AI Writing Assistant: 8 Tools Priced for a Year (2026)

An AI writing assistant is software that helps you write by checking, rewriting or drafting text. The name covers three different products. Editors fix words you already wrote: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Wordtune and QuillBot. Writers draft from a prompt: Claude, HyperWrite, Notion AI and ChatGPT. Specialists do one kind of writing, like Sudowrite for fiction.

Most lists of AI writing tools rank all three in one column. That is how people end up paying for a generator when what they wanted was a second pair of eyes on an email. Pick the job first. Then the tool.

Once you know the job, price the year, because a monthly figure hides the commitment. I read every one of these pricing pages on 6 October 2026 and priced a year on each, at the cheapest published paid plan. As of October 2026, the four editors all cost less than $150 a year and the writers cost $192 to $240. Wordtune's cheapest year, $58.68, is about a twelfth of Jasper's year.

One shortcut before the list. If you already pay for Claude or ChatGPT, you own a writer, and the purchase that adds something different is an editor.

I run Gravity, an AI agent platform. It shows up near the end because some writing is a single step inside a bigger job, and jobs are what agents do. It does not underline your sentences. For the wider picture of what agents take on by occupation, see the index of AI agents for every profession.

How I compared them

Every tool got the same six questions. The first two are about the job: does it fix your words or write them, and so do you write every sentence or edit what it drafts? The other four are about money: what a year costs on the cheapest published paid plan (twelve times the monthly price, or the page's own annual total where it prints one), what the page says about billing, which I recorded in a basis column instead of guessing, what the free plan allows, and what gets metered, since each page meters something different, from prompts to credits.

I read the US versions of the pricing pages, because several of them show rupees when you open them from Bangalore. The homepage screenshots below were captured on the same day, 6 October 2026.

What I did not do: write test documents, compare outputs or score anyone's grammar engine. This post covers what each tool is for and what twelve months cost.

Quick comparison

Prices as shown on each vendor's pricing page on 6 October 2026, in USD per month. "As listed" means the page did not say whether the figure is the monthly or the annual rate. Gravity is an AI agent platform in private alpha, listed for reference so you can see where it sits next to the writing tools.

One year on the cheapest plan

Monthly prices are hard to compare when one page bills annually and the next doesn't say. So here is the same question for every row in the table: what does twelve months cost on the cheapest paid plan each vendor publishes?

One year on the cheapest published paid plan, from each pricing page as read on 6 October 2026, in USD. Where the page printed an annual total (HyperWrite, Claude, ProWritingAid), that total is used. For Wordtune, QuillBot and Jasper, the year is 12 times the listed monthly price on annual billing. For rows marked "not labelled", the year is 12 times the listed monthly price. Wordtune's rate was a promotional discount on the day. Gravity is listed for reference and is not a writing assistant; its $60 assumes the $5 alpha price holds for twelve months.

All four editors finish under $150 a year. The writers cost $192 to $240: HyperWrite at $192, Claude at $200 and a Notion Business seat at $240.

Jasper sits alone at $708. Wordtune's year is about a twelfth of that, though Jasper sells a different job, marketing content, so read its row as the top of the range.

Notion AI is the odd row. It is the only one where the AI arrives as part of a bigger workspace seat, so that $240 buys the Notion workspace, with the AI included. The Plus plan, at $10 a member, carries only a trial of the AI.

What the free plans actually let you do

Much of page one for this search is free tools, so the free plans deserve a straight look. Here is what each pricing page said on 6 October 2026:

• Grammarly Free: spelling and grammar checks, tone detection and 100 AI prompts a month.
• QuillBot Free: paraphrasing up to 125 words at a time in two modes, Standard and Fluency. The humanizer is capped at 125 words with limited usage, and summaries go up to 1,200 words.
• Wordtune Basic: a limited daily allowance of rewrites.
• ProWritingAid: a free plan is listed next to the paid ones.
• Sudowrite: a free trial that does not ask for a credit card.
• HyperWrite: a free account with limited monthly credits on its basic AI.
• Notion: the Free and Plus plans include only a trial of Notion AI, which matters if you assumed the AI came with any Notion account.
• Claude: a Free plan at $0.

So yes, there is a free AI writing assistant for light work. Grammarly's free plan and QuillBot's 125-word paraphraser fit short emails and single paragraphs, and Claude and ChatGPT both have free plans for drafting. Students on no budget at all will find more in the best AI agents for students, free tiers first.

1. Grammarly: the free everyday editor, with 100 free AI prompts a month

Grammarly is an editor first. It checks spelling and grammar and detects tone, and as of October 2026 its free plan includes both, plus 100 AI prompts a month.

