Comparison
Grammarly catches your mistakes. Copynote helps you write the sentence in the first place.
Grammarly is the writing assistant most people already have installed — a browser extension, desktop app, and mobile keyboard that checks grammar, spelling, punctuation, and clarity in real time as you type, in whatever app you're typing in. It started as a proofreading tool and has since added tone detection, a generative rewrite/compose feature, and a plagiarism checker, with separate free, premium, and business plans.
SIDE BY SIDE
Feature by feature
Where the other tool is stronger, the table says so. Verify anything decision-critical on both vendors’ own sites — features move on both sides.
| Feature | Copynote | Grammarly |
|---|---|---|
| Turning a non-English draft or bullet points into full English | Core feature — this is what Copynote is built for | Not the core use case — needs an English draft to start from |
| Tone/register control | Presets for client, manager, teammate, LinkedIn — genuinely different output per recipient | Generic tone labels (e.g. 'confident,' 'friendly') applied to your existing draft |
| Grammar mistake explanations | Explained in your own language, so the mistake stops repeating | Explained in English only |
| Personal/company vocabulary | Saved once, respected going forward, shareable with your team on Pro | Personal Dictionary stops repeat spelling flags once a term is added manually — doesn't inform tone/rewrite suggestions; team sharing needs the Business tier |
| Reviewing changes before they apply | Every AI change arrives as a diff you approve or reject | Suggestion-by-suggestion accept; no unified diff view for a full rewrite |
| Where it works | Browser-based — Gmail, Slack, LinkedIn, Google Docs | Browser extension, desktop app, mobile keyboard, Word add-in — broader surface coverage |
| Free tier | Yes, starter limits, currently in beta | Yes — a larger, more established free tier |
| Pricing shape | Free, plus Spark ($19/mo or $190/yr) and Pro ($29/mo or $290/yr) | Free tier plus paid subscription plans billed monthly or annually, with a separate business tier — check grammarly.com for current pricing |
AN HONEST READ
What Grammarly does well, and where it stops
Grammarly is genuinely good at
- A decade-plus of refinement on the hardest problem in the category: catching real grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors — subject-verb agreement, misplaced modifiers, comma splices, article misuse — with very few false positives.
- A free tier that actually does something day to day (core corrections plus tone detection), which is why it's the default install for millions of people who never pay for anything.
- Coverage most competitors don't match: browser extension, Windows/Mac desktop app, mobile keyboard, and a Word add-in, so it corrects you inside nearly every app you type in, not just the browser.
- Suggestions appear inline as you type, not after you submit a request — no friction between writing and getting corrected.
- A Business/Enterprise tier with a shared style guide, brand tone settings, and admin dashboards built for large orgs, not just individual writers.
Where it leaves a work-writer short
- It corrects English that already exists. If the sentence is still in Ukrainian, Mandarin, or Portuguese in your head, Grammarly has nothing to work with until you've produced an English draft yourself — the hardest part of the task, for this audience, happens before Grammarly ever sees the text.
- Tone suggestions are a label on top of your own draft ('this sounds confident,' 'this sounds friendly') rather than a register you can target. Ask it to adapt the same update for your CEO and for a peer and you largely get the same politeness pass, not two genuinely different messages.
- Its Personal Dictionary can stop repeat spelling flags on a term, but only after you manually add it, one term at a time — and that exception is spelling-only, so it never informs Grammarly's tone or rewrite suggestions the way a saved vocabulary does. Sharing a team-wide list also sits behind the separate, pricier Business tier rather than being part of an individual plan.
- Grammar explanations are terse and English-only — fine if you read fluent English explanations easily, less useful if the mistake traces back to a rule that doesn't exist in your first language and you need it explained in that language.
- Its generative features sit on top of a proofreading product and are built for polishing or replying to existing text. Turning a scrappy half-English, half-native-language brain dump into a finished English message isn't the core use case the way it is for a drafting-first tool.
WHICH ONE
Pick the right tool for your case
Choose Grammarly when
- You're already a confident English writer and mainly need typo and grammar catches, not help composing the message.
- You need coverage beyond the browser — a native desktop app, a system-wide mobile keyboard, or a Word add-in for offline documents.
