performs better than the browser extension for long documents.
The Bottom Line
Grammarly Free is a legitimately useful grammar checker. It catches the errors that matter most: misspellings, grammar mistakes, and basic punctuation problems. For casual personal writing, short emails, and social media, it does enough.
Grammarly Premium is not a scam, but it is also not essential for everyone. Its strongest features are clarity suggestions and full-sentence rewrites, which genuinely improve professional writing. Tone adjustments and formality controls add measurable value for business communication. The plagiarism checker is useful but not best-in-class.
The honest answer to "Is Grammarly Premium worth it?" depends on two factors: how much you write and how much that writing matters. If you write thousands of words per week for professional purposes, Premium pays for itself in time savings and quality improvement. If you write a few casual emails per day, free is fine.
If you decide to upgrade, commit to the annual plan and watch for promotional discounts. If you decide free is sufficient, pair it with Hemingway Editor for readability analysis and you will have a solid, zero-cost editing workflow that catches the majority of issues that matter.
Grammarly Free Maximization Tips
If you decide to stay on the free tier, these strategies help you get the most possible value from it.
Pair Free with Hemingway Editor
Grammarly Free's biggest gap is style and clarity. Hemingway Editor fills this gap perfectly. After Grammarly catches your grammar and spelling errors, paste your text into Hemingway (hemingwayapp.com, completely free) for readability analysis. This combination covers correctness and clarity at zero cost.
Use the Tone Detector Proactively
Even in the free tier, Grammarly's tone detection label tells you how your text reads. Before sending an important email, check the tone label. If it says "Direct" when you intended "Friendly," you know to add softening language. The free tier does not tell you exactly what to change, but the label alone provides useful directional feedback.
Review Grayed-Out Suggestions Strategically
When you see a grayed-out Premium suggestion, Grammarly shows the category (Clarity, Engagement, or Delivery). Even without seeing the specific suggestion, knowing the category tells you something useful. If multiple Clarity suggestions appear in a paragraph, you know that paragraph needs simplification. You can make improvements manually based on the category alone.
Set Your Preferences Accurately
Grammarly Free allows you to set your English dialect, document type (academic, business, casual, technical, creative), and audience. These settings affect which rules are applied. A document set to "Academic" will flag different issues than one set to "Casual." Take 30 seconds to set these correctly for each document.
Use the Weekly Writing Report
Grammarly sends a weekly email with statistics about your writing: words checked, top errors, accuracy compared to other users, and vocabulary diversity. These reports are free and provide longitudinal insight into your writing patterns. Pay attention to your recurring error types and focus on learning those specific rules.
Grammarly Platform Availability -- Free vs Premium
Both Free and Premium work across the same platforms, but knowing exactly where Grammarly operates helps you maximize coverage.
| Platform | Free | Premium | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome extension | Yes | Yes | Works on most websites with text fields |
| Firefox extension | Yes | Yes | Same functionality as Chrome |
| Safari extension | Yes | Yes | Mac only |
| Edge extension | Yes | Yes | Same as Chrome-based extensions |
| Windows desktop app | Yes | Yes | Standalone editor for documents |
| Mac desktop app | Yes | Yes | Standalone editor for documents |
| Microsoft Word add-in | Yes | Yes | Windows and Mac |
| Google Docs | Yes | Yes | Via browser extension |
| iOS keyboard | Yes | Yes | Works across all iOS apps |
| Android keyboard | Yes | Yes | Works across all Android apps |
| Outlook add-in | Yes | Yes | Web and desktop versions |
| Slack integration | Limited | Yes | Premium provides full checking |
| API access | No | No | Only available on Enterprise plan |
The platform coverage is identical between Free and Premium. You do not lose access to any platform by staying free. The difference is only in the depth of suggestions provided on each platform.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Upgrade
Can I Try Premium Before Committing?
Grammarly does not offer a free trial, but the 7-day money-back guarantee functions similarly. You pay the subscription fee, use Premium for up to a week, and request a full refund if you decide it is not worth the cost. This requires providing payment information upfront, which some users dislike, but the refund process is straightforward.
Will I Lose My Data If I Downgrade from Premium to Free?
No. Your documents, writing statistics, and account history remain intact if you downgrade. You lose access to Premium suggestions, but previously accepted changes in your documents are not reverted. Your writing continues to benefit from corrections you already made while Premium was active.
Does Premium Work Better on Some Platforms Than Others?
Premium suggestions appear consistently across all platforms, but the experience varies slightly. The desktop app and Google Docs integration provide the smoothest Premium experience with all suggestion types visible in context. The browser extension occasionally compresses suggestions in small text fields. The mobile keyboard provides corrections but presents fewer style suggestions due to screen size limitations.
Can I Share a Premium Account?
Grammarly's terms of service prohibit account sharing. Premium is licensed to a single user. Grammarly Business exists for teams that need multiple users. In practice, the browser extension and desktop app are tied to a single login, making account sharing technically difficult even if you wanted to attempt it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Grammarly Free actually check for?
Grammarly Free checks for critical grammar errors, spelling mistakes, basic punctuation issues, and some mechanical writing problems. Specifically, it catches subject-verb disagreement, incorrect verb tenses, misspelled words, missing commas in compound sentences, and basic sentence fragments. It also detects some commonly confused words like their, there, and they're. What it does not catch is equally important: it misses most clarity issues, wordiness, passive voice overuse, inconsistent tone, vague language, and subtle word choice problems. The free tier also lacks plagiarism detection, full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustments, and vocabulary enhancement suggestions. For everyday emails and casual writing, the free tier catches enough to prevent embarrassing mistakes. For professional or published writing, the gaps become noticeable.
Is Grammarly Premium worth it for students?
It depends on your academic level and writing frequency. For high school students writing occasional essays, Grammarly Free combined with your school's writing center is usually sufficient. For college students, especially those writing multiple papers per semester, Premium starts paying dividends through its clarity suggestions, wordiness detection, and tone adjustments that directly improve academic writing quality. The plagiarism checker is a genuine benefit for students who want to verify their work before submission. At the annual plan rate, Premium costs roughly the same as one hour of private tutoring per month but provides feedback on everything you write. Graduate students and non-native English speakers in academia benefit most from Premium, as the advanced suggestions address exactly the patterns that distinguish competent academic writing from polished academic writing.
How does Grammarly Premium pricing work in 2026?
Grammarly offers three pricing tiers: Free, Premium, and Business. As of early 2026, Premium costs approximately 30 dollars per month on the monthly plan or roughly 12 dollars per month when billed annually at around 144 dollars per year. Grammarly Business runs approximately 15 dollars per member per month with a minimum of three members, billed annually. Prices vary slightly by region and are subject to periodic changes and promotions. Grammarly frequently offers discounts of 40 to 60 percent for new annual subscribers, so it is worth checking for current promotions before purchasing at full price. There is no free trial of Premium, but the 7-day money-back guarantee provides a safety net. Students should check whether their university provides institutional Grammarly access, as many schools offer Premium at no cost to enrolled students.