Pro is $12 a month as listed on its plans page on 6 October 2026, with a 7-day free trial. It adds full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment, plagiarism checks, AI-text detection and 2,000 AI prompts per member per month. Enterprise goes through sales, and the page says it is "available through Superhuman Go".

The page I read did not say whether $12 is the annual or the monthly rate. Twelve times $12 is $144 a year, the top of the editor group. If the checkout shows a different figure, believe the checkout.

Pro's real upgrade is twenty times the AI prompts

Spelling and grammar already cost nothing. What changes on Pro is the AI: 100 prompts a month becomes 2,000, and full-sentence rewrites and tone adjustment switch on. 100 prompts is about three a day. Use more than three AI prompts a day and the free plan runs out before the month does.

Best for

Anyone who writes their own emails and documents and wants them checked.

Pricing

Free $0; Pro $12 a month as listed; Enterprise through sales. As of October 2026.

Verdict

Start free. Pay once the prompts run out every month.

2. QuillBot: a paraphraser that also summarises, at $99.96 a year

QuillBot's core job is rewording text you already have, and the homepage I captured put its Paraphraser button right under the prompt box. The free plan paraphrases up to 125 words at a time in two modes, Standard and Fluency, and summarises up to 1,200 words.

Premium is $8.33 a month billed annually as of October 2026, which is $99.96 for the year. It opens nine paraphrase modes plus custom modes, plagiarism checks up to 25,000 words a month, summaries up to 6,000 words and paraphrasing in 23 languages.

The 125-word cap decides whether you need Premium

125 words is one long paragraph. Rework a sentence or two at a time and the free plan holds up. Paste whole sections and you hit the wall on every paste, which is the point where $99.96 a year starts to look reasonable.

Before you pay, run a normal week of work through the free plan and count how often the 125-word limit stops you.

3. Wordtune: the cheapest year on this list, on a discount

Wordtune's homepage describes a free AI writer that can paraphrase, rewrite and correct your grammar, which puts it with the rewriters. The Basic plan is $0 with a limited daily allowance of rewrites.

Advanced is $4.89 a month billed annually, shown discounted from $6.99, as of October 2026. Unlimited is $6.99 a month billed annually, discounted from $9.99. The plans page carried a "-50% Annually" banner on 6 October, and both paid plans come with a 3-day free trial.

That makes a year on Advanced $58.68, the cheapest year in this comparison, and a year on Unlimited $83.88. These are the discounted annual prices as displayed that day. Promotions end. Check the banner is still there before you plan a budget around it.

Best for

Rewording your own sentences on the smallest budget here.

Pricing

Advanced $4.89 a month and Unlimited $6.99 a month, both billed annually at a discount. As of October 2026.

Free tier

Basic, with a limited daily allowance of rewrites.

Trial

3 days on both paid plans.

4. ProWritingAid: an editor built around the manuscript

On 6 October, ProWritingAid's homepage showed a panel of manuscript tools: chapter critique, plot analysis, character analysis and manuscript analysis. That makes it the editor for long-form work, a different brief from tidying a cover email.

Premium is $10 a month billed yearly ($120) or $30 billed monthly, as of October 2026. Premium Pro is $12 a month billed yearly ($144) or $36 billed monthly. A free plan is listed too.

The $399 lifetime licence pays for itself in year four

ProWritingAid also sells one-time licences: $399 for Premium and $699 for Premium Pro. At the yearly prices, $399 covers about 3.3 years of Premium and $699 about 4.9 years of Premium Pro. Premium's licence breaks even early in 2030 and Premium Pro's in the second half of 2031; if you expect to be editing past that, buy once. If this is one book, pay yearly.

Annual billing makes a year of Premium $120; monthly billing makes it $360, three times as much for the same plan.

5. Sudowrite: fiction, billed in credits

Sudowrite calls itself "the #1 Creative Writing AI", and it is the only tool here built around one genre, which makes it the specialist on this list. Its site would not render for a screenshot on 6 October, so this section has none.

Plans are metered in credits. Hobby & Student is $10 a month for 225,000 credits as of October 2026. Professional is $22 a month, and the page showed 1,000,000 credits with 450,000 struck through, which means an offer was running. Max is $44 a month for 2,000,000 credits, and unused credits roll over for 12 months.

Budget from $10 a month and confirm which billing you are on

The page has a Monthly and Yearly toggle, with yearly marked "up to 50% off", and the version I read did not label which billing the prices shown use. The honest figure is from $10 a month. My year table uses $120, twelve times that, so annual billing could come in lower. The free trial does not ask for a card.

Best for

Novelists and short-story writers who want an AI aimed at fiction.

Pricing

From $10 a month (Hobby & Student, 225,000 credits); Professional $22; Max $44 with 2,000,000 credits. As of October 2026.

Free trial

Yes, no credit card.

Verdict

The only specialist here. Put it next to ProWritingAid's manuscript tools before you choose.