- You want the most mature, widely-used free tier for everyday proofreading with no learning curve.
- Your organization needs enterprise-grade style guide enforcement and admin controls across a large team.
Choose Copynote when
- You draft in your own language, in bullet points, or in half-English/half-native text and need a full English message, not a corrected fragment.
- You send the same message in different registers to different people — client, manager, teammate — and want each version to actually read differently, not just more polite.
- You keep making the same grammar mistake and want it explained in your own language so it actually stops.
- Your work involves recurring product names, internal terms, or your own phrasing that keeps getting flagged or 'corrected' into something generic.
Copynote: a Free tier with starter limits, Spark at $19/mo or $190/yr, and Pro at $29/mo or $290/yr (higher quotas plus team vocabulary sharing) — currently in beta. Grammarly: a free tier plus paid subscription plans billed monthly or annually, with a separate business/enterprise tier for teams — tier boundaries and pricing shift over time, so check grammarly.com directly before deciding.
Questions about Grammarly and Copynote
Is Copynote trying to replace Grammarly?
Not exactly — different job. Grammarly proofreads English you've already written; Copynote is built for the step before that, turning a draft in your own language, bullet points, or half-English into a full English message with tone control and consistent vocabulary. Copynote's own grammar review is shipped and explains mistakes in your language, but if you want the most mature, widest-coverage proofreading layer across every app you type in, Grammarly still does that specific job well.
I already use Grammarly — do I need something else?
Depends on where you get stuck. If your English drafts just need a final polish, Grammarly covers that. If the actual bottleneck is turning a thought that's still in your first language into a first English draft, or writing the same update differently for a client versus a teammate, that's a step earlier than Grammarly operates.
Does Grammarly work well for non-native English speakers?
Yes, genuinely — it catches real errors including some patterns common to second-language writers. What it doesn't do is adapt its explanations to your first language or adjust tone based on who you're writing to; both suggestions are generic regardless of your background or your recipient.
Can I use Copynote and Grammarly together?
Nothing stops you. Some people draft and rewrite in Copynote for meaning and tone, then run a habitual final Grammarly pass — though it's often redundant, since Copynote's grammar review already covers that layer with explanations in your own language.
Which one remembers my company's product names and internal terms?
Copynote does — save a term once and it's respected from then on, with team-wide sharing on the Pro plan. Grammarly has no equivalent for individual users; its closest analog is the Business tier's shared style guide, which is admin-configured rather than something the tool learns automatically as you write.
Is Copynote free to try?
Yes. There's a Free tier with starter limits; Spark and Pro unlock higher quotas and, on Pro, team vocabulary sharing. Copynote is currently in beta.
Other comparisons
Copynote vs ChatGPT
ChatGPT is OpenAI's general-purpose conversational AI, and for a huge number of people it's simply the tab that's already open. You paste in a rough draft, describe the situation, and ask it to write or fix the message — the same way you'd ask it to debug a script or explain a spreadsheet formula an hour later.
Copynote vs DeepL
DeepL is a machine translation service, built by the German company of the same name, known for producing fluent, natural-sounding translations that read less like a machine did them than most alternatives. Alongside the core translator, it ships DeepL Write — a lighter rewriting tool with a basic formal/informal style toggle for a handful of languages — and a glossary feature for locking specific terms to a fixed translation. At its core it's a translation-first tool: you put in text written in one language and get equivalent text back in another.
Copynote vs QuillBot
QuillBot is a paraphrasing-first writing tool. Its core is a rewriting engine with named modes — Standard, Fluency, Formal, Academic, Simple, Creative, Shorten, Expand — plus a synonym slider that controls how aggressively words get swapped while keeping your sentence structure. Around that core it has grown a grammar checker, a summarizer, a translator, and a combined "Co-Writer" drafting workspace, reachable through its web app, a Chrome extension, and Word/Google Docs plugins. It's built for people who already have an English sentence and want a different version of it — students polishing essays, professionals tightening a paragraph, anyone who wants to avoid repeating the same three words in a document.
Draft in your language
send in English that sounds like you
Copynote is in beta — we’re onboarding people who write at work in a second language first. Apply and we’ll reach out as spots open.
