[Pricing] Grammarly free tier: 100 AI rewrites a month, or pay US$12 for 2,000?

Grammarly’s free tier runs out of rewrites fast—here’s the real cost breakdown

Grammarly is the writing assistant most people reach for when their English needs cleaning up before they send it. The free tier gives you unlimited spelling and grammar checks, which handles the basic job. But flip on the AI features—the rewrites, tone shifts, plagiarism scans—and you hit a wall fast. The question AMPM readers ask most: does the free tier actually last you a month, or do you end up forced to buy Pro?

We broke down every tier and tested the free quota in real usage. One finding: Grammarly publishes an annual discount but won’t tell you the actual price. That matters if you’re considering the yearly commitment.

The free tier: solid basics, hard AI ceiling

Unlimited spelling and grammar checks without paying a cent—that part is real. The tool plugs into your browser, email, and word processor. Tone detection comes free too, flagging when your email sounds too harsh or too casual.

But here’s where it gets tight: 100 AI-powered generations per month. That’s rewrites, completions, tone adjustments. The math breaks fast. Three emails a day using the AI rewrite feature? That’s roughly 90 uses per month. A couple of long emails with multiple rewrites, a LinkedIn post that needs voice work, one memo rewritten for a friendlier tone—you’re out before the month ends. The reset doesn’t come until the calendar flips.

Plagiarism detection is locked to Pro. So is full-sentence rewriting (the free version suggests edits inline, but doesn’t rewrite whole sentences for you). Heavy writers—students, freelancers, marketers—notice this gap immediately.

The US$12 Pro plan: realistic for daily writers

Monthly billing at US$12. Grammarly claims a discount for annual billing but publishes no price. We couldn’t find it listed anywhere, so treat annual as a mystery discount, not a known option.

Pro raises the AI generation quota to 2,000 per month. That’s roughly 66 per day if you write every day. For someone drafting three or four substantial emails, a blog post outline, and a report in a day, 2,000 is comfortable room. Tight for someone shipping multiple content pieces daily, loose for occasional writers.

You also get:

• Full-sentence rewrite (select text, rewrite the whole thing in one shot)
• Tone adjustment (make it sound more confident, more empathetic, more formal—without rewriting from scratch)
• Plagiarism detection (runs your text against billions of web pages and published works)
• AI-generated content detection (flags passages that look like they came from an LLM)
• Unlimited personalized suggestions (the free tier throttles these too)
• Priority support

The 7-day trial lets you test it at full capacity before committing.

🔍 AMPM exclusive check

We verified every number on grammarly.com/plans on 2026-09-21. The free tier limits, Pro pricing, and feature set match the official page exactly. One gap: Grammarly states “annual discount available” on the Pro page but does not publish the discounted rate. We searched their site, pricing FAQ, and support pages—no public annual price. That’s a real gap: you can’t compare true year-over-year cost without knowing the annual number. If you’re considering the yearly commitment, you’d need to ask their sales team or sign up to see the discount at checkout.

☀️ AMO, the budget-minded cat

If you write English occasionally—a few emails a week, monthly reports—the free tier is genuinely enough. 100 rewrites per month is only tight if you’re using the rewrite feature constantly. Basic spell-check and grammar catch are unlimited and catch the typos that embarrass you.

But here’s the trap: once you install Grammarly, you start using the rewrite suggestions. That changes the math. A rewrite-heavy workflow (someone who drafts three or four emails daily, uses tone adjustment, tries different phrasings) will burn 100 rewrites in three weeks, not a month. Then you’re either sitting in read-only mode for the last week or upgrading mid-cycle.

For budget writers, the question is whether paying US$12 monthly saves you that pain. If you’re a heavy user, the answer is yes—2,000 rewrites spread over 30 days is roughly 66 per day, and that’s realistic room. If you write rarely, Free stays free. If you write moderately—once a day on average, maybe twice some days—you need to test your own usage against the 100-per-month cap. Free offers a perfect way to figure this out without risk.

The plagiarism detector is the outlier: if you need it, Pro is mandatory. Students writing papers, authors checking submissions, content teams verifying original work—that’s a forced upgrade decision, not an optional one.

🌙 PIMI, the performance-minded cat

Grammarly’s AI rewriting is the draw here, not the basic spell-check. The 2,000-per-month limit on Pro is a real quota, not marketing fluff—we traced it across their documentation and pricing page consistently.

For someone writing daily, 2,000 looks comfortable until you factor in iteration. A single email draft rewritten three times for tone, phrasing, and audience eats 3 of your monthly budget. A long report with ten paragraphs, each rewritten twice to test tone, burns 20. A content creator working on five social posts daily, each rewritten multiple times for platform voice, could reasonably hit 2,000 in heavy weeks.

The feature set is solid for performance work:

• Full-sentence rewrites beat inline suggestions. You get a finished alternative, not fragments you have to assemble.
• Tone adjustment is practical. Rewrite as “confident” or “empathetic” without redoing the whole sentence yourself.
• Plagiarism detection is table-stakes for any serious writer.
• AI detection is a newer add: it flags passages likely generated by LLMs, useful if you’re reviewing content from teams or freelancers.

The weak point: 2,000 is a moving target for professionals. A marketing team working on a campaign might burn that in a week. A developer writing documentation and blog posts could hit it. Anyone on a tight deadline doing heavy revision will feel the cap.

There’s no published mid-tier option. Enterprise pricing is custom and not public, so if 2,000 isn’t enough, you’re in conversation with Grammarly’s sales team, not browsing a menu of higher tiers.

Performance writers will also notice what’s missing: no integration tier for teams (the free tier and Pro are both individual seats), no API for bulk checking, no custom rules for house style or brand voice. You’re getting an excellent individual tool, not a team platform.

Verdict: who should use it, who should skip it

Use the free tier if: You write English occasionally and mainly need a safety net against typos. The spell-check is genuinely unlimited and catches real errors. Install it and let it work—don’t activate the AI rewrites and you’ll stay in budget.

Upgrade to Pro if: You write daily and use rewrites. The 100-per-month free cap runs out fast once you start leaning on AI suggestions. 2,000 is realistic for a daily writer. Also mandatory if you need plagiarism detection or tone adjustment features.

Skip it if: You write in Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, or other languages. Grammarly does English only—no exceptions. It won’t help you.

Wait for sales team contact if: You’re a writing team, agency, or heavy-volume operation. 2,000 rewrites per month isn’t scalable at team size. Enterprise exists but isn’t published, so you’re negotiating blind. Ask about volume pricing before committing to multiple Pro seats.

Written: 2026-09-21

Price last verified: 2026-09-21

Tool last health-checked: 2026-09-21

🔗 Related on AMPM

• Grammarly pricing & free tier

📎 Sources

All prices and quotas in this article come from AMPM’s verified dataset for Grammarly (last verified 2026-09-21); primary sources:

• https://www.grammarly.com/plans
• https://www.grammarly.com

🐾 Meet the cats: AMO and PIMI

AMPM is a Taiwan-based AI-tool pricing watchdog. Our motto: ask before you subscribe. Two cats argue every tool from two sides:

• ☀️ AMO — the budget-minded cat. Always asks: is the free tier enough, and is paying actually worth it?
• 🌙 PIMI — the performance-minded cat. Cares about whether it works well, fast, and gets your job done.

When they are done arguing, you know whether to pay. Every number is checked by us, with the verification date at the end.

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