Grammarly VS. ChatGPT: Which Is Better at Writing?

ChatGPT is one of the pioneers in the AI space and good at writing, while Grammarly is one of the most popular writing assistant tools and Grammarly also adopted AI features to help ideate and review writing work.

But which one is better between the two? Today, we're taking a look at both Grammarly and ChatGPT, breaking down their features, how they work, how reliable each tool is, and their pricing.

Below is a brief overview to compare ChatGPT and Grammarly:

1. Grammarly vs ChatGPT: Features

In this part, we will focus on comparing the features of Grammarly and ChatGPT, including text writing, spelling, writing style, tone suggestion, and plagiarism checking.

1.1 AI Text Generating

The first test is how they can help you create content from scratch based on a single sentence prompt. In this case, we've used the AI from both tools to create an outline of how to write a review of an iPhone.

Grammarly's Result:

When asked to generate a post outline to write an iPhone review, Grammarly AI summarized 10 key points to consider, followed by the detailed explanation of each point, and also shared some tips to strengthen the review by giving examples.

ChatGPT's Result:

When asked to generate a post outline to write an iPhone review, ChatGPT also summarized some guidelines with an explanation. Moreover, ChatGPT's responded with much more guidelines that Grammarly didn't have, such as star ratings and personal opinions, and ChatGPT reminded readers of maintaining balanced and objective tone, which is important when writing reviews.

Initially, we noticed that both AIs responded with largely similar points and information. However, when comparing both responses and reading through what the AI advises you to do, you'll notice that ChatGPT's version is more coherent and informative.

🎖️Winner - ChatGPT

Both AIs also have different endings to the prompt, with ChatGPT giving more nuanced details to enhance your writing of the article, compared to Grammarly's version which is shortened and not as informative.

1.2 Spelling and Grammar Correction

Next, we tested how each of the AIs and tools works to help enhance and proofread content.

Grammarly Result:

Grammarly automatically detects and highlight misspelled words, grammatical errors, and wrong punctuation usage (such as commas, periods, and more), provide suggestions to improve writing, and allows you to correct mistakes in real-time. By doing so, you will have a clearer vision of your writing, where the mistakes are, and how to correct them easily.

Grammarly has even more 'corrections'or recommended changes to help your text flow better. However, these additional changes are locked behind the premium plan. This proofreading feature is also not limited to solely the Grammarly word editor and can be used on Google Docs, Word, or any other text-based application on your PC.

ChatGPT Result:

While using the same sample text to ask ChatGPT to do a spell check and grammar correction, ChatGPT made similar corrections to the text. However, it can be difficult to spot where the changes were made unless you ask in another prompt to point out the corrected mistakes.

🎖️Winner - Grammarly

Proofreading, spell-checking, and correcting grammar are Grammarly's forte. While ChatGPT's corrections are not incorrect, you need to additionally prompt ChatGPT to inform you of the changes which aren't always obvious at a glance; Grammarly highlights the mistakes in real-time so that it's convenient for users to immediately make corrections.

1.3 Style and Tone Suggestions

For the next test, we wanted to see how both AIs would handle writing the same text but changing up the wording to fit different tones and writing styles without losing its meaning.

Grammarly Result:

Grammarly has a built-in feature that lets you change up the tone with pre-set tones to try out within the app, such as persuasive, assertive, confident, diplomatic, emphathic, casual, or formal. This makes it very convenient to simply select one of the pre-set tones to change the text to.

As for the results, we have tested several different tones using the same sample, and Grammarly generated brilliant answers and I could directly use in the daily work.

ChatGPT Result:

ChatGPT can also do the job of changing the style and word tone, and it can also do a great job in terms of re-writing text in different tones. Whereas with ChatGPT, you'll need to manually describe how you want the text to be rephrased and what tone you'd like it to use.

On the flip side, this means you have endless possibilities to manipulate and paraphrase text in any style or tone you prefer, and you're not limited to the set options that a tool like Grammarly provides.

🎖️Winner - Grammarly (By a Margin)

Both AIs created vastly different results when using the same descriptors for the style and tone we were looking for.

While ChatGPT's potential is indeed endless, the fact that you have to manually come up with a tone for how you want the text to sound makes it less convenient than Grammarly's pre-set and built-in tone adjustment feature.

1.4 Plagiarism Check

When it comes to checking for plagiarism, ChatGPT does not have any built-in functionality for it to cross-reference academic texts, online content, and other sources to identify plagiarised content.

Grammarly does have a plagiarism-checking feature, and it compares the text you submit against a vast database of web pages, academic papers, and other sources. After that, it will show you the result, including the percentage of test are detected as plagiarism and the detected reference.

🎖️Winner - Grammarly

ChatGPT doesn't have plagiarism check capabilities.

On the other hand, Grammarly does have a plagiarism check feature, but it's locked behind the Premium Plan. It wins by default, but we should mention there are other free tools available online that can do the same thing.

