Grammarly will catch the comma splice in your client email and suggest three ways to rephrase it; Hemingway Editor will turn your entire paragraph yellow and tell you it’s too hard to read. Both tools call themselves writing assistants. Each one misses what the other is built for.
Quick verdict:
- Grammarly is best for business writers, non-native English speakers, and anyone who needs grammar accuracy across Gmail, Slack, and Google Docs
- Hemingway Editor is best for fiction writers, minimalists overwhelmed by too many suggestions, and offline writers who need a distraction-free tool
At a glance
| Feature | Grammarly | Hemingway Editor | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price (as of 2026-08-17) | Free basic; $12/mo Premium ($96/year) | Free web app; $19.99 desktop one-time | Grammarly costs $96–144/year; Hemingway is $20 once |
| Grammar & syntax | Comprehensive (subject-verb, tense, articles, commas) | Limited (fragments, run-ons; misses most grammar errors) | Grammarly catches formal errors; Hemingway doesn’t |
| Readability focus | Available but buried in dashboard | Front and center (grade level, highlighted complex sentences) | Hemingway makes readability the main event |
| Readability metric | Flesch Reading Ease (buried) | Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (prominent) | Both use proven metrics; Hemingway surfaces it visually |
| Tone adjustment | Yes (8+ tones: confident, friendly, formal) | No | Grammarly’s advantage for business email |
| Works where you write | Gmail, Slack, Docs, web forms, desktop | Standalone app or hemingwayapp.com web tab | Grammarly integrates; Hemingway requires copy-paste |
| Plagiarism detection | Yes (Premium; 16B+ web pages) | No | Critical for academic/research writers |
| Offline capability | Limited (desktop syncs to cloud) | Full (desktop app works offline) | Hemingway wins for airplane/conference writing |
| Biggest weakness | Suggestion overload creates decision fatigue | Leaves grammar errors completely unflagged | Pick your poison |
Understanding readability metrics: What the numbers mean
Before you can pick between Grammarly and Hemingway, you need to understand what “readability” actually measures. Both tools reference standardized metrics, but Hemingway makes them central while Grammarly buries them.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is what Hemingway displays at the top of its editor. It estimates the U.S. school grade required to understand your text, calculated from sentence length and syllable count. A grade 8 score means an eighth-grader can read it comfortably. Most web content targets grade 8 or below; academic papers often run grade 12-16; literary fiction varies widely by style. The Purdue Online Writing Lab notes that lower grade levels don’t mean “dumbed down” — they mean accessible to more readers.
Flesch Reading Ease is Grammarly’s preferred metric (though you have to dig into settings to see it). It runs 0-100, where higher scores mean easier reading. A score of 60-70 is standard for most business writing; 90-100 is very easy (think children’s books); 0-30 is very difficult (legal contracts, academic journals). The Hemingway App documentation explains that both Flesch metrics measure the same underlying concept — sentence complexity — but display it differently.
Gunning Fog Index is less common in writing tools but matters for technical documentation. It estimates years of formal education needed to understand text on first read. A Fog Index of 12 means a high school senior can parse it; 18+ means graduate-level density. Neither Grammarly nor Hemingway displays Fog Index directly, but both target similar clarity goals.
Why this matters for your choice: Hemingway’s entire interface revolves around hitting a readable grade level. Grammarly treats readability as one checkbox among many. If you’re writing user-facing documentation, web content, or anything where clarity beats formality, Hemingway’s readability-first approach gives you immediate visual feedback. If you’re writing business memos or academic papers where grammar correctness matters more than reading ease, Grammarly’s comprehensive checks win.
Grammarly — best for writers who need accuracy everywhere
Grammarly is the tool that follows you around. Install the browser extension and it appears in Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter, Slack, Google Docs, and most web forms. It catches subject-verb disagreements, missing articles, comma splices, and passive voice in real time. The Premium tier adds tone detection (“this email might sound curt”), plagiarism scanning against billions of web pages, and AI-powered rewrites.
The accuracy advantage: Grammarly’s grammar engine is comprehensive. It catches errors that spellcheck misses: “The data show” vs “The data shows,” misplaced modifiers, incorrect verb tenses. For non-native English speakers and business writers who can’t afford to send a sloppy email, this thoroughness matters. The Grammarly Blog regularly publishes usage guides that reveal the linguistic models behind its suggestions — this is pattern-matching built on actual grammar rules, not just flagging what “looks wrong.”
The integration advantage: You don’t have to remember to use Grammarly. It’s already there when you compose a Slack message or reply to a client email. This persistent presence is either a feature (you never skip editing) or a bug (you can’t draft without distraction).
