Best AI Essay Writing Tools for Effortless Writing

Writing an essay for your academic project isn’t easy. From struggling with a strong introduction to presenting your research in a comprehensive manner, there are numerous challenges—we get it!

This is where AI essay writing tools come into the picture.

These tools help you in ideation, refining your writing to suit different tones, and help collate all your research to be presentable.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the best AI essay writing tools that you can use today. We’ve tested and reviewed them based on their price, features, and ease of use. In short, this blog is all you’ll need to find the right tool for your writing needs!

Features Of AI Essay Writing Tools

You need to understand that the purpose of AI in writing is not a replacement for your creativity. Instead, it’ll help you guide your creativity in the correct direction and make your writing session productive. Yes, some tools can write up an entire piece of a thesis in seconds, but that is not what we are looking for here.

Since there are plenty of writing tools available online, here are the features we’ve considered (and the ones that you should too) when looking for an essay writing tool.

• Natural language processing capabilities: AI understands the nuances of human language through NLP. Natural Language Processing helps the AI understand the intent behind your writing or queries. So a tool that can process this more efficiently should be your pick. It will be able to craft content in a more organic way, ensuring that your work doesn’t sound robotic or unnatural.
• User-friendly interfaces: An essay writing tool should make your job easier, and it does so by providing an efficient user interface that you can navigate quickly. After all, not everyone is tech-savvy, and complicated tools will only make your job more difficult.
• Integration with other writing tools: You might be using other tools along with the essay writing tool to fix the tone, spellings, grammar, punctuation, and cite references. So, choose an AI essay writing tool that integrates with the popular writing apps. This will help you complete your work faster, without switching between multiple tools.

Top AI Essay Writing Tools

1. Paperguide

Paperguide isn’t just an essay writing tool. In fact, it’s an all-in-one solution for all your academic needs. From writing essays to citing references to sharing and collaborating on your paper with teachers, professors, and other students—it does them all!

While it offers a bunch of other tools, we’ll focus specifically on the essay writing tool here. Simply put, we loved it. Its AI writing tool is excellent, allowing you to add generated introductions, conclusions, key points, transitions, and even opposing arguments based on the text you feed it.

When we tested the tool, we gave it a basic introduction and asked it to continue writing. So, we clicked on the “Ask AI” button, and clicked on the “Continue Writing” button. It then generated a paragraph that was along the same lines as the content that we fed it. You can then accept the suggestion or ask for another suggestion, based on your requirements.

To bolster your research essay, you can use the “Cite” button, which showcases multiple relevant results that you can cite in your essay.

It also gave us the option to check our content for plagiarism with a “Check Plagiarism” button in the top right corner, showing a plagiarism score and relevant matches to ensure that our work was both error- and plagiarism-free!

In short, Paperguide focuses on one goal - making essay writing as easy and manageable as possible.

Below, you’ll find a few more features of Paperguide (as a whole) to help you with your research essay.

Features

• Ask AI-relevant questions about your research and get answers from its 200 million + research paper database.
• Its ChatwithPDF option lets you extract data from any document.
• Get instant summaries of your texts in minutes.
• Manage your references in quick folders.
• Collaborate easily and share folders, papers, and annotations with your fellow authors.
• Insert perfectly formatted citations with its easy in-text integration.

Pros

✅ User friendly and of the best tools for beginners.

✅ Saves a lot of time in the case of lengthy academic papers.

✅ The AI research assistant is capable of providing insights throughout your work.

Cons

• The free plan offers a limited storage of 500 MB.

2. Grammarly

Grammarly is the ideal tool for anyone who has any sort of association with writing. It is a live grammatical suggestion generator that helps you optimize your work and ensure it's error-free.

When we used Grammarly, we liked its options in setting the tone, spellings, and punctuations according to set standards. For example, you can change settings for American or British English, along with a tone analysis for formal or informal writing styles.

Features

• Rewrite your entire paragraph in one click.
• Paraphrase any piece of writing.
• Set the tone of your work with live prompts.
• Get jargon suggestions on the same page for clarity.

Pros

✅ Easy to install and use.

✅Has a free version.

✅ Get explanations for your corrections in one popup.

Cons

• It can sometimes be a distraction with its constant prompts of improvisation while you are writing.

3. QuillBot

Paraphrase your writing, change your tone, and play around with your content with Quillbot’s easy interface and user-friendly design. Quillbot is designed to help you fix the nuances of your writing with the help of AI.

For essay writing, we’d recommend trying out tools like Paraphraser, Grammar Checker, Plagiarism Checker, Citation Generator, etc., as these are the most helpful tools for this particular use case.