6. HyperWrite: a drafting assistant that installs in Chrome

On 6 October, HyperWrite's homepage described an AI writing assistant with autocomplete, web search and citations, with Add to Chrome as the main button. It is a writer: it drafts from a prompt.

Premium is $19.99 a month on monthly billing or $16 a month billed annually, $192 for the year, as of October 2026. That buys 250 AI messages a month, citations and real-time information, three custom personas and unlimited TypeAheads. Ultra is $44.99 monthly or $29 a month billed annually ($348 a year), with unlimited AI messages and ten custom personas. The free account comes with limited monthly credits on its basic AI.

The message cap is the number to check before you subscribe

Premium's 250 AI messages a month come to about eight a day. Annual billing saves $47.88 against twelve monthly payments.

If you are weighing it against an agent that runs the whole task, I put the two side by side in Gravity vs HyperWrite.

7. Notion AI: you buy the workspace and the AI comes with it

Notion AI is a writer that lives inside a workspace, and the price tells you which product you are buying. As of October 2026, the Free plan and Plus at $10 per member a month include only a trial of Notion AI. The AI itself comes with Business, at $20 per member a month as listed.

Business adds an agent, meeting notes and search

Business includes Notion Agent, which Notion says "completes complex, multi-step tasks using context from Notion, your connected apps, and the web". It also includes AI Meeting Notes and Enterprise Search (beta). Custom Agents are priced on top: "Free to try, then $10 per 1,000 monthly Notion credits."

A year on Business is $240 per member, the most expensive writer in the table. For a team already on Business, the AI comes with the seat. A team on Plus pays $10 more per member a month for it, $120 a year. For one person who wants help with a draft, it is a lot of workspace to buy. The agent side gets a fuller treatment in what Notion's AI agents actually do.

8. Claude: the general assistant you might already pay for

You may already pay for Claude, the general assistant on this list. You ask in plain words and it drafts. It belongs on a writing list because drafting from a prompt is the writer job, and a general assistant covers it without a separate writing subscription.

As of October 2026, Claude has a Free plan. Pro is $17 a month with the annual discount, $200 billed up front, or $20 a month billed monthly. Max starts at $100 a month.

A general assistant can replace a separate drafting subscription

Claude Pro's $200 year sits between HyperWrite at $192 and Notion Business at $240. If you already pay for it, or for ChatGPT, a second generator mostly duplicates what you have. The cheapest editor year on this list, Wordtune at $58.68, costs less than a third of Claude Pro's $200. How a chat assistant differs from an agent is laid out in Gravity vs Claude.

What about ChatGPT and Jasper?

ChatGPT does the same writer job as Claude. Its pricing page lists Free, Go, Plus, Pro and Business plans, but the prices load by location and no US figure rendered when I read it on 6 October 2026, so I am not quoting one. If you are deciding between a chat assistant and an agent, Gravity vs ChatGPT covers that line.

Jasper is a marketing-content tool, at $59 a month billed yearly or $69 billed monthly as of October 2026, and it belongs with the generators in the nine AI tools for content creation I compared.

Where Gravity fits: when the writing is one step of the job

Gravity is my product, so read this part with that in mind. It is an AI agent platform. It does not sit in your browser and it does not underline sentences, so if you want an editor, buy one of the four above.

Where it fits is the job around the writing. Research a topic, draft the weekly update, put it in the doc, send it to the list. The writer tools above are priced here for drafting. Some reach further: Notion Agent draws on context from Notion, connected apps and the web, and Claude's homepage advertises Cowork for everyday tasks. A Gravity agent is built around the whole job: you describe it in plain words, and an expert-built agent runs it and hands back the result.

Gravity is in private alpha. As of October 2026 the Basic plan is free with no card, and Pro is $5 a month during the alpha, which is $60 for a year if that price holds. The details are on the Gravity pricing page. For writing that ends up on LinkedIn, a sane setup for an AI agent on LinkedIn content shows the shape of that job.

Which one should you choose?

Start from the job. If you mostly fix your own emails and documents, begin on Grammarly's free plan and pay once the prompts run out. If you reword more than you correct, try the free plans of QuillBot and Wordtune first. For a book, ProWritingAid handles the edit and Sudowrite is the one aimed at fiction itself.

Already paying for Claude or ChatGPT? You have a writer. Add an editor, not a second writer.

Starting from zero and want drafts? Claude, or HyperWrite if you want it in Chrome. A team already on Notion gets the AI with Notion's Business plan.

If you write for clients or an audience, the job runs past the draft. AI agents for copywriters and AI agents for content creators cover the rest of that work by role.

And if the writing is one step in something you repeat every week, research and sending included, that is agent work. Gravity is one option, in private alpha and free to start.

FAQ

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