Grammarly Review (2022) | Is Grammarly Premium Worth It? [Pricing, Pros & Cons, Reviews]

I’ve been using Grammarly for several years now.

I remained a Grammarly Free user for a long time but eventually upgraded to Grammarly Premium in 2017.

Since then, it has been a critical part of my content marketing, freelancing, and copywriting business, and has saved me hundreds of hours with its advanced grammar checking features.

But is it a flawless product, and do I recommend it to everyone?

The answer to both those questions is no.

In this in-depth Grammarly review, I’ll share my experience of using Grammarly and help you decide if it’s the right tool for your needs.

Let’s dive in.

Quick Verdict | Is Grammarly Premium Worth It?

Don’t have the time to read the full review of Grammarly? Here’s my quick verdict

Grammarly is the best grammar checker and AI-powered writing assistant I’ve used. But it’s still not a complete replacement to a real-life editor.

For students, professionals, and regular internet users, looking for a basic grammar checker, Grammarly Free offers sufficient features to write clearer, more concise, and grammatically correct content.

But if you’re a freelance writer, an agency owner, or anyone who makes money from their content, Grammarly Premium and Grammarly Business are excellent investments because of their advanced grammar and plagiarism checks, tone suggestions, clarity-focused tips, and many other great features.

What Is Grammarly?

Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant and grammar & plagiarism checker that helps you write unique, clear, and engaging content.

It does so by identifying grammar mistakes and typos, helping you with better word selection, checking voice consistency, and sharing tips to make your writing more impactful.

Grammarly’s machine learning and deep learning capabilities make it an advanced communications tool that helps users avoid common writing errors such as repetitions, incorrect word usage, and complicated sentences.

It seamlessly integrates with all offline and cloud content creation and communication tools like Google Docs, MS Office, Gmail, and Google Chrome. This means you can use it in all environments to edit and refine your writing.

Grammarly was founded in 2009 by Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko, and Dmytro Lider as a simple text editor.

But over the years, it has evolved into a highly sophisticated writing assistant used by 30,000+ business teams and over 30 million users every day.

This is why it has been named in the “Cloud 100” list by Forbes and “The World’s Most Innovative Companies” by Fast Company.

You can use Grammarly as a Chrome extension, web application, Windows/Mac application, software add-on, and mobile application.

Grammarly.com Review | Core Features & Benefits

Grammarly uses four different parameters to evaluate various aspects of your content. All of its features fall under one of these parameters.

• Correctness
• Clarity
• Engagement
• Delivery

Let’s discuss them in detail.

1. Correctness

Correctness is the first and most important parameter on which Grammarly evaluates your content.

It includes three areas.

• Grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
• Consistency in spelling and punctuation.
• Fluency of content

Grammarly uses its Grammar Checker to examine your content for these factors.

Grammarly Grammar Checker

Grammarly started as a grammar checking tool years ago. While it has evolved into a much more advanced communications tool, grammar and punctuation checking are still its primary functions.

Grammarly Grammar Checker ensures that your content is grammatically correct, free of typos, and follows correct sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling.

It highlights the incorrect parts of your content, explains what’s wrong with them, and suggests corrections.

It also ensures your spellings and punctuation follow a consistent format throughout your content.

For example, both “color” and “colour” are correct, but Grammarly requires that your content uses one of them.

Similarly, both “25 Aug” and “August 25th” are correct date formats, but you should stick to one of them in your content.

And finally, Grammarly Grammar Checker ensures your content is fluent and uses appropriate words.

Here’s an excellent example.

Again, I love how every correction comes with a short explanation as it helps you understand the mistake and improve your writing skills.

2. Clarity

Your writing might be free of any grammar mistakes but it still won’t communicate your intended message if it isn’t clear.

What is clarity in communication? It’s the ability to express your message concisely, using accurate words, in an easily understandable format.

Grammarly brings clarity to your content by

• Helping you identify and replace long and complicated sentences.
• Suggesting better word selection for more concise writing.
• Suggesting formatting changes to help readers understand your message easily.

Here’s a great example.

In this example, Grammarly removed repetition and suggested more concise words to make the content easier to understand.

Here’s another example of how it simplifies the reader’s experience.

As you can see, the original text was unnecessarily complicated. So Grammarly made it easier to read by transforming it into a bullet list.

3. Engagement

Grammarly makes your writing more engaging by suggesting compelling words instead of boring language that help your readers visualize and understand the true meaning of your content.