In our test run, we used the Paraphraser and provided a piece of content that Quillbot needed to, well, paraphrase. We set the Standard tone (it’s the only available one in the free plan), and let the tool do its magic. You could also adjust the level/amount of synonyms used through a slider.

Next, we tested the Grammar Checker and fed it the content. It gave us a decent writing score and a (free) recommendation.

Lastly, we tried the AI Detector. Thankfully, and rightly so, it flagged the content correctly as 0% AI-generated.

Overall, Quillbot is great for refining your writing to meet academic expectations. However, we’d recommend you to go for the full version, as the free version has limits on the tone refinements and doesn’t offer the Plagiarism Detector, which is essential for writing essays.

Features

• Summarize any piece of text in just a few clicks.
• Set the tone of your writing, from its varied range of filters for your readers.
• Establish the authenticity of your work with its plagiarism checker.
• Get multilingual support and translate your piece of text.
• Create, edit, or save citations in more than 1,000 different styles.

Pros

✅It is an accessible tool that can improve the readability of your writing.

✅QuillBot is cheaper, compared to its contemporaries.

✅You can sniff out AI-written content with Quillbot in a matter of seconds.

Cons

• QuillBot doesn’t do much if you wish to generate content from scratch. It is more of a checker than an assistant.

4. Writesonic

Writesonic is equipped to access all your writing needs and give you overall assistance in your content creation journey. This AI-based tool can help you not only create content but also analyze it, optimize it as per SEO standards, and many more.

The tool works based on a Credits system. Each action requires a certain number of credits. For example, writing/generating an article will require 20 Credits. We were given 25 Credits in the free trial and tried its 10-Step Article Writer.

It allowed us to pick the topic, article type, references, keywords, and a lot more. While this isn’t directed related to writing an essay, we noticed its versatility for ideation for particular topics or subjects.

Writesonic’s home page also provided access to Chatsonic (the AI-chatbot that acts as a research assistant) and Content Rewriter, which is essentially a paraphrasing tool.

While not all the tools are meant for essay writing, you’ll find that some can be repurposed to suit your requirements. For example, the Chatsonic assistant is excellent in summarizing PDFs and webpages to provide key insights that you can use in your essay.

Features

• Get access to fact-checked cited content for your articles.
• Set the tone for your writing, as per your brand voice, with built-in SEO optimization.
• It is designed to give you SEO insights instantly to boost your website traffic.
• Chatsonic its personalized AI assistant helps you chat with your PDFs, summarize webpages, and many more with just one click.

Pros

✅It can generate images as per your prompts.

✅You can even repurpose your old content with WriteSonic.

✅Writesonic has a ChatGPT-powered AI Chatbot, which gets trained on your data to resolve queries.

Cons

• It requires human intervention for complex topics.

5. Byword ai

Byword uses aggressive techniques powered by AI to help you achieve the most optimized content. It offers a diverse range of assistance when it comes to writing and is easy to set up and operate. 

We found Byword to be an excellent option when you’ve run out of words for your essay. It helps you increase the length of your paper, while keeping the tone and intent in sync. If you struggle with reaching the minimum word count, give Byword a try!

Features

• It generates content as per the instruction you feed it. It can be through prompts or feeding the AI your niche of work.
• Byword links automatically with your website to understand the demand of your readers.
• Lengthen any article upto 3k words.
• The Programmatic SEO Generator helps generate campaign ideas in seconds with just the URL.

Pros

✅Get multilingual support to cater to all kinds of readers.

✅Generate high-quality images with each article.

✅It has easy integration and paves the way for seamless publication.

Cons

• It is not equipped to generate competitive analysis reports.

6. Rapidely

This AI-powered social media assistant helps you enhance your content journey and guides you through its major challenges. It is equipped to provide fast and easy solutions for hectic and mundane tasks and helps you save time and effort.

Rapidely isn’t the best option for your academic essay writing, but it’s still a great tool for writing essays due to its AI assistant. It can help you with ideas for your essay if you know feed it specific prompts.

Features

• Rapidely helps to schedule your content by understanding your algorithm and niche to boost reach.
• Strategize your content as per your followers and gain the maximum traction.
• Generate captions with the help of AI and modify them as per your needs.
• Get visual ideas for your captions too.

Pros

✅Generate SEO-optimized content in bulk.

✅It is capable of assisting with blog posts, social media captions, product descriptions, and many more.

✅The free version allows you to get accustomed to its AI and understand the workflow.

Cons

• It is more of a social media optimization tool and is not built for academic research or single-article postings.

7. Copy.ai

Copy.AI has been synonymous with the progress of AI when it comes to writing. It is one of the most popular tools preferred by many in their writing journey. It offers incredible features packed with a decent pricing plan. 

