Alternatives
EssayGPT alternatives you can look at before signing up
HIX.AI launched EssayGPT in May 2024, and its address now redirects to a sign-in page in HIX.AI's app. Its public pages and its own pricing page are gone, so what it does and costs today can't be checked without an account. What's on record, from archived pages, is a Generator that produced “outlines, draft essays, or even complete essays on a given topic”, and a mode that was sold to get those essays past AI detectors.
Every tool below has public pages describing what it does, and where a price isn't shown, its review says so. Jenni AI and Paperpal help with research and citations while you write, Paperguide goes deep on literature reviews, Grammarly and Trinka check your own text, and Writefull suits LaTeX. EthiWrite, which we make, is the first entry.
Prices and features checked on October 17, 2026.
Why EssayGPT users go elsewhere
The archived pages sold an “Undetectable AI Essay” mode to “humanize your AI-generated essay to bypass AI detection” and avoid “getting flagged by Turnitin, GPTZero, Originality.ai”, billed with its own word credits. That page is gone, but HIX still sells HIX Bypass, advertised as “Bypass AI Every Time With 100% Undetectable Content”. If you hand in an essay a generator wrote, a bypass changes whether anyone notices, not whose work it is.
Billing is the loudest complaint about HIX.AI on Trustpilot: unauthorized charges, annual renewals without a reminder, and refunds promised but not paid in full.
The pricing page doesn't clear things up. HIX AI Pro and Max are listed as billed yearly, with a “-” where each price should be, and EssayGPT's own Basic, Pro and Unlimited plans are no longer listed at all.
In fairness, the old pages described a handy kit: a Writer workspace for researching, citing and formatting, a ScholarChat bot for locating sources, a search of 200+ million scholarly sources, APA, MLA and Chicago citations, and one-click export to DOCX, PDF or Google Docs. Positive Trustpilot reviewers, some of them students, say it helps them get assignments done faster.
What to look for in a EssayGPT / HIX AI alternative
A price you can see before you sign in
If the price only appears after you create an account, you can't compare it. Prefer tools whose plan page shows the price and the billing period, and treat a hidden price as a reason to wait.
A renewal you'll see coming
Annual renewals without a reminder are at the centre of the negative reviews of HIX.AI. Whatever you choose, put the renewal date in your calendar the day you subscribe.
Sources you can open
A search of hundreds of millions of papers means little if you can't open the one behind a citation. Look for a tool that links each citation to its paper or passage.
The best EssayGPT / HIX AI alternatives
1. EthiWrite
Full disclosure: this is our tool.
EthiWrite leaves the writing to you. Autocomplete suggests a sentence at a time, capped around thirty words, as grey text, and it won't write paragraphs from a prompt. Every citation comes from a source in your Library: uploaded PDFs, papers from the open OpenAlex index, web pages and books.
When the draft is done, Examiner Mode maps the argument and flags unsupported claims, thin evidence and structural gaps, with no way to rewrite your text. There's a free plan, and citing and export are never metered. One limit: citations come in APA, MLA and Chicago only, the same three styles EssayGPT advertised.
EthiWrite editor with the Guide panel open (demo account, email blurred). Best for: Students who want to write their own essay from sources they can open.
2. Jenni AI
Jenni AI replaces EssayGPT's Writer with an editor you can inspect from the outside. It searches 200M+ papers, or works from your PDFs and a Zotero or Mendeley library, and links AI-suggested sentences to their place in the source PDF. Citations format in 10,000+ styles, and Trustpilot reviewers praise the citation and bibliography tools.
Free gives 10 autocompletes a day. Plus costs $12 a month and Pro $29; the price of the annual discount isn't shown. Autocomplete will produce whole passages if you let it. Its billing complaints look a lot like HIX's: several Trustpilot reviewers report renewals charged without notice and refunds refused.
Jenni AI editor, signed in to a free account. Best for: Students who want a cited editor with a big paper search and a public pricing page.
3. Paperpal
Paperpal is an academic language editor that also searches and cites. Its grammar and tone suggestions are trained on scholarly edits, and it runs in Word and, through browser extensions, in Google Docs and Overleaf. Research and Cite searches 250M+ articles and formats citations in 10,000+ styles.
Free gets you 200 grammar edits a month and five a day each of paraphrase, trim, translate and AI review, with no credit card. Paid plans (Prime and Pro) come monthly or annually, at prices that load by region. Ask and it will draft too, “with suggestions grounded in your sources”.
Paperpal editor on its built-in sample document, signed in to a free account. Best for: Students who want academic polish, translation help and citations on text they wrote.
