How does Microsoft Editor compare to Grammarly? I found out
Key things
- Grammarly offers better accessibility with cross-platform apps, while Microsoft Editor is limited to web browsers and Microsoft Office apps on the web and desktop.
- Grammarly includes more advanced features like AI-driven suggestions, content rewriting, and an expert review add-on.
- Microsoft Editor’s features are more basic, but compared to Grammarly’s premium plans, it’s an affordable option with a competent plagiarism detector.
If you already pay for Microsoft 365, you get access to the premium version of Microsoft Editor. But is it good enough to replace Grammarly? I use both Editor and Grammarly when working with text documents, and here’s a sample of how Microsoft’s offering fares against the popular grammar checker.
Availability
Grammarly offers better cross-platform accessibility than Microsoft Editor. It is available on the web as a browser extension and has dedicated apps for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. Unlike the desktop Grammarly Editor, it works with any text editor on your computer, including Word, Slack, Asana, or any other apps you use.
If you don’t want the grammar checker to analyze everything you type, you can turn it off for specific websites and apps. However, its more detailed assessments are still available within the web editor.
Microsoft Editor has more limited availability. The free version works with Word Online and as a browser extension in Edge, Chrome and other Chromium browsers. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can also access Editor with advanced features in Office desktop applications such as Word, Outlook, and Excel.
Features
Both Grammarly and Microsoft Editor offer basic features such as checking spelling and grammar. In addition, these tools provide significant advanced features that make them ideal for various use cases.
Grammatical
Not only does Grammarly excel at catching spelling and punctuation errors, it also offers a more robust feature set. He can point out problems in your writing and suggest improvements in style, tone, and clarity.
However, his suggestions can sometimes be too aggressive, especially when it comes to technical terms, partly due to a lack of awareness of context. To alleviate this problem, Grammarly allows you to set goals by choosing the domain, intent, audience, and formality of the document to get better suggestions that match the purpose of your writing.
Like most software these days, Grammarly is also big on artificial intelligence (also known as GrammarlyGo). Its AI assistant can rewrite sentences, find gaps in content, generate ideas and outlines, and even write a complete first draft for a blog post. But it’s not just for content writing, AI-enabled tools can improve your school work and help you simplify email communication. Another useful feature in Grammarly is document version history, which allows you to download previous versions of edited and saved documents.
If you need extra help, Grammarly offers a “Get Expert Help” add-on to have your document reviewed by a human expert. It is a premium service and the price varies according to the processing time, which ranges from 3 hours to 24 hours.
Microsoft Editor
Microsoft Editor is a simple tool for checking spelling and grammar problems. It shows suggestions for clarity, formality, punctuation conventions, and vocabulary. The editor highlights spelling problems with a red underline and clarity suggestions with a purple underline; click on the highlighted suggestions to accept or ignore them.
Text Predictions is another useful feature in Editor that helps you write faster by predicting next words and suggesting words or phrases as you type. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s definitely useful. While you can set the document goal as formal, informal, or professional in the Editor to get better suggestions, it lacks the extensive customization that Grammarly offers.
Plagiarism check
Plagiarism detection is a core feature of any writing assistant, and Grammarly and Microsoft Editor can help identify plagiarism from online sources.
Microsoft Editor’s Similarity Checker can check your text document against web pages and research sources using Bing, highlighting problematic passages and allowing you to add citations. Integration with Bing also means broader web searches and more accurate results for newly indexed material.
Grammarly uses its own database to detect plagiarism from websites and academic papers and allows you to add correct citations. In addition, Grammarly can also detect AI-generated text, a feature that Microsoft Editor lacks.
I tested both tools by adding texts from my recently published works. After an initial check, Microsoft Editor flagged itself 78% content as similar to online resources with accurate citation suggestions. The results were pretty consistent over several tests.
On the other hand, grammar is slowly catching up with recently published works. When using the desktop application, it can simply go into a scanning loop requiring a reboot before it can start working again.
Prices
When it comes to prices, the comparison is less direct. Both Microsoft Editor and Grammarly offer a free tier with basic features, and you can opt for premium plans with more advanced features. Except that in the case of Editor, there is no premium plan; instead, it’s all included in your Microsoft 365 subscription, which I think is worth it.
Grammarly offers a more comprehensive free plan with basic spelling and grammar checks along with clarity suggestions. The inclusion of AI features in the free tier is a nice perk, but it’s quite limited. The cost of Grammarly’s Premium plan $12/month (billed annually) or 30 dollars if billed monthly. This gives you access to advanced grammar suggestions, AI features and plagiarism checking.
While on the expensive side, Grammarly is an essential tool for students and content writers, especially if you’re a beginner. The cost can be worth it if you take advantage of its advanced AI and grammar suggestions.
Microsoft Editor is free to use with Word online and in your web browser, but more advanced grammar features, including integration with Office desktop apps and plagiarism checking, are only available to Microsoft 365 subscribers. While it may not offer all the bells and whistles of Grammarly , Microsoft Editor is definitely a more affordable option for anyone who needs grammar and spelling checks along with plagiarism detection.