Readability tool
Looking for a Hemingway Editor alternative?
A readability tool that grades your text and highlights hard sentences, adverbs and passive voice. No AI involved. MonkeyPen is a different shape of tool, and this page is a comparison rather than a pitch — so the table starts with what Hemingway Editor does better, and there is a section on when you should stay put.
Hemingway Editor vs MonkeyPen, side by side
| Hemingway Editor | MonkeyPen | |
|---|---|---|
| Genuinely better at | Being free, instant and completely transparent. Nothing is sent to a model, nothing is rewritten behind your back, and the highlighting teaches you what is wrong with the sentence. If you want to actually improve, this beats any rewriter — including ours. | It tells you which sentences are hard; we rewrite them. Ours is faster when you have twenty minutes and a deadline; theirs is better when you have an hour and want to learn. |
| Known for | A readability tool that grades your text and highlights hard sentences, adverbs and passive voice. No AI involved. | One job: taking a draft that reads like AI wrote it and making it read like you wrote it, for a specific kind of writing. |
| Day to day it feels like | A diagnostic. It highlights what is hard to read and leaves the rewriting entirely to you. | Paste, say what the text is and the tone you want, get a rewrite plus a short note on what changed and why. No workspace, no templates, no account. |
Stay with Hemingway Editor if…
……you would rather do the editing yourself. Use the free one. That is the honest answer and it is a good tool.
Hemingway will not touch the specific problem this site is about — AI drafts are usually perfectly readable, they just sound like nobody. But it costs nothing to check.
We would rather you kept the tool that fits than switched and went back a fortnight later. Nothing on this page is worth changing your workflow over unless the difference above is actually your problem.
What you get if you do switch
- A rewrite tuned to the text type. Tell it that it is a cover letter, an invoice reminder or a wedding speech and the instruction changes, because the reader changes.
- Writing insights, not just output. Every rewrite comes with three to five specific things that changed and why, plus one tip you can apply yourself next time.
- Nothing to set up. No account, no workspace, no brand kit. Paste, two dropdowns, done — 5 free every day.
- 100 pages that already know your case, each with the tool pre-set and the specific giveaway for that kind of writing.
- The same thing on your phone. MonkeyPen is an iPhone app too, at the same price.
Try it on the same paragraph
The only honest way to compare rewriters is to run one paragraph through both and keep the version you would actually send. Here is ours, free:
Paste a paragraph
No account. 5 free rewrites a day, then $5/month.
5 free today
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Why it reads differently
Read it before you send it. Your name is on this, so fix anything that is not true of you and put back the one specific detail only you know.
More comparisons
See all 20 comparisons → · or go straight to your case: all 100 text types →
Hemingway Editor and other product names belong to their respective owners; this comparison reflects each tool’s publicly described focus and our own honest read of it, and none of them has endorsed it. We deliberately quote no prices, ratings or user numbers for other tools, because those change — check their own site for current details. MonkeyPen is a writing tool: it rewrites what you give it and keeps the facts, and you should read any rewrite before you send it.