Here’s a great example.

As a non-native English speaker, I often struggle with finding the right words to express myself when writing a blog post.

Thankfully, Grammarly has made things much easier for me.

Here’s another way Grammarly helps you write more engaging content.

It highlights the monotonous sections of your content where you can add better transitions or use different word combinations to make the content more fluent.

4. Delivery

Great writing is about building a connection with your audience. This is where your content’s tone and delivery play a vital role.

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

Grammarly’s tone detector is an excellent feature that helps you realize how your content sounds to a reader.

I love this feature because it’s easy to assume your content’s tone as a writer. But with Grammarly’s neutral perspective, you can set the tone of your content and communicate your message exactly the way you want to.

Its advanced features also include checking for politeness and inclusive language in your content.

These seemingly small changes significantly impact your writing quality and make your message more appealing to your target audience.

Grammarly For Plagiarism

Apart from evaluating your content for grammar, voice, and punctuation, you can also use Grammarly for plagiarism detection.

Grammarly’s plagiarism checker is an advanced tool that not only checks your content for originality but also helps you find passages that need citations.

It checks plagiarism by matching your content with billions of web pages in just a few seconds.

Based on Grammarly’s overall plagiarism score for a document, you can determine if it’s within the acceptable limits for you.

Plus, it also highlights duplicate content in your document that you can consider revising.

Alternately, you can copy the source URL from Grammarly’s suggestions and use it to reference your content.

How Grammarly Works?

The best thing about Grammarly is that it works without interrupting your work (unless you want it to.)

Once installed, it works in the background and only shows detailed suggestions when you want.

Whether you’re using Grammarly’s web application, Chrome extension, or desktop application, the experience is pretty similar.

Here’s how it works.

You enter your content in the editor window or your browser (whichever you’re using), and Grammarly immediately starts scanning it for improvements.

When it’s done and has recommendations for you, you’ll see a red icon at the bottom of your screen.

Here’s an example from a document I edited using Grammarly in Google Docs.

Clicking this icon opens Grammarly’s recommendations in the same window.

When you click a suggestion from the list, your document scrolls to the point where the mistake is highlighted.

You have two options at this point. Either accept the suggestion or dismiss it to keep your version.

Manage all the suggestions like this until there are none left.

Grammarly also gives your document an overall score which is a good indication of your content quality.

For example, here’s how the score appears in Grammarly’s desktop application.

You can also accept or reject suggestions directly in your content without opening the suggestions pane.

To do that, hover your mouse pointer over any words with red underlines.

This opens Grammarly’s suggestion in the same window that you can accept or reject.

Overall, Grammarly is quite easy to use and does its job without interfering with your work.

How To Use Grammarly | Step By Step Grammarly Installation

Now that you understand how Grammarly works, let me briefly explain how you can start using it.

Sign Up For A Grammarly Account

To use Grammarly, you need to create a free or premium account. You can do that by going to its sign-up page and creating a new account using your email address, Google account, Facebook Id, or Apple account.

Complete the standard sign-up steps to set up your account.

Once your account is ready, sign in to use Grammarly in one of the following ways.

Grammarly Extension For Chrome

The easiest way to use Grammarly across all your web applications, cloud-based document management tools, and email services is to install its web browser extension.

Currently, Grammarly has extensions for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge (download from here.)

Grammarly’s Chrome Extension, in particular, is extremely popular with over 10 million users. You can install it to your Chrome browser from the Chrome Web Store.

On Grammarly’s Chrome extension page, click Add To Chrome to install it.

Once you activate the extension, you’ll be able to use Grammarly in text editors on platforms such as Google Docs, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and any other sites.

Grammarly For Google Docs

You can use Grammarly for Google Docs to edit and grammar-check your writing on the go. Previously, Grammarly’s Chrome extension didn’t support Google Docs.

But after its recent update, Grammarly automatically integrates with Google Docs when you install the Grammarly Chrome extension.

How To Use Grammarly In Google Docs

Using Grammarly in Google Docs doesn’t require any additional software or add-on. When you install Grammarly’s browser extension, it automatically integrates with Google Docs and allows you to edit your content on the go.

Why Isn’t Grammarly Working In Google Docs?

Despite being a useful product, Grammarly sometimes stops working in Google Docs. I’ve experienced this problem personally but have a few tips to help you solve it.

