9 Best AI Writing Assistants in 2026 (We Tested All of Them)

TL;DR — Top 3 AI Writing Assistants in 2026

• Best overall for marketing teams: Jasper AI — brand-trained, campaign-ready, deeply integrated
• Best for long-form and research-heavy writing: Claude — remarkable at holding context over thousands of words
• Best for writers on a budget: Rytr — genuinely useful at $9/month, hard to argue with the price

1. Jasper AI — Best for Marketing Teams

Starting price: $49/month (Creator) | Free trial: 7 days

Jasper has been the enterprise marketing team’s AI of choice for several years, and the 2026 version continues to justify that reputation. What sets it apart isn’t raw text quality alone — it’s the brand infrastructure built around it.

The Brand Voice feature lets you feed Jasper examples of your existing content so that every piece it generates matches your company’s tone, vocabulary, and style. For teams managing multiple product lines or client accounts, the Pro plan’s three Brand Voices become indispensable.

The no-code AI App Builder (available on Pro and Business plans) is genuinely impressive. Marketing teams can build custom internal tools — think “campaign brief generator” or “ad headline tester” — without touching any code. Jasper’s Business plan adds Jasper Agents, which can autonomously handle research, personalization, and campaign workflows.

Jasper AI Plans and Pricing

• Creator: $49/month — 1 Brand Voice, unlimited words, 50+ templates, browser extension
• Pro: $59/month — 3 Brand Voices, team collaboration, no-code App Builder, advanced AI features
• Business: Custom pricing — API access, enterprise security, SOC2 compliance, SSO, dedicated account manager

Annual billing saves approximately 20% across all paid plans.

Pros

• Best-in-class brand voice training
• Deep integrations (Gmail, Google Docs, social platforms)
• Useful analytics on team usage and content performance
• No-code workflow builder for custom AI apps

Cons

• Creator plan restricts you to a single Brand Voice — limiting for agencies
• Business pricing is opaque until you talk to sales
• Overkill if you only need occasional writing help

Best for: Marketing departments, content agencies, and brand teams producing consistent, high-volume content.

Looking for alternatives to Jasper? See our full list of Jasper AI alternatives worth considering in 2026.

2. Copy.ai — Best for Sales Copy and GTM Teams

Starting price: Free | Paid plans from: $29/month

Copy.ai has undergone a significant transformation over the past two years. What started as a simple marketing copy generator has evolved into a full Go-To-Market AI platform, built specifically for sales and revenue teams.

The free plan is genuinely useful — you get access to Claude 3 and GPT models, plus Copy.ai’s Brand Voice and Infobase features. For teams, the Chat plan at $29/month includes 5 seats and unlimited words in chat, making it one of the best value options for small sales teams.

The headline feature in 2026 is Content Agent Studio, available on the Agents plan ($249/month). This lets you train custom AI agents that understand your brand, your products, and your sales process — then automate repetitive content tasks like follow-up email drafts, proposal sections, and prospect research summaries.

Copy.ai Plans and Pricing

• Free: $0 — 1 seat, 2,000 words in chat, Claude 3 + GPT-3.5 access
• Chat: $29/month — 5 seats, unlimited words, access to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini models
• Agents: $249/month — 10 seats, 10,000 workflow credits, Content Agent Studio
• Growth: $1,000/month — 75 seats, 20,000 workflow credits
• Scale: $4,000/month — 200 seats, enterprise-grade security

Pros

• Generous free plan with access to top AI models
• Powerful CRM integrations and Zapier connectivity
• SOC 2 Type II compliant — safe for enterprise data
• Excellent for high-volume sales outreach

Cons

• The jump from $29 to $249 is steep for growing teams
• Primarily optimized for short-form and sales copy — less suited for long editorial content

Best for: Sales teams, GTM operators, and marketers who need AI-assisted outreach at scale.

3. Writesonic — Best for SEO Content

Starting price: $39/month (annual billing)

Writesonic has positioned itself in 2026 as an AI visibility platform rather than just a writing tool — and that distinction matters if SEO is your primary use case. The platform combines traditional content generation with something most competitors still lack: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tracking.

GEO is the practice of optimizing content to appear in AI-generated answers (think Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity). Writesonic’s higher-tier plans actively track how often your brand appears in these AI answers and let you optimize for them. For SEO professionals and content marketers, this is genuinely forward-thinking.