Strengths:
- Catches grammar and syntax errors across tenses, articles, agreement, and punctuation
- Tone detection flags when your business email sounds harsher than intended
- Works natively in Gmail, Slack, Google Docs, and Microsoft Office
- Plagiarism detection for academic and professional writers (Premium)
- AI rewrites offer alternative phrasings when stuck
Weaknesses:
- Suggestion overload creates decision fatigue — every sentence gets flagged for something; writers report disabling it while drafting to avoid distraction
- Subscription cost adds up — $144/year if you pay monthly; $96/year if you commit upfront
- Tone suggestions can feel like voice policing — fiction writers and columnists with strong style find Grammarly’s “make this more confident” suggestions intrusive
- Requires internet — the desktop app syncs to cloud servers; fully offline mode is limited
Best for: Business communicators who write in Gmail and Slack daily, non-native English speakers who need a grammar safety net, academic writers who need plagiarism detection, and content creators who publish across multiple platforms.
Hemingway Editor — best for writers who need clarity, not correction
Hemingway Editor does one thing: it shows you where your writing is hard to read. Paste text into the app (web or desktop) and it highlights complex sentences in yellow, very complex sentences in red, passive voice in green, adverbs in blue, and simpler alternatives for weak phrases in purple. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level appears at the top. There are no grammar checks, no tone suggestions, no AI rewrites. Just visual feedback on clarity.
The readability advantage: Hemingway’s feedback is sparse, so you trust it. A sentence highlighted in yellow genuinely is too long or convoluted; a word marked in purple (“utilize” → “use”) genuinely is weaker than the alternative. The tool doesn’t flag every choice you make — it flags choices that make your reader work too hard. Fiction writers, bloggers, and technical writers use Hemingway to tighten prose without losing voice.
The minimalism advantage: Hemingway is deliberately not integrated into Gmail or Google Docs. You open the app, paste your draft, read the visual feedback, and revise. This friction is intentional — it separates drafting from editing. Writers with ADHD or decision fatigue report that Hemingway’s sparse, color-coded interface is easier to process than Grammarly’s sidebar of 47 suggestions.
Strengths:
- Visual readability feedback is immediate and trustworthy (Flesch-Kincaid grade level and highlighted sentences in one glance)
- Minimalist interface eliminates decision fatigue
- Desktop app works fully offline (no internet required)
- One-time $19.99 purchase for desktop (no subscription)
- Never flags intentional style choices (dialogue fragments, short punchy sentences) as errors
Weaknesses:
- No grammar safety net — you’ll publish with comma splices, subject-verb errors, and typos if using Hemingway alone
- Not integrated anywhere — every use requires copy-paste into a separate tab or app; slower compared to Grammarly’s “always on” presence
- No plagiarism detection — academic and professional writers are on their own for originality checks
- Limited maintenance — Hemingway is maintained by a small team; updates are infrequent, with no enterprise support
Best for: Fiction writers who prioritize narrative flow over formal grammar, minimalists who find comprehensive feedback overwhelming, offline writers (airplanes, conferences, no WiFi), and budget-conscious writers who prefer a one-time cost to monthly subscriptions.
What each tool catches: Same sentence, different priorities
Take this sentence from a real business email:
“In order to facilitate the optimization of our collaborative workflow efficiencies, it is recommended that team members utilize the new project management platform for all future communications regarding deliverables.”
Hemingway flags:
- Grade level: 18 (post-graduate reading level)
- Entire sentence turns red (very hard to read)
- “Utilize” marked purple with suggestion: “use”
- “In order to” marked purple with suggestion: delete it
- Passive voice (“it is recommended”) highlighted green
Hemingway does NOT flag:
- The subject-verb agreement is technically correct
- No missing articles or commas
- Verb tense is consistent
- No spelling errors
Grammarly flags:
- Passive voice: “it is recommended” → suggests “we recommend”
- Wordiness: “In order to facilitate” → suggests “To improve”
- Wordiness: “utilize” → suggests “use”
- Clarity: sentence is too long, suggests splitting
Grammarly does NOT flag:
- The sentence is grammatically correct, so fewer red “error” marks
- Readability grade is buried in a dashboard metric, not front-and-center
- No visual color-coding to show severity at a glance
Revised using Hemingway’s priorities (clarity first):
“Please use the new project management platform for all deliverables. It will improve our team workflow.”
Revised using Grammarly’s priorities (grammar + tone + clarity):
“We recommend using the new project management platform for all future deliverables to improve our collaborative workflow.”
Both revisions work. Hemingway’s version hits grade 6 and sounds like a human wrote it. Grammarly’s version hits grade 10, retains some business formality, and still improves on the original. The tool you pick depends on whether your workplace expects “Please use” (direct, clear) or “We recommend using” (formal, diplomatic).
