Last Updated on February 18, 2024 by Alex Birkett
AI writing tools are proliferating.
“Use it or get left behind,” they say.
I don’t know about all that. But I do use AI writing apps for research, outlining a piece of content as well as optimizing it for search engines.
Fact: I’m using Jasper to write this piece right now.
What is AI Writing Software?
AI writing software, as it sounds, uses artificial intelligence to create or alter text.
There are a few different types of AI writing assistants. Most of them fall under the category of “general use AI writing software.” Tools like Jasper.ai, Copy.ai, and Writer all allow you to do…well, just about anything with their AI writing tool.
Like I said, I’m writing this (long form) blog post using an AI writing assistant. But I could also use it for other cases, like to expand my sentences, rewrite paragraphs…hell, even write love poems.
Some tools like Frase and Dashword focus on creating AI content briefs and outlines. I include these in the AI writing software category as they help speed up the writing process, mostly by organizing a ton of research and outlining.
Others are very specific, focusing only on rewriting and paraphrasing or something like sales copy.
In any case, here’s the bottom line: AI writing software is awesome.
I know “artificial intelligence” triggers a lot of skepticism nowadays, and for good reason. It’s been a buzzword to generate sales for years.
Most of the tools here are built on top of GPT-3, which was released by OpenAI. GPT-3 is a pretty incredible piece of technology, and it’s only going to get better.
In short: if you’re a content creator, you should be using AI writing software. Here are the 13 best AI writing tools available today
Editor’s note: I’m going to use some affiliate links when possible to try to earn some revenue from my content. These don’t change the opinions espoused in the content nor the style in which they are written. If I think a product sucks, I’m not going to say otherwise. This is just a bonus and a way to fund the whole operation. Anyway, enjoy the article!
The 13 Best AI Apps for Writing
- Jasper AI
- GrowthBar
- Copy AI
- Writer
- Frase
- Dashword
- WriteSonic
- Article Forge
- Quillbot
- Hypotenuse AI
- Wordtune
- Anyword
- Grammarly
1. Jasper.AI
Jasper (formerly Conversion.AI and Jarvis) is an all-in-one AI writing tool that can do just about anything.
The interface is simple and easy to use, though this is a tool you’ll have to learn to use if you want to get the maximum value out of it.
For beginners (and even for experts), they have a collection of great templates to get you started. These include features to write Facebook ads, brainstorm a bunch of blog post headlines, and of course, write entire blog posts from start to finish.
They also include “recipes,” which are formulas for commands to tell Jasper to accomplish something specific. For example, you could write the perfect cold email using the AIDA model:
I’ve mostly covered the broad spectrum text generation features.
But you can also hit “expand” to have Jasper add more sentences to your text. Or you can rewrite copy in a different tone and voice (think: for guest posts or for repurposing content for social media).
If you really want to get the most out of Jasper, you’ve gotta use Boss Mode. This allows you to write longer sections as well as use their powerful command tool or integrate with Surfer to create SEO content.
I’ve been using Jasper for a few months now and I absolutely love it. The results are often incredible, and honestly, I’ve been surprised to say it does very well at creative writing (not just factual, bland stuff).
The only downsides are that it’s not free (though it is affordable), and the learning curve to master this tool is quite high. If you don’t know how to use it well, it can be a bit overwhelming.
Pros:
- Best long form content generator in the business
- Built on GPT-3 and constantly improving and releasing new products
- Boss Mode + Surfer SEO integration make it one of the most powerful tools
- Tons of ready-made templates and recipes to get you started
Cons:
- Can be overwhelming to new users
- Sometimes factual claims are inaccurate; good editing still need to prevail
- No freemium plans (though they have a 5 day money back guarantee)
Pricing: Plans start at $29 per month (though like I said, opt for Boss Mode, which begins at $59/mo)
G2 Score: 4.8/5
2. GrowthBar
GrowthBar is an AI writing platform built for SEO and organic marketing.
It’s a complete toolset to help SEOs and content marketers ramp up production and improve rankings and results.
They’ve got AI-powered content brief technology that helps you build an outline designed to rank for your target keyword. They also give you a score to aim towards as well as word count suggestions and related keywords.
Their AI content generator is one of the better ones in the space as well, especially for long form content. It includes details from your content brief as well as target audience and persona, so the content it generates isn’t just generic fluff.
Other than their AI tools, they also offer keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitive research tools. Great SEO product.
Price: $29/mo when paid annually
G2 score: 4.9/5
3. Copy AI
Copy AI is another all-in-one AI writing tool, and it’s very similar to Jasper.
In my opinion, Copy.AI does short form copywriting much better than others tools – things like social media, landing page copy, and product descriptions.
Its long form content generation isn’t the greatest, but I do like their blog post template. It generates a content outline for you based on your keyword, and then fills in the brief with details.
