If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve heard me mention that I am not great with grammar. In fact, it’s no secret that I rely on grammar checkers to catch basic mistakes that I make over and over again. I discovered Grammarly a few years ago, and having used the free and premium versions, I thought I could help other professional writers by sharing my honest thoughts.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am not affiliated in any way with Grammarly. These are my own thoughts on the service!

The advantages of Grammarly

I’m a huge fan of this service and think highly of it. Here are some of my favourite Grammarly pros:

• Colour coding for easy editing: If I’m only looking for certain types of suggestions, I love that I can use the colour coding to limit my search! It also adds some charisma and colour to the dreaded editing stage.
• Integration into your browser and writing apps: I don’t use Grammarly across all platforms, but I do love that you can do that. I have it installed where I use it most, and the seamless integration is a great way to help keep your writing strong.
• Helpful explanations of your mistakes: I love that each suggestion or correction has enough detail to help you understand how to hypothetically improve your knowledge. I say hypothetically because I make the same grammar mistakes each time!

The disadvantages of Grammarly

These Grammarly cons are ones that stood out to me, especially recently.  These include:

• There is no “middle of the line” option for pricing: While the price of Grammarly has remained consistent (a huge benefit), I would love the choice to have a “Lite” version of Grammarly where you can have some of the Premium features for a lower price tag. This can give you the best of both worlds.
• Some of the premium features change your tone: I’ve noticed that some of the suggestions change my writing tone to the point where I find myself skipping over a lot of them. This has been a recent change, and it’s been frustrating when I’m trying to keep my voice consistent.
• AI is getting snuck in: Not only is AI available in generating text via Grammarly, but it’s also sneaking into the suggestions during editing. I suspect this is actually where the “recent change” I mentioned above is coming from, though I have no proof of that. While I’ve written about how AI has changed freelancing, this is something that is totally different.

Is Grammarly Premium worth it?

For many years, Grammarly Premium was worth it. However, I’ve turned off my auto-renewal for 2025, and I’m feeling that this is the right decision for me. The Grammarly pros and cons weighed out for me resulting that the premium version of this service is no longer worth the amount charged.

I still use Grammarly for all of my professional writing (including this blog post!) and a lot of my personal writing. As I said earlier, I rely on Grammarly to make my writing better and that won’t change.

But, I realized that I was spending more time fighting some of Grammarly’s premium features than I was using in using them, and that’s what finalized the decision for me.

I’m aware that some of my thoughts may be extreme. So, I’d like to know yours! Do you love Grammarly? How do you feel about the changes? Is there another service that you prefer? Share below!