2. Grammarly vs ChatGPT: User Interface and Experience

For both tools, the user interface and experience are worlds apart and excel in their own niches and use cases. As a proofreading and writing assistant tool, Grammarly is a clear winner.

Since Grammarly integrates directly with your system, this means you can access Grammarly's proofreading and editing tools regardless of the platform you're using to write with. This is a system-wide program and utilizes clear visual indicators, real-time feedback, and great integrations (such as web browser, desktop applications, mobile applications).

On the other hand, ChatGPT is more simple and straightforward when it comes to its UI and only has a text field for you to type and prompt whatever you please. It doesn't have integrations with your system (yet).

🎖️Winner - Grammarly

For its convenience and availability across platforms and writing software, Grammarly inches out as a winner in the overall user interface and experience. Though it's catered to editing/proofreading content, it's still versatile enough to handle day-to-day writing tasks.

In terms of creating content from scratch, ideating, and helping solve problems (coding, Excel, providing comprehensive answers) though, ChatGPT is miles ahead of Grammarly's version of AI.

3. Grammarly vs ChatGPT: Accuracy and Reliability

In terms of accuracy and reliability, both Grammarly AI and ChatGPT are fairly accurate and reliable and can create and proofread content, but there are some differences.

According to a report demonstrated on Semantic Scholar:

"In this report, we aim to evaluate ChatGPT on the Grammatical Error Correction(GEC) task, and compare it with commercial GEC product (e.g., Grammarly) and state-of-the-art models (e.g., GECToR). By testing on the CoNLL2014 benchmark dataset, we find that ChatGPT performs not as well as those baselines in terms of the automatic evaluation metrics (e.g., $F_{0.5}$ score), particularly on long sentences." - by Semantic Scholar

"Human evaluation quantitatively confirms this and suggests that ChatGPT produces less under-correction or mis-correction issues but more over-corrections." - by Semantic Scholar

Simply put, compared with Grammarly, ChatGPT does not perform as well as these baselines based on automatic evaluation metrics, but ChatGPT tends to make broader changes to sentence structures while maintaining grammatical correctness

In general, both Grammarly and ChatGPT are reliable enough to use for most daily tasks however we'd always advise fact-checking any information and content generated by an AI, whether it's ChatGPT or Grammarly AI.

While they are reliable, they can make mistakes as we've seen through our testing where the AI can 'make up' facts or use outdated information since it does not have readily available access to the internet and the most up-to-date datasets.

🎖️Winner - Tie

In regard to the performance on the grammatical error correction, Grammarly does a better job in most case, in a convenient way. ChatGPT excels in generating content with follow-up questions, in a broader way.

4. Grammarly vs ChatGPT: Compatibility and Pricing

Compatibility:

In terms of compatibility, both ChatGPT and Grammarly are equally available on most platforms including mobile, PC, and web browsers. ChatGPT inches ahead with more flexible API access which allows it to be available on a number of apps, platforms, and services.

Grammarly has better built-in integrations with popular word editors like Word or Google Docs and other text-based programs on your PC so you can access it wherever you're typing something.

🎖️Winner - Grammarly

Pricing:

Obviously, Grammarly is more affordable for but it supports more writing tasks with less AI prompts. ChatGPT however gives users unlimited access and prompts to the second newest version of the GPT model, and you can upgrade ChatGPT Plus for a newer, more powerful, and comprehensive version.

🎖️Winner - Tie

ChatGPT, more expensive, simply provides far more utility and versatility as a productivity tool than Grammarly, more affordable, which focuses on being a writing assistant, rather than an AI to help create new content or answer complex queries.

5. Grammarly vs ChatGPT: Which Is Better?

Grammarly:

ChatGPT:

Best for Whom

Grammarly - In general, rather than an 'AI' tool, Grammarly focuses on writing assistance supplemented by their AI to help you generate ideas or enhance and improve your writing. This is better suited for writers of all kinds, marketers, students, content creators, and other professionals who require assistance in writing any type of text-based content.

ChatGPT - ChatGPT is a generative AI tool and can do a lot more than simple proofreading and editing. It can handle complex problems, solve inconsistencies in code, create tables, provide Excel formulas, and answer almost any text-based question. ChatGPT is more suited for professionals or users who require assistance with a broad range of written tasks or require solutions to complex queries.

My Opinion

All in all, ChatGPT and Grammarly are both incredibly reliable and powerful productivity tools to help you write and create content, and Grammarly is better as it integrates many writing features so that I don't have to write the prompts to get the job done. However, rather than picking just one, integrating both into your daily routines would prove more beneficial than just one.

You could potentially brainstorm ideas, get writing tips, or create new content with ChatGPT, and then refinend edition with Grammarly. Since both complement each other incredibly well, we think it's worth trying out both.