While it’s not always the most accurate, it does wonders at reducing writer’s block when starting new blog posts.
Copy AI also has tons of ready-made templates to get you started. I’d say this tool is a bit easier for beginners, but it’s less powerful than Jasper. It’s my second favorite AI writing assistant, and I’ve used it quite a bit and enjoy it.
Key features of Copy.AI include:
- A wide range of copywriting templates
- A content brief generator
- AIDA and sales copywriting frameworks
Pros:
- Helps with short form copywriting
- Generates content outlines
- All-in-one AI writing features, from short form to long form and rewriting
Cons:
- Not the best for long form writing
- No solid integrations
- Can be inaccurate at times
- Bit pricier than Jasper
Pricing: $49 per month and then goes up depending on your needs. They have a free plan for up to 2,000 words per month
G2 Score: 4.9/5
See: Copy AI alternatives
4. Writer
Writer is the AI content generator for teams.
I actually just discovered Writer recently, but I’m digging it.
You can see by their onboarding that they’re more than just an AI writing assistant to churn out a bunch of generic content.
One of the main cases appears to be style guide and brand management for large teams.
You can build a terms list for usage in marketing campaigns, a snippets library to help your sales team use brand approved messaging, or just publish a style guide your whole team can use.
Writer integrates with a bunch of different tools, like Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Figma, and Contentful. This makes it easy to publish generated content without having to copy and paste it into your CMS.
Finally, Writer is shipping some great features to deliver higher quality content, including their CoWrite launch.
This purports to learn from your own content, including tone and voice, so it can replicate the style and format in which you write. I haven’t tried training it on my style yet, but I love the premise.
And their blog writer is pretty damn good:
Key features:
- Style guide and brand management
- Integrations with popular content management systems (CMS)
- A wide range of copywriting templates
- Terms and snippet library
Pros:
- Ideal for content teams
- Has a approvals feature for quality control
- Easy to publish generated content with integrations
- CoWrite allows you to train the artificial intelligence to write like you
- Super affordable! Especially for a multi-faceted team platform
Cons:
- CoWrite is new, so it’s nascent on the market of AI copywriting software
- If you’re just looking for a bunch of bulk article rewrites, this isn’t the tool for you.
Pricing: they have a free plan and then starts at $11 per month
G2 Score: 4.6/5
5. Frase
Frase is perhaps the AI content tool with the broadest potential utility.
But that I mean it doesn’t only help you write new content. It’s also a full suite content optimization software in the vein of Clearscope, Surfer, and MarketMuse.
The AI writing assistant is just one small part of the larger platform
Instead of trying to describe all of the features, I’ll walk you through a comprehensive use case for writing a blog post.
First, you just enter the keyword / topic you’d like to write about. This is going to reverse engineer the search results pages and use some machine learning to predict which dimensions would matter in creating a high quality piece of content on the subject.
These dimensions include readability, word count, suggested keywords, as well as images and subheaders. It’s also a great research assistant, as you can see here it gives you citation suggestions as well as questions to answer within the piece:
Personally, I find this to be one of the better content brief tools, though it does fall a bit short for the optimization components (for those I much prefer Clearscope or Surfer).
Though it’s got great bang for the buck if you’re on a budget.
Like I mentioned, it’s also got an AI writing assistant, though I find it to be a bit lower quality than some dedicated copywriting tools.
Overall, I love Frase. Great platform, especially for growth marketers and SEOs.
Pros:
- All-in-one platform with several powerful AI-based tools
- Saves time by conducting research for you
- Helps you improve your writing quality
- Helps you optimize your content strategy
- In my opinion, the best at generating outlines
Cons :
- Can be a bit overwhelming to use the whole platform
- Jack of all trades, master of none (except outline generation)
Pricing: Starts at $44.99/mo for up to 30 articles per month
G2 Score: 4.8/5
6. Dashword
Dashword, like Frase, really excels at the content planning stage of the content creation process.
It uses natural language processing to help you come up with ideas for content, and then it helps you plan and organize that content.
Dashword is great for content marketers who are looking to plan and optimize their content creation.
Key features:
- Uses natural language processing to help you come up with ideas for content
- Helps you plan and organize your content
- Helps you optimize your content creation and planning
Pros:
- Great for content planning and optimization
- Uses natural language processing to help you brainstorm ideas
- Easy to use interface
- Powerful content monitoring and analytics features
Cons:
- Not as many features as some of the other tools on this list
- Not a full-fledged AI writer
Pricing: Plans start at $39/mo. Business plan is $249/mo for 100 NLP reports per month
G2 Score: NA
7. WriteSonic
WriteSonic is an AI writing assistant that helps you write better, faster.
Just like Jasper, this one is an all-purpose AI writing tool. It purports to help you with the content creation process from ideation to outlining and research to producing quality content.