The AI Article Writer 6.0 uses a guided 10-step process that pulls in Ahrefs data, Google Analytics, and Search Console metrics before it writes a single word. The result is SEO-first content that doesn’t read like keyword-stuffed garbage.

Writesonic Plans and Pricing

• Lite (SEO-Content): $39/month (annual) / $49/month (monthly) — blog posts, article generation
• Standard: Higher tier — adds Google Analytics and Search Console integrations
• Professional: AI Platform Visibility, GEO tracking, 100 AI prompt tracks/month
• Advanced: $499/month — 200 AI prompts, Sentiment Analysis, Gemini visibility
• Enterprise/Agency: Custom pricing

Pros

• First major platform to combine SEO + GEO optimization
• Supports GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, and Gemini 1.5 Pro
• One-click WordPress integration
• AI Traffic Analytics to monitor AI crawler activity

Cons

• Credit-based system feels restrictive for high-volume creators
• GEO features only available on mid-to-high tier plans
• Moderate learning curve for the full SEO Agent feature set

Best for: SEO professionals, content marketers, and agencies focused on ranking in both traditional search and AI-generated answers.

For a deeper look at AI tools purpose-built for search optimization, see our guide to the best AI for SEO content.

4. Claude — Best for Long-Form Writing

Starting price: Free (claude.ai) | Pro plan: $20/month

Anthropic’s Claude consistently earns praise from professional writers for one specific capability: it can hold context across extremely long documents without losing the thread. A 10,000-word research report, a full chapter outline, a multi-section white paper — Claude handles all of it with a coherence that other models still struggle to match.

In 2026, Claude is running on the Sonnet and Opus model lines, with the latter offering Anthropic’s highest capability ceiling. Its extended context window makes it the go-to choice for anyone writing long-form content, legal documents, technical documentation, or academic papers.

Claude is notably more nuanced in tone than many competitors — it avoids the “AI voice” that plagues lower-quality tools, and it’s particularly good at matching a specific writing style when given examples. It’s also available as an API for developers who want to build Claude into their own writing workflows.

Claude Plans and Pricing

• Free: Access to Claude via claude.ai with usage limits
• Pro: $20/month — priority access, larger context window, access to latest models
• Team: $30/user/month — team features, admin controls
• Enterprise: Custom pricing — SSO, compliance, expanded context

Pros

• Exceptional at long-form, multi-section documents
• Nuanced, natural writing that avoids the generic “AI voice”
• Large context window for analyzing existing documents
• Strong at following complex, multi-part instructions

Cons

• No built-in SEO or keyword research features
• Less specialized for short-form marketing copy
• Doesn’t directly integrate with WordPress or most CMS platforms

Best for: Writers, researchers, and content strategists who need to produce long, complex, coherent documents.

If academic writing is your focus, see our dedicated guide on the best AI for academic writing and our roundup of the best AI tools for research papers in 2026.

5. ChatGPT Plus — Best All-Rounder

Price: $20/month

ChatGPT Plus remains the default choice for people who want one tool that does everything reasonably well. At $20/month, you get access to GPT-4o — OpenAI’s flagship model — along with image generation via DALL-E, web browsing, code execution, and file analysis. No other single subscription matches that breadth at this price point.

In 2026, ChatGPT’s memory features have matured considerably. The tool can now remember your preferences, writing style, and common topics across sessions, which reduces the amount of context you need to provide each time. Custom GPTs allow you to build specialized writing assistants tailored to specific tasks — a blog writer, an email responder, a product description generator — without coding. For a deeper look, see our roundup of best AI writing tools.

For writing specifically, GPT-4o is strongest at structured tasks: persuasive essays, summaries, emails, product descriptions, and social media posts. It’s a reliable workhorse, even if it lacks the specialist depth of tools like Jasper for marketing or Sudowrite for fiction. We also cover this topic in our guide to AI for email writing.

Pros

• Unmatched breadth — writing, images, code, browsing, file analysis in one tool
• Custom GPTs for specialized writing workflows
• Improving memory and context persistence across sessions
• Huge community of shared GPT prompts and templates

Cons

• Jack-of-all-trades — outperformed by specialists in each specific category
• Output can feel generic without careful prompting
• No built-in brand voice or team collaboration features at the Plus tier

Best for: Individuals, freelancers, and generalists who need one subscription that covers a wide range of writing and content tasks.