• If Grammarly isn’t working in Google Docs, try refersing your browser. This often resolves the problem.
• If the problem persists, sign out of your Grammarly account, close your browser, sign in to your account again in a new Window. Then open your Google Doc and scan it with Grammarly.
• If Grammarly still doesn’t work in Google Docs, I suggest contacting their customer support.

However, to continue working, you can copy/paste the content from your Google Docs file to the Grammarly Web Application.

Grammarly Web Application

You can also use Grammarly’s cloud application on its website. Here’s the application interface once you sign in to your account.

You can create a new document in this application to create content or copy from any other file. From there, the application works the same way as the browser extension.

It automatically scans your content for improvements and shares its recommendations in the sidebar.

Grammarly’s web application also includes the plagiarism checker, which isn’t available in its Chrome extension.

Any documents you create in Grammarly are saved in the cloud, which means you can access them from anywhere.

Grammarly Desktop Application

If you want to use Grammarly outside the browser, you can download its desktop application for PC or MAC. It has the same user interface and options as the web app.

Any documents you create in the desktop application are automatically synced with your Grammarly account in the cloud.

Grammarly Mobile Application

Grammarly also has mobile applications for Apple and Android phones, called Grammarly Keyboard, to help users write more accurately.

Grammarly Keyboard replaces your default phone keyboard and helps you write better content by sharing suggestions and highlighting errors.

It doesn’t offer the same functions as the desktop app, but it’s still a helpful tool nonetheless.

Grammarly For MS Office (How To Use In MS Word And Outlook)

Grammarly also seamlessly integrates with MS Word and Outlook through its MS Office Add-In to help you create error-free documents and emails. 

Once you download and install the add-in, it appears in the corner of your MS Word toolbar.

Click on the Grammarly icon to open its dedicated toolbar, where you can sign in to your account and access its grammar and plagiarism checking features.

Similarly, Grammarly adds a toolbar to the email editor in your MS Outlook account to scan your writing for any improvements.

Grammarly Pricing | Free, Premium & Business Plans

Grammarly offers three different pricing plans designed for individuals, professionals, and businesses.

Here’s what each plan costs per month.

Let’s discuss the plans in more detail.

Grammarly Free Plan

Grammarly Free scans your writing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation improvements. It’s free forever without any limits on the number of documents you can check with it.

I remained a Grammarly Free user for many years and found it an extremely valuable tool for my day-to-day writing needs.

If you’re a student, a professional, or a content creator looking for a free grammar checker, Grammarly Free is ideal for you.

Grammarly Premium Plan

Grammarly Premium offers a comprehensive range of features on top of everything in the free plan. As a Premium user, you get the full range of Grammarly features to help you create correct, engaging, fluent, and clear content.

Grammarly Premium is ideal for you if you’re a freelance writer, a professional blogger, an editor, or anyone who makes money with their content.

Grammarly Business Plan

Grammarly Business is designed for agencies, large content teams, and brands looking to scale their content production without compromising quality.

On top of all the premium features, it allows you to create style guides and brand tones, offers in-depth analytics and priority support, along with many other valuable features.

So, if you’re an agency owner or a brand that’s fully invested in content marketing, Grammarly Business can be an excellent choice.

Grammarly Business vs. Premium – What’s The Difference?

Grammarly Premium and Business plans are designed for different end-users.

The Premium plan is for professional writers, content creators, and individuals looking for all of Grammarly’s advanced grammar and plagiarism checking features.

Grammarly Business, on the other hand, is for enterprises, agencies, and brands with large content teams looking to create high-quality content across platforms.

It helps you maintain a consistent content voice and style whether you have a large team of in-house writers or freelancers.

So, if you want to experience Grammarly’s full feature range as an individual, go for Grammarly Premium.

But if you work with multiple writers and need to develop editorial controls and standards, Grammarly Business is the right option for you.

Grammarly.com Review | Grammarly Pros & Cons

Before sharing my detailed verdict, let me sum up some of Grammarly’s main strengths and weaknesses to help you make an informed decision.

Grammarly Strengths

There’s a lot to like about Grammarly, but the following are its biggest strengths in my experience.

1- Very Easy To Use

I’ve said this before, Grammarly is straightforward to use and does not interrupt your work in any way. This is one of its biggest qualities because, as a writer, I hate distractions during work. 

I mostly use Grammarly with Google Docs in my Chrome browser. It works silently in the background and highlights its suggestions without hindering my work. Then, once I’m done writing, I dive into its recommendations and accept the ones I agree with.