Grammar vs. style: What Hemingway intentionally skips
The article’s comparison table states that Hemingway “leaves grammar errors completely unflagged,” but that’s both true and misleading. Hemingway doesn’t skip grammar errors by accident — it skips them by design.
What Hemingway deliberately ignores:
- Subject-verb agreement — “The team are meeting today” (British English) vs “The team is meeting today” (American English). Hemingway won’t flag either. Both are defensible; correcting one damages voice.
- Article errors — “I went to hospital” (British) vs “I went to the hospital” (American). Non-native speakers need this flagged; native speakers with regional dialects don’t.
- Verb tense shifts — Fiction often switches tenses for effect. Flagging every shift as an “error” destroys intentional style.
- Sentence fragments in dialogue — “You coming?” is flagged as incomplete by grammar checkers. Hemingway leaves it alone because dialogue doesn’t follow essay rules.
According to Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips, many so-called “grammar rules” are actually style preferences that vary by region, genre, and context. Hemingway’s decision to focus only on readability (sentence length, complexity, passive voice) rather than prescriptive grammar reflects a philosophy: clarity matters more than correctness when your reader already understands the language.
When this philosophy breaks: If you’re a non-native English speaker writing a business proposal, Hemingway’s hands-off approach to articles and verb tenses will let errors through. “We wants to collaborate with you” has no readability problem — it’s short, direct, grade 3 — but it’s wrong. Grammarly catches it immediately.
When this philosophy works: If you’re writing fiction with a strong narrative voice, Grammarly’s corrections feel like an editor who’s never read a novel. Sentence fragments, regional dialect, intentional passive voice for pacing — all flagged as “errors” that need fixing. Hemingway treats these as style choices and leaves them alone.
The APA Style guidelines for academic writing note that clarity and correctness serve different audiences. Academic and professional writing needs both; creative and web writing often prioritizes clarity. Know which audience you’re writing for before you pick your tool.
Writing-type decision matrix: Pick your tool by task
Forget generic personas like “business writers” or “fiction writers.” Here’s what to use for specific writing tasks:
Technical documentation:
- Use Hemingway — Readability is the priority. If your documentation requires a post-graduate degree to parse, users won’t read it. Aim for grade 8 or below.
- Then add Grammarly (or a human editor) to catch grammar errors Hemingway missed.
- Example: API reference docs, user manuals, help-center articles.
Business email and Slack:
- Use Grammarly — Tone detection matters here. “Per my last email” might be technically correct but sounds passive-aggressive. Grammarly flags it; Hemingway doesn’t.
- Skip Hemingway unless you’re writing a long-form memo. Three-sentence Slack replies don’t need grade-level analysis.
Academic papers and research writing:
- Use Grammarly Premium — Plagiarism detection is non-negotiable. Citation errors, passive voice norms, and formal grammar rules all apply.
- Skip Hemingway — Academic writing often runs grade 14-16 by design. Hemingway will flag every sentence as “too complex,” but your professor expects that complexity.
Long-form essays, blog posts, and narrative nonfiction:
- Use Hemingway first — Draft in your editor, paste into Hemingway, tighten for readability.
- Use Grammarly second — Catch the grammar errors Hemingway skipped.
- Why this order: Revising for clarity changes sentence structure; running Grammarly first means you’ll re-break sentences Hemingway tells you to split anyway.
Fiction and creative writing:
- Use Hemingway — If you trust your grammar instincts, Hemingway’s clarity feedback won’t mess with your voice.
- Skip Grammarly (or use the free tier for spellcheck only) — Premium’s tone suggestions and style corrections will flag intentional choices as errors.
Client-facing proposals, cover letters, resumes:
- Use Grammarly — One typo or grammar error here costs you the job or the contract. Grammarly’s thoroughness is worth the decision fatigue.
- Use Hemingway second if the document is long (multi-page proposals). Grade 10-12 is fine for professional writing; grade 18 is not.
Side-by-side: Workflow integration reality
Most comparisons list Grammarly’s integrations (Gmail, Slack, Docs) and Hemingway’s lack of integrations, then move on. What they skip: integration is a trade-off, not a pure advantage.
Grammarly’s “always on” posture:
- The upside: You never forget to check your writing. Grammarly is already there when you compose a LinkedIn post, reply to a Slack thread, or draft a Google Doc. Writers who edit in Gmail 10 times a week save hours by not switching contexts.
- The downside: You can’t turn your brain off. Grammarly underlines every sentence as you draft it, which creates decision fatigue. Professional writers report a workflow where they disable Grammarly while drafting (to avoid distraction) and re-enable it during the editing pass. This defeats the integration advantage.
Hemingway’s “deliberate paste-in” posture:
- The upside: You edit when you’re ready to edit. Open the app, paste your draft, process the visual feedback in one sitting, close the app. The friction is a feature — it separates drafting (no judgment) from revising (focused judgment).