6. Grammarly — Best for Editing and Grammar

Starting price: Free | Pro plan: $12/month (annual billing)

Grammarly occupies a unique position in the AI writing landscape: it’s the only major tool in this list whose primary job is to improve writing you’ve already done rather than generate new writing for you. In 2026, that distinction is actually a strength.

The newly rebranded Grammarly Pro (formerly Premium) builds on the familiar grammar and spell-checking foundation with a full suite of AI capabilities: tone detection and adjustment, advanced clarity rewrites, plagiarism detection, vocabulary enhancement, and 2,000 AI prompts per month for generative tasks.

Grammarly Docs is the platform’s newest addition — a standalone writing surface that combines real-time editing with AI agents that suggest stronger arguments, sharpen phrasing, and provide rubric-aligned feedback for academic writing. It’s a genuine competitor to Google Docs for writers who want AI built into every keystroke.

The free plan remains one of the most useful in any category: spelling, basic grammar checking, and limited conciseness suggestions at no cost, across every browser and writing surface you use.

Grammarly Plans and Pricing

• Free: Spelling, grammar, basic conciseness, 100 AI prompts/month
• Pro: $12/month (annual) / $30/month (monthly) — advanced clarity, tone, plagiarism detection, 2,000 AI prompts/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing — consolidated billing, user management, dedicated account manager

Pros

• Works everywhere — browser extension covers Gmail, Docs, LinkedIn, Slack
• Best-in-class grammar and clarity suggestions
• $12/month annual plan is outstanding value
• Non-intrusive — enhances your writing without replacing your voice

Cons

• Not a content generator — won’t write articles or copy from scratch
• Full Business plan has been replaced by enterprise-only custom pricing
• Plagiarism checker quality lags behind dedicated academic tools

Best for: Anyone who writes professionally and wants real-time feedback on clarity, grammar, and tone. Especially useful for non-native English speakers.

7. Notion AI — Best for Document-Based Teams

Starting price: Free (limited) | Business plan (full AI access): $20/user/month

Notion AI is the strongest argument for keeping your AI assistant inside your knowledge management system rather than switching between separate tools. If your team already lives in Notion — storing meeting notes, project briefs, SOPs, and wikis there — Notion AI turns all of that institutional knowledge into a queryable, generative resource.

The Ask Notion feature lets you query your entire workspace and connected apps (Google Drive, Slack, GitHub) and get sourced answers. Every response links back to the original Notion page or document, so you can verify and expand. For teams drowning in internal documentation, this is transformative.

The Notion 3.0 AI Agents, launched in late 2025, go further: they can autonomously execute tasks within your workspace — updating databases, drafting documents based on project data, and summarizing meeting notes into action items. It’s moving from “AI that suggests” toward “AI that actually does.”

The main caveat: full AI access requires the Business plan at $20/user/month. Free and Plus users only get 20 trial AI responses. For a team of 10, that’s $200/month — meaningful budget.

Pros

• AI that understands your team’s actual documents and knowledge base
• Sourced answers with links back to original pages
• Autonomous AI Agents for workflow automation
• Replaces several separate tools for teams already using Notion

Cons

• Full AI features locked behind the $20/user Business plan
• Less useful if your team doesn’t heavily use Notion
• Undisclosed AI usage limits under fair use policy

Best for: Teams who centralize work in Notion and want AI that understands their specific documents, not just the internet.

8. Sudowrite — Best for Fiction Writers

Starting price: $10/month (Hobby plan)

Sudowrite exists because general-purpose AI tools are genuinely bad at fiction writing. They produce flat dialogue, generic scene descriptions, and narrative arcs that feel like they were assembled from the average of every story ever written. Sudowrite was built to fix that, and in 2026, it’s still the best fiction-specific AI tool available.

The centerpiece is Muse, Sudowrite’s custom LLM fine-tuned on actual novels and short stories. It understands subtext, pacing, and tone in ways that generic models simply don’t. It also has fewer content restrictions than most platforms, which matters for writers working in gritty or mature genres.

The feature set reads like a novelist’s wishlist: Write continues your story in your voice (with multiple options so you stay in control), Expand fleshes out sparse scenes, Canvas handles visual story outlining and beat sheets, and the Story Bible tracks characters, world details, and your specific prose style across an entire manuscript. You can also switch to Claude, GPT-4o, or Deepseek if Muse isn’t right for a particular scene.