WriteSonic went through Y Combinator and launched in 2020.
Basically, a few days after OpenAI launched GPT-3, the founder built an AI-powered landing page generator using GPT-3. The product went viral, so they kept building. In 2021, they launched their AI writing assistant for articles and blog posts.
Now, it’s one of the most popular tools for AI generated content.
They’ve got tons of ready-made templates and features, allowing you to write for landing pages, social media, sales copy, SEO optimized content…really anything.
One downside is that the long form content generator isn’t great – only allows up to 1,500 words (which, as you can see by my own writing, I don’t consider necessarily long form).
Any tool built on GPT-3 is going to have two things in common: it will be powerful, but on the flip side, it takes some time to learn how to use it well. You can do all the good stuff here:
This is true of Jasper, Copy AI, and WriteSonic as well. There’s a little learning curve. Doesn’t write everything perfectly for you with the touch of a button.
Pros:
- All-in-one AI writing tool
- Helps with ideation, outlining, research, and producing quality content
- Has ready-made templates for different types of content
- Super affordable
Cons:
- Not great for long form content – only allows up to 1500 words
- Learning curve – takes some time to learn how to use it well
Pricing: Free plan available, then $10/month
G2 Score: 4.8/5
8. Article Forge
Article Forge is a content generation tool that uses AI to write articles for you.
It’s a bit of a different take on the other tools on this list – instead of helping you with the writing process, it actually writes the article for you.
So, if you’re looking for a tool to help generate ideas or do research, this isn’t the tool for you. But if you’re looking for a tool that will actually write the article for you, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Article Forge uses artificial intelligence to research and write articles on any topic. Just enter a keyword, and it will generate an article for you.
It’s great for quickly generating large quantities of content. And, because it’s powered by AI, it can actually produce some pretty good quality content.
Of course, there are downsides. Because the articles are generated by a machine, they’re not going to be perfect. They may have grammar errors or be missing information.
And, because you’re not involved in the writing process at all, it can be easy to end up with a bunch of articles that all say the same thing.
Pros:
- Quickly generates large quantities of content
- Can produce some pretty good quality content
- Long form content that is 100% original and checked by Copyscape
Cons:
- Articles may have grammar errors or be missing information
- Only long form capabilities
- Can be easy to end up with a bunch of articles that all say the same thing
- Honestly, probably one of the lower quality ones on this list if you care about high quality content
Pricing: $27/mo for up to 25,000 words
G2 Score: 3.6/5
9. Quillbot
Quillbot may be the most popular paraphrasing tool out there.
No, it doesn’t generate text from scratch. Nope, it doesn’t do content outlines or research.
But it does one thing and does it well: rewrites your content.
It’s also free, which is a massive benefit. You legitimately don’t even need to create an account to use it:
Though it does seem to want to stamp out my Wisconsin accent, which is frustrating.
This free version, of course, is limited. On the paid tiers, you can dictate whether your rewrite is formal or informal, whether you want to expand or contract the content, and how many synonyms you’d like to use.
Other tools available from Quillbot are a grammar checker, a plagiarism checker, and a citation generator.
Overall, a solid tool for those who want to rewrite content and improve it (ideally I see students using this most frequently, but also copywriters who write tons of product descriptions or social media ads and want to generate new creative ideas).
Pros:
- Really simple to use. Literally just copy and paste your text and press enter
- Free to use without an account
- Super affordable
- Pretty damn good at paraphrasing
Cons:
- No long form
- Limited in its use case
- Grammarly and others are getting better at this.
Pricing: free plan available on their site, then only $8.33 per month
G2 Score: 4.5/5
10. Hypotenuse AI
Hypotenuse AI is a great AI writing software that has continued to develop new and interesting features.
They started out aimed at ecommerce and retail, so as such, they’ve got a sweet native integration with Shopify as well as WordPress.
Now it’s much more than an ecommerce AI assistant. It’s great for long form content, especially with their new factual AI writer (many AI writing tools suffer from inaccurate content – this solves that).
While it can also produce long form blog content, I love Hypotenuse AI for things like product descriptions, social media copy, ad copy, and sales copy. It’s also great for bulk rewriting of product descriptions (great if you have hundreds or thousands of SKUs).
This is a newer tool on the market, but it’s quickly picking up steam.
Pros:
- Built for ecommerce
- Great Shopify integration
- API access
- Image generation included
- Writes in 20+ languages
- Factual AI content detective feature
Cons:
- Not the best at long form blog posts
Pricing: $29/mo
G2 Score: 4.2/5
11. Wordtune
Wordtune is a simple (but great) tool that helps you improve the quality of your writing. It doesn’t produce AI generated content; rather, it helps you optimize existing copy.
You can even try out the tool directly on their website without creating an account.
The Chrome extension allows you to improve your writing anywhere, not just in WordPress or Google Docs.