- The downside: You have to remember to use it. If you’re writing quick Slack messages or casual emails, you won’t open Hemingway for a three-sentence reply. The tool works for deliberate writing sessions, not ambient communication.
Verdict: If you write in Gmail and Slack all day, Grammarly’s integration saves time. If you write long-form drafts in a dedicated app, Hemingway’s separation of concerns reduces cognitive load.
Pricing: What you actually pay
Grammarly:
- Free tier: Basic spelling and grammar (limited suggestions)
- Premium: $12/month ($144/year) or $8/month if billed annually ($96/year)
- Business: $15/user/month (team/enterprise licensing)
Hemingway Editor:
- Web app (hemingwayapp.com): Free for basic use
- Desktop app (Mac/Windows): $19.99 one-time purchase
Cost over 3 years:
- Grammarly Premium: $288–432 depending on billing cycle
- Hemingway Desktop: $19.99 total
- Difference: Grammarly costs 14–22x more than Hemingway over three years
The pricing gap matters if you’re a freelance writer or student on a budget. Grammarly’s subscription makes sense if you use it daily for client work; it’s harder to justify for a novelist who writes offline and only needs readability feedback twice a month.
Best writing assistant for your workflow
Neither tool is “the best writing assistant” for everyone. The right choice depends on what you write and where you write it.
Choose Grammarly if:
- You write business emails, reports, or professional documents where grammar errors hurt credibility
- You’re a non-native English speaker who needs comprehensive grammar checking (articles, verb tenses, subject-verb agreement)
- You publish across platforms (Gmail, LinkedIn, Slack, Docs) and want one tool that works everywhere
- You need plagiarism detection for academic or client work
- You’re willing to pay $96–144/year for thoroughness and integration
Choose Hemingway Editor if:
- You write fiction, creative nonfiction, or narrative-driven content where voice matters more than formal correctness
- You find comprehensive feedback (47 suggestions per paragraph) paralyzing and prefer sparse, trustworthy highlights
- You write offline frequently (airplanes, conferences, remote locations) and need a tool that works without internet
- You want a one-time purchase ($19.99) instead of a recurring subscription
- You trust your grammar instincts and only need readability feedback (target grade level, sentence complexity, passive voice)
Use both sequentially if:
- You write long-form web content, blog posts, or white papers where readability and grammar both matter
- Your workflow is: draft in your editor → paste into Hemingway to hit target grade level (8-10 for web content) → paste into Grammarly (or enable extension) for grammar sweep → publish
- The combined annual cost ($96 Grammarly + $20 Hemingway = $116 first year, $96/year after) fits your budget and you write across genres (business + creative, technical + narrative)
FAQ
Is Grammarly more accurate than Hemingway Editor?
Grammarly is more accurate at grammar; Hemingway is more accurate at readability. Grammarly catches subject-verb disagreement, tense errors, and comma splices that Hemingway ignores. Hemingway flags complex sentence structure and passive voice that makes writing hard to read, using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level metric. They measure different things. If “accuracy” means “catching grammar errors,” Grammarly wins. If “accuracy” means “identifying unclear writing that runs grade 16 when it should run grade 8,” Hemingway wins.
Can I use Hemingway Editor instead of Grammarly?
Only if you’re confident in your grammar or have another way to catch errors. Hemingway won’t flag “The data shows” (should be “show”), missing commas, or verb tense mistakes. Fiction writers and experienced editors often use Hemingway alone because they trust their grammar instincts and prioritize readability over prescriptive correctness. Business writers and non-native speakers need Grammarly’s safety net for subject-verb agreement, articles, and tense consistency.
Does Hemingway work offline?
Yes. The desktop app ($19.99) works fully offline with no internet connection required. This makes it the better choice for writers working on airplanes, at conferences, or in remote locations. Grammarly’s desktop app requires periodic cloud syncing, so offline capability is limited.
Which tool is better for lowering reading grade level?
Hemingway. Its entire interface is built around the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level metric, showing your current grade at the top and color-coding sentences by complexity. Grammarly includes a Flesch Reading Ease score, but it’s buried in settings and not part of the main editing flow. If your goal is to hit grade 8 for web content or grade 10 for business writing, Hemingway gives you instant visual feedback.
Affiliate disclosure: Comparisony earns a commission when you purchase through links on this page. Our recommendations are based on research and testing, not affiliate relationships.
Grammarly is the right choice for business and academic writers who need comprehensive grammar checks across Gmail, Slack, and Docs. Hemingway is the right choice for fiction writers, bloggers, and technical writers who prioritize readability and work offline. If you write across both formal and creative genres, the sequential workflow (Hemingway for clarity, then Grammarly for grammar) gives you both metrics without the decision fatigue of running them simultaneously.