Hemingway Editor
Flags long sentences, passive voice and hard-to-read paragraphs in your draft, then shows you plainly what to cut.
What you'd use it for
Running a finished draft through a plain-English readability check before it goes out, without anything rewriting it for you.
- Colour-code a paragraph by readability, yellow for a hard sentence, red for a very hard one
- Flag passive voice, adverbs and needlessly complex words as you type
- Export a marked-up draft to Word, PDF, HTML or Markdown, or publish straight to WordPress
- Format text for publishing with bold, italics, headers and bullets in a distraction-free view
The verdict
Hemingway's free web editor and $19.99 desktop app stay the readability pass, not the writing tool — they will not draft, rewrite or paraphrase a sentence for you, only tell you which ones are hard to read and why. That restraint is what makes those two worth pairing with an AI assistant rather than choosing between them, draft with something that generates, then run the result through something that only grades. The paid Hemingway Editor Plus tier, around $10 a month, breaks from that and adds AI-assisted rewriting on top of the same grading engine, for anyone who wants the fix drafted rather than just named.
What it costs
| Tier | Price | For | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web Editor | $0 | Anyone editing a draft in the browser. | Full readability grading, sentence and adverb flags, no account or signup required. |
| Desktop App (Hemingway Editor 3) | $19.99 one-time | Someone who wants the editor offline, without a browser tab open. | The same editing engine as the web version, works with no internet connection, one-time purchase via Shopify checkout with PayPal option, no AI features. |
| Hemingway Editor Plus | $10/mo, or $100/yr billed annually | Someone who wants the flagged sentence rewritten for them, not just flagged. | AI-assisted sentence and paragraph rewrites, expanded grammar fixes on top of readability grading, a monthly AI-sentence credit allowance, two-week free trial that ends on its own without charging. |
Read from Hemingway Editor's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.
What you need to start
- Nothing beyond a browser for the free web editor, no account or signup
- A payment method for the $19.99 desktop app, bought through Shopify checkout with a PayPal option
- macOS or Windows to install the desktop app
Seconds to a working result in the free web editor; a couple of minutes to buy, download and install the desktop app.
Your first run Paste any text into the free editor at hemingwayapp.com and it colour-codes every hard sentence and passive-voice phrase within seconds, no account, no upload, nothing to configure.
Where it breaks
Hemingway edits what you already wrote — it does not draft new copy from a prompt the way a general chat assistant does. The free web editor and the $19.99 desktop app are a report on a document, not a writer of one, and have no AI rewriting feature at all. The separate Hemingway Editor Plus subscription is the exception, at $10/mo or $100/yr, adding AI-assisted rewriting on a monthly sentence-credit allowance.
The free web editor runs in any browser; the desktop app installs on macOS and Windows.
First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.
When not to use it
Not for anyone on the free or $19.99 desktop tiers who wants the flagged sentence rewritten for them — those two name what's wrong and stop there, so pair one of them with an AI assistant if you want the fix drafted too, or pay for Plus instead. Not for structural or developmental editing on any tier, it reads at the sentence and word level only, never plot, argument or organisation.
There’s a category of writing tool that tells you what to change and a category that changes it for you, and Hemingway has stayed firmly in the first one for more than a decade, through the entire period AI writing tools moved toward the second. It reads a paragraph and colour-codes it — yellow for a hard-to-read sentence, red for a very hard one, purple for a needlessly complex word — and leaves the rewriting to you.
That restraint holds for the free web editor and the $19.99 desktop app: neither uses a language model, generates text, or offers a rewrite suggestion on its own — they’re a rules-based readability engine, plainly labelled as such, and hadn’t needed to become an AI tool to stay useful. Hemingway now also sells a tier that breaks from that: Hemingway Editor Plus, around $10 a month, rewrites the sentences it flags instead of only naming them. This entry sits in the directory because plenty of businesses reach for AI writing help when what they actually need is a second pair of eyes on prose that’s already written, and the free Hemingway does that job as well as anything newer.
Free web editor, $19.99 desktop app, and the $10/mo Plus tier
The web editor and the desktop app aren’t really different products — the desktop app is the same grading engine, sold once instead of used for free in a browser, for people who want it available without an internet connection or a tab open. For most people the free web version at hemingwayapp.com is the whole answer; the desktop purchase is a convenience fee, not a feature unlock. Plus is the actual upgrade: a $10/mo (or $100/yr) subscription layered on top, with a two-week free trial, that adds AI-assisted rewriting of the sentences it flags. It’s worth paying for only if you specifically want the fix drafted rather than named — most people are still better served by the free web editor paired with a general AI assistant for the rewrite.
Where it fits next to AI writing tools
Pair it with ChatGPT or Claude rather than choosing between them — draft with an AI assistant, then run the draft through Hemingway before publishing. Each does a job the other doesn’t.
Alternatives
Writing & editingAppsGrammarly
An AI writing assistant that lives inside the apps you already type in, correcting and rewriting as you go rather than waiting for you to paste something into a chat box.
Writing & editingAppsWordtune
Rewrites a sentence several ways so you can pick the tone you meant, and summarises long pages down to the parts worth reading.
Assistants & chatAppsChatGPT
OpenAI's assistant in a browser tab, a desktop app and a phone app, where you ask questions, draft text, and hand it files or spreadsheets to work through.
Assistants & chatModelClaude
Anthropic's AI assistant, available in a browser tab and — the part that matters here — as a desktop app that can read the files on your own machine and reach the systems you connect to it.
Get Hemingway Editor
Buying the tool is not the hard part.
The ebook is about what to hand over, in what order, and how you find out when it goes wrong. One payment, no subscription.