Smodin vs Writefull: similar prices, opposite jobs

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

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On monthly billing, Smodin Starter is $12.99 and Premium $19.99, while Writefull Premium is US$21. On annual billing, Smodin works out to $10 or $16 a month, and Writefull Premium is US$150 a year, which falls between Smodin's two annual totals of $120 and $192.

What you get differs more than what you pay. Smodin Starter has all its AI tools with limited writing output; Premium adds unlimited output, premium AI models, advanced humanization and a Chrome extension. Writefull Premium gives unlimited language edits, rewrites and other tools under a fair-use rule.

Both let you start free. Writefull's free plan is a quota of each feature, each marked “Limited”, and some users on r/academia say they hit the daily limit quickly. Smodin lets you try its tools without signing up, but its pricing page lists only the two paid plans and its free limits aren't published.

This is Writefull's core. It runs inside Microsoft Word and Overleaf, checks language directly in LaTeX source, and can generate LaTeX tables and equations. LaTeX users on r/academia value that, though others in the same thread found it correcting mathematics as if it were prose or imposing a serial comma on British English.

Smodin has a rewriter, and its positive Trustpilot reviews mostly praise quick summaries and help tidying their wording rather than the essay writer. But its rewriting tools sit beside a humanizer that promises “Highest humanization possible to bypass Turnitin-level detection”. Those are different jobs from academic language editing.

From a topic, Smodin's AI Writer produces essays, articles or research papers, lets you choose style, tone and length, and expands the next section when asked. Its plans say you can “write full essays with simple prompts”. The writer FAQ adds a reminder to follow your institution's academic integrity policies.

Writefull mostly edits, but it isn't drafting-free. The Abstract Generator, Title Generator and Ask AI produce new text when asked, and the site now promotes a separate Papers AI product to “Draft the whole manuscript”. The Writefull editor itself still works on your sentences.

Smodin says its writer can find sources and add references in APA or MLA in one click, and that it makes facts and statistics “100% accurate”. It doesn't say where the sources come from or how it checks them, and users report references and facts they had to verify by hand. Read every paper it hands you before it goes in a reference list: a citation you haven't read is one you can't defend in a viva or to a marker.

Writefull doesn't find, manage or format sources. Its citation feature, Writefull Cite, flags sentences that look like they need a citation and have none, and it's sold to institutions only. You'll want a reference manager alongside it.

Writefull says it never stores your text or uses it to train its AI, and asks for consent before sending text to third-party AI services. That's worth knowing if your draft contains unpublished results.

Smodin's site shows a 4.8 out of 5 rating citing Trustpilot, but Trustpilot says the rating “is unavailable due to a breach of our guidelines” and that it removed fake reviews for the company. Billing is the most common complaint about Smodin: charges for a full year when users expected monthly billing, and renewals they couldn't get refunded. Some Writefull users also report being charged after cancelling.

Choose Smodin if you want a draft generated, plus summarizing, translation and plagiarism checks under one subscription, and you'll verify every source yourself. Try it without signing up before you pay, and pick the billing period carefully.

Choose Writefull if you write your own research in Word or Overleaf and want academic language edits from a tool that says it doesn't store your text. Start on the free quota, which is limited, and upgrade if it runs out.

If you want help building a paper from your own reading without handing the drafting to AI, EthiWrite is the tool we built. Its autocomplete stops at about thirty words, and Examiner Mode flags thin evidence and gaps in the argument without rewriting anything. It won't write paragraphs from a prompt, so it's the slower choice if you want a draft fast.

Is Smodin or Writefull cheaper?

Smodin's plans cost less month to month: $12.99 or $19.99 against US$21 for Writefull Premium. On annual billing, Writefull's US$150 a year sits between Smodin Starter ($120 a year) and Premium ($192 a year).

Does Writefull work in Overleaf?

Yes. It works inside Overleaf, where it checks language directly in your LaTeX source, and inside Microsoft Word.

Can Smodin's text pass an AI detector?

That's what its humanizer is sold for: its plans promise to “detect and bypass top AI detectors”. Submitting humanized text as your own work is an academic-integrity risk whatever a detector says.

Will Writefull add references to my paper?

No. It doesn't add citations. Writefull Cite, available to institutions, flags sentences that look like they need one.