We loved Copy.ai for the readability it provides to your essays. Its AI assistant keeps providing suggestions to improve your writing style to keep it in line with your academic requirements. It also has a free outline generator that can give you a structure for your essays.

Features

• Write any kind of content be it captions, emails, sentences a product descriptions with this AI-powered copywriter tool.
• Generate optimized, readable paragraphs with just a prompt.
• You don't have to struggle with a creative block with its free outline generator.
• It helps you think on your behalf and can even generate ideas for your content.

Pros

✅It is ideal for brainstorming and discussing your ideas backed by a user-friendly interface.

✅ Get a variety of toes and flair into your writing with its AI power suggestions.

✅Copy.ai can create a SEO-friendly writing drafts for you while maintaining the authenticity of your brand voice.

Cons

• There is no way of establishing the factual accuracy of the generated content.

8. Wordtune

Wordtune is an AI essay writer that offers some excellent options if you’re struggling with your writing. 

After signing up, I opened the Wordtune Workspace and found a minimalist yet intuitive editor that offers some simple options.

Since its a paraphrasing and rewriting tool, Wordtune works best when you have some content to feed it. So, you can write your essay (or a part of it), and feed it to Wordtune.

In the example content shown above, Wordtune provided me with options to change the tone to either a Formal or a Casual one. You can also rewrite the entire content, based on certain suggestions that the AI provides.

Similar options are shown for the Formal and Casual tones.

Clicking on any of the suggestions directly changes the content in the draft. The Expand and Shorten options work similarly, and I found the options to be quite reasonable based on the content I provided.

Another important feature that can help you with your creative blocks is the Continue Writing option. 

Upon clicking the Right Arrow icon (for Continue Writing), it provided a decent chunk of sentences that could be accepted or rejected. You also get the freedom to ask for another suggestion if you didn’t like the initial one.

Overall, Wordtune provided me with some decent features and it was quite easy to use. However, its free trial is very limited, offering just 10 daily rewrites and basic grammar or spelling suggestions. To fully utilize this tool, I’d recommend purchasing the Advanced plan. 

Moreover, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who’s also looking to manage academic writing and suggestions. Wordtune works better for basic essays, offering spellchecks, grammar suggestions, and ways to overcome creative blocks.

Features

• Paraphrase any form of writing the articles, essays, or emails with just one click.
• Rewrite your entire work with the help of AI.
• Wordtune is capable of not only summarizing your text, but videos too.
• It also has a grammar checker to ensure you produce error-free content.

Pros

✅It lets you switch your tones between formal or casual as per the writing demands.

✅Save time with its conceptual suggestions and smart synonyms.

✅The generated content is fact-checked with AI to ensure error-free writing.

Cons

• It can be a hassle for people who are only looking for academic writing support.

9. Rytr

Rytr uses the power of AI in the most convenient way possible and helps you with templates, automatic editing, and many more.

We found Rytr to be the best essay writing tool if you want to increase your efficiency. It uses AI to auto-complete your writing, saving you heaps of time in the process. Moreover, if you’re stuck anywhere, it’s Continue Writing feature will give you a relevant prompt to get your creative juices flowing.

Features

• Harness the power of AI to auto-complete your sentences and paragraphs and enhance readability.
• Its Continue Writing feature takes over when you hit the creative block.
• Inflate your text or shorten your sentences easily with the help of  Rytr.
• Give full control to AI as per your needs and dictate commands for it to operate through your piece.

Pros

✅You can rely on Rytr for his optimized, plagiarism, check, and grammar checker.

✅Has an easy integration with Chrome to ensure a smooth workflow.

✅ It has a dedicated section for marketing to help you with Google Ads, Facebook posts, Product descriptions, and many more.

Cons

• It is an ideal tool for creative writing and for your creative process. It doesn’t have much credibility as an academic writer or a research assistant.

10. Scribbr

Scribber offers optimized tools dedicated to academic writing, and is known to enhance academic writing and maintain readability. It is one of the top choices owing to its highly accommodating user interface and powerful AI. 

For essays, it’ll be a real challenge to find a tool better than Scribbr. This tool is made for essay writing, offering multiple features that help you detect AI content, avoid plagiarism, and stick to the recommended style guides.

It offers tools for paraphrasing, grammar checks, summarizing content, detecting AI content, and proofreading.

The paraphrasing tool is powered by Quillbot, offering much of the latter’s features. You can rephrase according to style and the amount of synonyms to include in the final version. While this is fine, I feel other tools, like Wordtune, offer more for writing.

Next up was its AI Proofreader, which offers just a single trial scan for language mistakes. For more mistake detection features, you’ll have to subscribe to the paid plans.

The plagiarism detector also requires you to pay for its features. Moreover, the price will vary based on the size of the document. A 650-word document can cost up to $19.95!

