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Pricing: Freemium
Verified: Yes
Editor rating: 4.3/5
Updated: September 2026

Free web app highlights complex sentences/passive voice - achieve 6th-8th grade readability instantly.

Editor's take: Excellent readability editor, keeps writing clear and concise — Sohail Akhtar

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Editor-selected listing
Verified by our team
Independent & reader-supported

Pricing & free tier — last checked

How we checked: read directly from the vendor's own pricing pagesource

First check, and the first listing in this queue whose figures were all correct. The defect was the product map: we welded the one-time desktop app to the subscription under an invented name, 'Desktop Plus', and told readers the $19.99 purchase added the AI features. It does not. Hemingway sells three separate things and the AI exists in only one of them.

WhatWhat we foundStatus
Free web editor$0, unlimited, no account required. Highlights hard sentences, passive voice and adverbs, and scores reading grade level. Confirmed
Hemingway Editor 3 (Classic desktop)$19.99 as a one-time purchase, Mac and Windows. Offline editing and export. No AI features.Confirmed on hemingwayapp.com/desktop, where it renders as the price of 'Hemingway Editor 3 — for Mac and PC' above live Buy Now buttons. Worth recording HOW this was checked: '19.99' also appears once inside the Plus page as SVG path coordinates, which is precisely the kind of match that makes a naive price scrape confident and wrong. Confirmed
Plus — Individual 5K$8.33 a month, billed as $100 a year. 5,000 AI sentence rewrites a month. Confirmed
Plus — Individual 10K$12.50 a month, billed as $150 a year. 10,000 AI sentence rewrites a month.Three signals agree on the 10,000: the tier id `tier-individual-10k`, the documented 5,000 on the tier below, and the tier's own copy — 'Double your access'. Confirmed
Plus — Team 10K$12.50 per user a month, billed as $150 a year per seat. Confirmed
ArithmeticReconciles exactly in both directions: 8.33 x 12 = 99.96 against $100, and 12.50 x 12 = 150.00 against $150. Confirmed
TrialHemingway Editor Plus opens with a two-week free trial and asks for no payment details up front. Confirmed
'Desktop Plus' at $19.99 'adds offline/AI features'Withdrawn. No product of that name exists, and the one-time app carries no AI.This is a costlier error than a wrong price. A wrong price loses a reader accuracy; this sentence tells them they can buy the AI rewriting once for $19.99, and they would have received an offline editor that does not do it. Same class as shareasale, pincel and elicit — the pricing MODEL was wrong, not a digit, so the page's argument had to be rewritten and not just its number. Changed since last check

Checked by the TheToolsVerse Verification Deskby reading the vendor's own published pages, not by testing the product in an account. Hemingway Editor can change prices at any time without notice. The date above is the last time we looked; if it looks old, treat every figure here as unconfirmed and check Hemingway Editor directly before paying.

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Editor's Verdict

Official Review
Hemingway color-codes writing problems in real time — hard sentences (red), complex sentences (yellow), passive voice (blue), adverbs (green) — with an instant grade-level score requiring no login or signup. The free web version is genuinely complete for most use cases. Be careful which paid version you buy: $19.99 once gets you the Classic desktop app, which adds offline editing and no AI at all, while the AI rewriting is a separate Plus subscription starting at $8.33 a month. Best for functional writing like blogs and documentation; the enforced clarity can feel reductive for literary or highly technical prose.
4.3 / 5.0
Editor Rating

Reviewed by Sohail Akhtar

Lead Editor & Founder

Pros

What we like

  • Free web version works immediately — no account, no signup, no paywall on core readability analysis
  • Real-time color-coding makes writing problems immediately visible without parsing a long feedback report
  • Grade-level score calibrates writing to the 6th-8th grade target that maximizes reader comprehension and engagement
  • The Classic desktop app is a one-time $19.99 purchase, not a subscription

Cons

Limitations

  • Enforces brevity and simplicity — not suitable for legal, academic, or technical writing where precision and complexity are necessary
  • AI rewriting, which needs the Plus subscription rather than the $19.99 app, can strip voice and nuance in favour of generic clarity
  • No grammar or spelling checking — it is a readability and style tool only