2- Grammarly Personal Dictionary

Grammarly fixes spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes in your writing. But sometimes, it cannot recognize jargon used in different industries, teams, or closed groups. As a result, it marks their spelling as incorrect.

In such cases, you can add those words to your Grammarly Personal Dictionary, which is synced with your Grammarly account. This means Grammarly will recognize your saved words on any device.

3- Aligns With Your Goals

Grammarly allows you to write exactly the way you want to by tailoring its suggestions to your goals.

You can set writing goals to tell Grammarly how you want to write depending on your audience’s preferences.

For example, you can tailor its suggestions to your content’s formality level, your audience’s expertise, the intent of your writing, etc.

4- Saves A Lot Of Time

Grammarly isn’t a complete replacement for manual editing. But it drastically speeds up your editing process by helping you identify the most obvious errors in your content. It’s the first filter in my editing process and has made my life much easier.

5- Seamlessly Works In All Environments

Another reason I love Grammarly is that it works with all kinds of tools and devices. I mostly use it in Google Docs, but sometimes when I need to run a quick plagiarism check, I use its desktop app for Windows.

And thanks to its Chrome extension and mobile app, I even use it on Twitter, Facebook, and many other platforms.

Grammarly Weaknesses

Like every product, Grammarly also has a few weaknesses.

Let me explain.

1- Shares Incorrect Suggestions

Grammarly is an ever-improving product. But it still occasionally shares incorrect suggestions that don’t properly fit with the content.

Plus, it sometimes suggests weird synonyms. Here’s an example.

This is one of the reasons why you can’t fully replace manual editing with Grammarly. So, keep a close eye on its suggestions. They’re not always correct.

2- Slows Down The Browser

Whether you’re using Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, Grammarly will slow down your browser.

Plus, Chrome frequently crashes because of it when working in Google Docs or with documents that are too long.

I’ve complained about this issue several times, and it occurs less frequently now. But it’s still there.

3- Has Functionality Issues

Grammarly has several software glitches that users regularly point out on social media.

One issue, in particular, is very frustrating in its browser extensions and web/cloud apps.

Grammarly lists all the suggestions for a document in a dedicated section of your screen (nothing wrong with it.)

When you accept a suggestion, Grammarly replaces the incorrect word in your content with its version.

But here’s the problem.

You must ensure that the incorrect word is visible on your screen when you accept a suggestion. Otherwise, Grammarly replaces another word with its version instead of your content’s incorrect word/section.

So, to avoid problems, first, scroll down to the relevant section of your document and then click Grammarly’s suggestion.

This is a software bug, not an intentional feature in Grammarly.

The Verdict | Is Grammarly The Best Grammar Checker And Writing Assistant?

So with everything I’ve covered in this article, do you think Grammarly Premium is worth it?

Here’s my answer.

If you don’t make money with your content/writing, purchasing Grammarly Premium or Business isn’t necessary. The free version is good enough for your needs.

But if you’re a professional writer, blogger, content creator, agency, or any other business that makes money from written content, Grammarly Premium (for individuals) and Grammarly Business (for teams) are excellent investments.

Because despite Grammarly’s weaknesses, it makes content creation much easier and faster and charges a tiny amount for it.

So if you’re serious about making money from your content, get Grammarly today.

Grammarly Review | Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is Grammarly for free?

Yes, Grammarly has a free forever plan with grammar, spelling, and punctuation checking features. 

What is bad about Grammarly?

Not a lot, but it has a few software bugs and occasionally comes up with wrong suggestions.

Can Grammarly be trusted?

Yes, there’s nothing to suggest that Grammarly isn’t trustworthy.

Does Grammarly steal your work?

There’s no evidence of this so far.

What are the most frequent Grammarly complaints?

The most frequent Grammarly complaints include incorrect suggestions, performance issues, and software glitches.

Is Grammarly Premium worth buying?

Grammarly Premium is certainly worth buying if you’re a professional writer, blogger, or someone who makes money with written content.

How good is Grammarly’s plagiarism checker?

Grammarly’s plagiarism checker matches your text with 8 billion+ web pages to find duplicate content. So it’s pretty good. But you still need to carefully review its findings before determining if a piece of content is copied from somewhere.

How much does Grammarly Premium cost?

Grammarly Premium costs $12/month paid annually.

Grammarly Premium account vs. free – which one should I choose?

If you’re a casual internet user, a student, or someone looking for a basic grammar checker only, go for Grammarly Free. But if you’re a professional looking for advanced writing assistance, Grammarly Premium is an excellent investment.