Grammarly vs Smodin: a writing coach or an essay machine?

Writing assistants help you write; essay generators write the essay for you.

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Smodin's plans let you “write full essays with simple prompts”. The AI Writer drafts essays, articles and research papers from a topic, lets you pick the style, tone and length, and expands the next section on request. Its writer FAQ adds “Always follow your institution's academic integrity policies when using AI writing tools.”

Grammarly writes too, in a different register. Its agents “can draft new text directly into the editor”, and AI Grader's suggestions include AI-generated rewrites, which Grammarly warns could get your work flagged for AI use. Students on Reddit report high detector scores on work they wrote and only edited with Grammarly. Smodin's writer is pitched at whole essays; Grammarly's drafting is described as new text and rewrites inside your document.

Smodin goes all in on evasion. Its plans also promise to “detect and bypass top AI detectors”, and its humanizer page calls the result “undetectable”. Submitting text like that as your own is an academic-integrity risk, whatever any detector says.

Grammarly's Humanizer is meant to make AI-assisted writing “sound more natural”, and it sits beside an AI Detector in the same product. The more useful tool for a student is Authorship: it records your process (typed, pasted, AI-assisted) with a replay and a report you decide whether to share, and it's on the free plan.

Smodin says its writer can find sources and add references in APA or MLA in one click, but it doesn't say where those sources come from. It also claims the writer makes facts, data and statistics “100% accurate” without saying how. A Reddit user reports its references “need a second look”.

Grammarly's Citation Finder flags claims in your draft that need support and suggests web-based sources it finds, then formats and inserts the citation. It doesn't name its databases either, and it stops at APA, MLA and Chicago, but the source is put in front of you to read before you keep it. On the free plan, that's five citations a day.

Grammarly's checks are built around coursework. AI Grader estimates your grade from the assignment details and rubric with personalized feedback, though Grammarly is careful to call it an estimate, and Reader Reactions shows where readers could get confused. The free plan allows three pieces of AI Grader feedback once a day; plagiarism and AI-text detection need Pro.

Smodin's subscription bundles an AI content detector, a plagiarism checker, a rewriter, a summarizer and a translator, and it says the detector and plagiarism checker can be tried without signing up. Its positive Trustpilot reviews mostly praise the quick summaries and help tidying up wording, not the essay writer.

Smodin Starter is $12.99 billed monthly or $10 a month billed annually, with limited writing output. Premium, at $19.99 or $16, adds unlimited output, premium AI models, advanced humanization and the Chrome extension. The tools can be tried without signing up, but the pricing page lists only the two paid plans and publishes no free limits.

Grammarly's free plan covers docs, Authorship and most agents, within daily limits and 100 AI prompts a month. Pro is $30 month to month or $144 a year, which the plans page shows as $12 a month. Month to month, both Smodin plans cost less than Pro. On annual billing, Smodin Starter's $10 a month comes in under that $12, and Premium's $16 comes in over it.

Ignore the 4.8/5 rating on Smodin's site. It cites Trustpilot, but Trustpilot says Smodin's rating “is unavailable due to a breach of our guidelines” and that it has “removed a number of fake reviews for this company.” Smodin users also report annual charges they didn't expect and refused refunds, while Grammarly's billing reviews are split.

Choose Grammarly if you want to write your own essays and get feedback on them: AI Grader against your rubric, Reader Reactions, citation suggestions and an Authorship record you can share, all free within daily limits.

Choose Smodin if you work across languages and mainly want its translator, summarizer or plagiarism checker on text you wrote. It generates text in more than twelve languages, and Starter is $10 a month on annual billing. Leave the writer and humanizer alone.

For feedback on the argument with no humanizer anywhere near it, there's EthiWrite, which we make. Examiner Mode flags unsupported claims and structural gaps with no ability to rewrite your text, and citations come only from your Library. Its paper search covers one index, OpenAlex, rather than a commercial database, though unlike Smodin it says where its sources come from.

Does Grammarly's Humanizer hide AI writing?

Grammarly says it “is not intended to bypass AI detectors”; it's meant to make AI-assisted writing “sound more natural”. Grammarly also sells an AI Detector, so it's on both sides of the question.

Can Grammarly show how I wrote my essay?

Yes. Authorship records what you typed, pasted or wrote with AI help, with a replay and a report you choose whether to share. It's on the free plan and can be turned on in Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Canvas LMS submissions.

Is Smodin free?

You can try its tools without signing up, but the pricing page lists only the two paid plans and publishes no free limits. Smodin's writer FAQ describes “two paid plans”.

Does Grammarly check for plagiarism for free?

No. Plagiarism and AI-text detection come with Pro; the free plan leaves them out. Smodin's plagiarism checker can be tried without signing up.