The tool looks at your sentence structure, clarity, conciseness, and grammar and, depending on your command, highlights any areas that need improvement.
It’s great for bloggers, content marketers, and freelance writers who are looking to improve their writing skills.
Pros:
- Helps you improve the quality of your writing
- One of the most affordable rewriters on the market
- Gives you a score out of 100 for sentence structure, clarity, conciseness, and engagement
- Highlights areas that need improvement
- Can be used directly on their website or as a Chrome extension
Cons:
- Doesn’t produce AI generated content
Pricing: Free! And the free plan is great. Then $9.99 / month
G2 Score: 4.3/5
12. Anyword
Anyword is one of the older AI writing tools, founded in 2013.
It’s, to my knowledge, not built on GPT-3, and instead on powerful predictive analytics built in-house.
This is a powerful one.
Not only does this generate great sales copy, but it also gives you a predictive performance score to help you optimize copy for your intended purpose. You can also create custom buyer personas to map your copy towards.
This helps solve the problem many AI powered writing tools have, which is that they generate quite generic copy.
I’d say this AI copywriting tool is best at sales copy and short copy like social media posts. It can do long form blog posts, but I’d use it to create content for sales purposes.
Pros:
- Gives you a predictive performance score to help you optimize copy
- Can create custom buyer personas to map your copy towards
Cons:
- Not built on GPT-3 (to my knowledge), but their own machine learning models
- Not my favorite for longer form blog posts
Pricing: They do have a limited free plan with up to 1,000 word credits per month. Then starter plan begins at $19 /month
G2 Score: 4.8/5
13. Grammarly
Grammarly is unlike the others on this list. It doesn’t necessarily write copy for you, but it does improve your writing.
This is mainly through their spelling and grammar checker, but they also help you optimize your tone and style.
They built a great plagiarism checker that I use to evaluate guest posts people pitch me as well.
Key features:
- Spelling and grammar checker
- Tone and style optimization
- Plagiarism checker
Pros:
- Helps you improve your writing
- Easy to use interface
- Has a free version
Cons:
- Doesn’t write copy for you
- The paid version is expensive
Pricing: Plans start at $12.00 USD / month, but they do offer a free version with limited features.
G2 Score: 4.6/5
Creative Ways to Use AI Writing Software
I know you probably came here for a list of recommendations, and hopefully I’ve provided that satisfactorily.
But if you’ll indulge me for a minute, I want to show you some out-of-the-box ways I’ve been using AI writing software. Maybe it will give you some ideas to get started.
Shaking up my tone and style
I think my style is fairly distinct, but I like to play around with different ways to phrase things. I enjoy reading, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and trying to deduce how he constructs sentences, paragraphs, and narratives, and then trying to pull some of that into my writing.
Jasper makes it easy to do this at scale. Check this out, I’ll use a command to rewrite a paragraph in the style of Charles Bukowski:
Writing podcast introductions
When writing podcast introductions, I’ve got a LinkedIn biography and a quick summary of the themes we talked about. Before, I would write these manually and it would take a while.
Now, I just enter their bio, our podcast info (boilerplate), and my quick notes on the conversation. It turns it into an introduction for me:
Blog post brainstorming and outlining
I’m a disorganized writer. I HATE writing content outlines, and I often dive right into the piece. This is fun, but often inefficient.
So, I now use Frase + Jasper to pull in as much information as possible before I get started. Let’s say I want to write about “content optimization software.” I just enter that into Frase and it gives me a ton of questions to answer, suggested sub headlines, and more:
Jasper, too, is great for brainstorming. On a simple level, it can give me a ton of headline ideas (which I’m not great at coming up with):
On the further end, it can help me brainstorm new content and marketing ideas in general. Marketing teams could introduce this into their ideation process to mix things up:
(This one needs some work)
Repurposing long form content to social media
This is one of my main use cases for AI writing software.
I write like 3 tweets a day and 5 LinkedIn posts a week. It’s a way I do marketing for my content marketing agency.
This, obviously, is time consuming.
I already do a ton of long form content, including podcast conversations and long form blog posts. So I’m already generating tons of ideas and insights, I just need to repurpose them to fit the formatting restrictions of different social media platforms.
Can easily turn a blog post now into like 100 tweets:
Writing love poems
Seriously – it’s pretty good. Check out this love poem I had it write:
These tools keep getting better and better. It’s pretty astounding what type of use cases it can accomplish already today.
Wrap up on the best AI writing software
There are a lot of AI writing software tools out there. I’ve only covered thirteen of the best ones in this blog post, but there are many more.
If you’re looking to improve your content creation process, I highly recommend giving one (or more) of these tools a try. They range in price and features, so you can find one that fits your needs and budget.
Do you have a favorite AI writing software tool that I didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments. I’m always looking to try new things.