Sudowrite Plans and Pricing

• Hobby and Student: $10/month — 225,000 monthly credits (~40-50 pages)
• Professional: ~$25/month — 1,000,000 credits, full toolkit access
• Max: Higher tier — 2,000,000 credits with 12-month rollover
• Free trial: 10,000 credits (no credit card required)

Pros

• Muse model is the best AI specifically for literary fiction
• Story Bible keeps characters and world details consistent across long projects
• Fewer content restrictions than general-purpose tools
• Multiple AI model options within a single interface

Cons

• Credit limits can run out fast during intensive drafting sessions
• Not useful for non-fiction, marketing copy, or business writing
• Smaller community and fewer tutorials than mainstream tools

Best for: Novelists, short story writers, and creative writers who need an AI that actually understands narrative craft.

9. Rytr — Best Budget Option

Starting price: Free | Unlimited plan: $9/month

Rytr makes a strong case that you don’t need to spend $50 a month to get real value from an AI writing assistant. At $9/month for the Unlimited plan, you get genuinely unlimited content generation in 35+ languages with 50 plagiarism checks included.

Rytr works best for short-to-medium-form content: product descriptions, ad copy, social media posts, email subject lines, blog introductions, and YouTube video descriptions. It’s fast, reliable, and covers the 40+ most common use cases that marketing and content teams face day-to-day.

The Chrome extension brings Rytr directly into Gmail, Google Docs, LinkedIn, and other web tools — a convenience feature that platforms charging five times as much still handle inconsistently.

It’s not the right tool for long-form articles requiring deep research, nuanced brand voice, or advanced SEO optimization. But for the person who needs quick, decent copy across a range of formats without a significant monthly commitment, Rytr is hard to beat.

Rytr Plans and Pricing

• Free: $0 — 10,000 characters/month, 20 tones, Chrome extension
• Unlimited: $9/month ($7.50 billed annually) — unlimited generation, 50 plagiarism checks, priority support
• Premium: $29/month ($24.16 billed annually) — unlimited generation, 100 plagiarism checks, custom use cases, 35+ languages

Pros

• Best price-to-value ratio in the market at $9/month
• Chrome extension integrates with Gmail, Docs, and social platforms
• Covers 40+ content use cases
• 35+ language support even on the mid-tier plan

Cons

• Output quality plateaus for long-form or complex content
• No SEO integration or keyword research features
• Limited brand voice and customization options

Best for: Freelancers, small business owners, and individuals who need versatile AI writing help on a strict budget.

For a broader view of cost-effective options, see our roundup of the best free AI tools in 2026.

10. ProWritingAid — Best for Book Writers

Starting price: $30/month | Annual: $120/year | Lifetime: $399 one-time

ProWritingAid sits in a category of its own: it’s not primarily a content generator, and it’s not a quick grammar checker. It’s a serious manuscript editing tool built for writers who are working on books, screenplays, and long-form documents over months or years.

The most distinctive feature is the ability to run an entire manuscript through analysis at once — something Grammarly still can’t do effectively. ProWritingAid generates up to 25 detailed reports covering grammar, style, readability, sentence length variation, passive voice usage, overused words, clichés, pacing, and more. Each report is actionable, not just a score.

The 2026 version adds Marketability Analysis, which evaluates your manuscript’s commercial potential, identifies your target readership, and provides ready-made promotional templates for authors preparing for publication. The Virtual Beta Reader and Chapter Critique features simulate editorial feedback across each section of your book.

The lifetime plan at $399 is one of the best deals in the AI writing space — for any serious author planning to write professionally over the next several years, the per-year cost rapidly becomes negligible.

ProWritingAid Plans and Pricing

• Monthly: $30/month
• Annual: $120/year (~$10/month)
• Lifetime: $399 one-time payment
• Pro Lifetime: $699 one-time payment — includes plagiarism checker
• Free version: 22 reports, 500-word limit per session

Pros

• Full-manuscript analysis — not chapter by chapter
• 25 detailed writing reports covering style, pacing, and readability
• Marketability Analysis for authors preparing to publish
• Lifetime plan offers exceptional long-term value
• Scrivener integration — essential for serious book writers

Cons

• Slow on very long documents with multiple reports running simultaneously
• Free tier’s 500-word limit is too restrictive for meaningful testing
• Plagiarism checker only available on Pro tier
• Less useful for short-form content or marketing copy

Best for: Authors writing novels, memoirs, or non-fiction books who need deep editorial feedback across a full manuscript.

AI Writing Assistant Comparison Table (2026)

Frequently Asked Questions