I also tried the Grammar checker (powered by Quillbot), and it offered similar suggestions to Grammarly. However, I’d prefer Grammarly if I needed more advance suggestions and insights.

The AI text summarizer worked well, however. It extracted key insights from the sample text and shortened 650 words into 145 words. It also helps that you can adjust the length of the summary as per your needs, and choose a Bullet Point format instead of a Paragraph, based on your needs.

I also liked the AI content detector tool, as it provided detailed insight on the sample writing. This included percentages of AI-generated, AI-generated & AI-refined, Human-written & AI-refined, and Human-written. This elaborate analysis can help you refine your writing to a greater degree than most other AI content detectors.

Overall, Scribbr proved excellent in some aspects. Its AI content detector, text summarizer, and paraphrasing tools are effective and can be used without hesitation. However, the more powerful features, like the AI Plagiarism Detector, are locked behind paywalls. Nonetheless, I’d highly recommend Scribbr for checking shorter sections of your essay (if you’re using the free version)!

Features

• It’s Knowledge Base not only helps you with research but cite your sources and write effectively as per your academic style.
• Detect AI-generated content and paraphrase the text in your hand in just a few clicks.
• Fight plagiarism and maintain the authenticity of your content.
• Get expert-verified APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard citations.

Pros

✅ You can opt for human editors to proofread your work.

✅ Has a user-friendly interface.

✅ You can automatically find citations for your articles in URL, DOI, or ISBN.

Cons

• It is tailored for academic writing and might not be fruitful for your creative pursuits.

How to Choose the Right AI Writing Tool

Now that you know what makes up for a great writing tool and what each of the top alternatives offers, choosing a tool will be a bit easier. But to put it into perspective, you can check on the points below to find a tool that suits your needs. 

• Objective: Currently, there is no dearth of AI tools in the market, which creates confusion for many users. So, the ideal way to settle on the perfect tool for you is to understand the goal of your writing. Tackling questions like whether you need a more creative orientation or an academic research assistant can help solve this issue. You can even navigate through this by asking simple questions like are you looking for content generation, grammar checking, or paraphrasing?
• Cost: Just like with any venture, the cost of the premium subscriptions to the tool is going to be another deciding factor for you. 
• Customization: The sole purpose of leaning into AI for writing is to be able to use it in your favor. So a tool that’s stringent with customization is not going to be much of an advantage. 
• Ease Of Use: If you are not someone who is close friends with technology, a tool with a complicated interface is a problem. It is critical for you to make sure the complexities of technology do not plague the tool of your choice.

Benefits Of Using AI Essay Writing Tools

You can summarize the features of the tools we talked about in just a few quick points by talking about the benefits of AI in writing. Some of them are as follows. 

• Time Efficiency: AI ensures that the tedious work of research for your writing is done in just a few clicks. 
• Optimized Writing: Author error-free and authentic write-ups with AI’s grammar checks, style suggestions, and plagiarism detection.
• Creativity: Using AI for the technicalities ensures that you devote all your time to enhancing your creativity. Moreover, it helps you with creative blocks too and enhances your productivity. 
• Consistency: The use of AI also ensures that you maintain a consistent tone in your work. The structure and tone of the write-up are always aligned with AI.

Conclusion

As you know, there are multiple AI tools currently ruling the market. This gives you, the users, the leverage to pick the best from the lot, but at the same time, it creates pressure to make the right choice. To navigate successfully between these two situations, you need to understand and acknowledge the need for the tool and proceed according to your set constraints.

We’ve chosen the best tools that we’ve used here to make this search easier for you. From Paperguide’s all-in-one solution for essay writing to Scribblr for writing in dedicated style guides, you won’t have to worry about creative blocks or writing inconsistent quality essays ever again!

FAQs

1. Can AI writing tools help improve my writing skills?

Yes, AI can most definitely help with your writing skills by offering suggestions on your sentence structure and improving your grammar.

2. Are AI essay writing tools suitable for academic use?

There are many writing tools suitable for academic writing, backed by citation generators and plagiarism checkers.

3. How much do AI essay writing tools typically cost?

An AI essay writing tool’s premium version will cost around $10 upto $50 per month.

4. Do AI writing tools offer plagiarism checks?

Traditionally, almost every other writing tool offers a plagiarism checker as a basic feature.

5. Can AI tools help with formatting essays?

Yes, AI tools are designed to format essays. But it may sometimes fail if the need for the editing is rooted in one particular style.

6. What are the limitations of AI essay writing tools?

There are many limitations to an essay writing tool, including the lack of understanding of complex topics, repetitive use of monotonous sentences, and the lack of human empathy towards a sentimental research topic.