4. Paperguide
Paperguide makes a 200-million-paper search checkable. It covers 200M+ papers across PubMed, arXiv, OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar plus your own library, every claim links to the exact sentence in the source, and it says AI-written passages are never given invented references. Systematic reviews get dual independent screening and a PRISMA diagram.
The free plan has 2,000 AI credits a month. Plus is $12 a month per seat on annual billing, and yearly billing is advertised as saving 41% over monthly. Its AI Writer will generate a cited draft from a research question, and some Trustpilot reviewers found its results unhelpful for university assignments.
Paperguide dashboard, signed in to a free account (the account name is removed). Best for: Literature reviews and research-heavy assignments where every claim needs tracing.
5. Grammarly
Grammarly's docs editor is free to use and works on your writing. AI Grader estimates a grade from your rubric with personalized feedback, Reader Reactions shows where a reader could get confused, and Authorship records whether text was typed, pasted or AI-assisted.
It sells a Humanizer as well, but says it “is not intended to bypass AI detectors.” Free use is metered, with 100 AI prompts a month; Pro is $144 a year or $30 month to month. For references, Citation Finder offers web sources in APA, MLA or Chicago; its agents can draft text when asked.
Grammarly doc with Grammarly's built-in demo essay, signed in to a free account. Best for: Feedback on your own draft and a record of how you wrote it.
6. Trinka
Trinka checks grammar, punctuation and academic style, with style-guide corrections for APA, AMA, ACS, AGU and IEEE on paid plans, and works in Word, the browser, a Windows app and on LaTeX files. Its Citation Checker validates your references against Crossref and flags hallucinated ones.
It works on text you've written and doesn't find sources. The free Basic plan gives 5,000 words of writing help a month; Premium is $48 a year, and Premium Plus, at $125 a year, adds file translation. A Confidential Data plan at $300 a year adds instant data deletion and no AI training.
Trinka editor on its built-in demo file, signed in to a free account. Best for: Polishing academic English and checking the references on a finished draft.
7. Writefull
Writefull is for people writing in LaTeX. It works inside Overleaf, checks language directly in the source, and can generate LaTeX tables and equations; it runs in Word too. Its feedback comes from models trained on published papers, and it says it never stores your text or uses it to train its AI.
It doesn't find, manage or format sources. Premium is US$21 a month or US$150 a year, and the free plan is a limited quota of each feature. Its Abstract Generator drafts an abstract from your paper, and some r/academia users found it correcting maths as if it were prose.
Writefull Academizer run on its own example sentence, signed out (the Word and Overleaf tools need an account). Best for: Researchers in Overleaf who want language edits on their own text.
At a glance
Every tool above, with EssayGPT / HIX AI on the last row for reference. Writing assistants help you write; essay generators write the essay for you.
| Product | Type | Paid from | Free tier | Citations | Ghostwriting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EthiWrite | Writing assistant | $9 (billed every week) or $10/month ($120 billed annually) | Yes | Only from sources you added | Guides; you write |
| Jenni AI | Writing assistant | $12/month | Yes | Your sources, or papers it finds for you | Drafts text when asked |
| Paperpal | Writing assistant | See pricing page | Yes | Your sources, or papers it finds for you | Drafts text when asked |
| Paperguide | Writing assistant | $12/month | Yes | Your sources, or papers it finds for you | Drafts text when asked |
| Grammarly | Writing assistant | $12/month | Yes | Your sources, or papers it finds for you | Drafts text when asked |
| Trinka | Writing assistant | $48/year | Yes | Does not cite | Drafts text when asked |
| Writefull | Writing assistant | US$21/month | Yes | Does not cite | Drafts text when asked |
| EssayGPT / HIX AI | Essay generator | Price not shown | Yes | From its own paper database | Writes the essay |
The bottom line
EssayGPT has gone behind a sign-in and taken its prices with it. Pick a tool you can inspect first: Jenni AI or Paperpal for help citing as you write, Paperguide for a literature review, and Grammarly or Trinka to check the draft you wrote.
FAQ
- Is EssayGPT free?
- HIX AI's free plan gives 20 credits, but its pricing page doesn't say how many EssayGPT uses. HIX previously described a free EssayGPT plan with no credit card required; whether that still exists can't be checked without signing in.
- Did EssayGPT cite real papers?
- The vendor said the Writer found papers in its own database of scholarly sources and formatted the citations. Whether essays from the Generator cited real, correctly attributed papers was never independently verified, and a review by a company that sells study-abroad services didn't test its citations.
- Does EssayGPT work in other languages?
- The vendor said it writes in 50+ languages. If what you need is help with your own text in another language, Paperpal's free plan includes five translations a day, and Trinka Premium Plus translates files.
- What should I do with essays I've already generated?
- Treat them as notes, not submissions. Check each citation against the paper itself, then write the essay you hand in from your own outline.