Pricing

PlanDetails
Free web editor$0, unlimited, no account required. Highlights hard-to-read sentences, passive voice and adverbs, and scores reading grade level. This is the version most people mean by 'Hemingway'.
Hemingway Editor 3 (Classic desktop)$19.99 as a ONE-TIME purchase, for Mac and Windows. Works offline and exports formatted text. It does NOT include the AI features \u2014 those are only in the Plus subscription, and this is the distinction most likely to cause a wasted purchase.
Plus \u2014 Individual 5K$8.33 a month, billed as $100 a year. 5,000 AI sentence rewrites a month.
Plus \u2014 Individual 10K$12.50 a month, billed as $150 a year. Double the allowance at 10,000 AI sentence rewrites a month.
Plus \u2014 Team 10K$12.50 per user a month, billed as $150 a year per seat. The 10K allowance with team billing.
TrialHemingway Editor Plus starts with a two-week free trial and does not ask for payment details up front. Read from hemingwayapp.com/hemingway-editor-plus and /desktop, 9 September 2026.

Hemingway is three products and it matters which one you buy. The web editor is free, unlimited and needs no account. Hemingway Editor 3 — the Classic desktop app for Mac and Windows — is a one-time $19.99 purchase that works offline and does NOT include the AI features. The AI rewriting lives only in the Hemingway Editor Plus subscription: Individual 5K at $8.33 a month, billed as $100 a year, for 5,000 AI sentence rewrites a month; Individual 10K at $12.50 a month, billed as $150 a year, for 10,000; and Team 10K at $12.50 per user a month on the same $150 annual basis. Plus opens with a two-week free trial that does not ask for payment details. This page previously merged the desktop app and the subscription into one invented product name, and said the $19.99 purchase added AI features. There is no such product, and it does not — the one-time app and the subscription are separate things. Read from hemingwayapp.com/hemingway-editor-plus and /desktop on 9 September 2026.

What is Hemingway Editor?

Hemingway color-codes writing problems: yellow (complex), red (very hard), blue (passive), green (adverbs). Instant grade level score. Free web version works immediately. The Classic desktop app ($19.99 one-time) adds offline editing; AI rewriting is the separate Plus subscription, from $8.33 a month. Bloggers hit 6th-8th grade sweet spot for max engagement. ESL writers fix unnatural phrasing. No login/signup - paste text, get analysis, rewrite smarter.

Associated Tags

hemingway app free, readability checker, passive voice finder, writing grade level, clear writing tool, blog readability, grammar checker free, seo writing tool

Key Features

Instant readability grade score
Highlights complex sentences
Passive voice + adverb detection
6th-8th grade optimization
Free web app - no signup
Desktop offline ($19.99 once)
AI sentence rewriting (Plus)
SEO/blogger proven
Real Use Cases

How professionals leverage Hemingway Editor - Free Readability Checker

Discover practical workflows and real-world scenarios where Hemingway Editor delivers key solutions.

01

Bloggers and content writers optimizing posts for readability before publishing

02

Marketing copywriters tightening email and landing page copy to reduce friction

03

Non-native English speakers editing for unnatural phrasing and overly complex sentence structures

04

Editors running a quick readability check on drafts before returning detailed feedback to writers

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hemingway Editor free, and what does paying add?
The web editor is genuinely free and unlimited, with no account required — it highlights dense sentences, passive voice and adverbs and gives you a reading-grade score. Paying buys one of two different things, and they are easy to confuse. $19.99 once buys Hemingway Editor 3, the Classic desktop app for Mac and Windows: offline editing and export, and no AI. The AI rewriting is a separate subscription, Hemingway Editor Plus, from $8.33 a month billed as $100 a year for 5,000 AI sentence rewrites a month, or $12.50 a month billed as $150 a year for 10,000. An earlier version of this answer merged the two and said the one-time purchase added AI features; it does not. Checked on hemingwayapp.com, 9 September 2026.
What does Hemingway analyze?
Complex sentences (yellow/red), passive voice (blue), adverbs (green) + grade level score.
Target readability score?
6th-8th grade = maximum engagement without losing sophistication.
Hemingway vs Grammarly?
Hemingway = readability/style. Grammarly = grammar/spelling. Use both.