Best AI Tools for Writing Essays
AI excels at writing all kinds of content, including essays. In fact, ever since ChatGPT became popular, teachers all around the world started complaining about their students using it to generate essays — instead of writing them themselves.
That has further prompted some commentators to conclude that the “school essay is dead” now that everyone can easily generate one in a matter of minutes if not seconds.
On the other hand, this same trend has prompted the development of AI detection tools, enabling teachers to know when their students are cheating and when they did the homework themselves.
Beyond students, there are also other people who could use AI to write essays, and for them – here are the best tools for the job:
Writesonic
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Makes article writing much, much faster
- Also helps with crafting ad copies and product descriptions
- Used by more than 5 million users and has 15,000+ 5-star ratings
- GPT-4 is available only with paid plans
Writesonic is an AI-powered platform that generates SEO-optimized content, tracks AI search visibility, and automates marketing workflows. It supports over 80 tools for creating blog posts, ad copy, social media updates, and more, drawing from real-time data sources like Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner. The platform integrates AI models, such as GPT and Claude, for accurate, multilingual outputs in over 25 languages. Users access features through a clean dashboard, with options for free trials and tiered plans ranging from an entry-level plan for freelancers to enterprise custom setups.
Key functionalities include the AI Article Writer, which produces full drafts with EEAT signals, internal links, and citations in seconds. The Content Engine refreshes existing pages by detecting visibility drops and suggesting updates, such as fresh statistics or examples. SEO Site Audits scan for issues such as broken schemas or robots.txt errors, providing automated fixes without developer input. For AI search, GEO tracking monitors rankings across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other platforms, offering sentiment analysis and prompt volume data from over 120 million conversations.
Writesonic stands out for its Action Center, which identifies citation opportunities on competitor-mentioning sites and generates outreach templates. It also highlights social gaps on Reddit or Quora, offering recommendations for engagement strategies. Compared to Jasper, Writesonic provides broader SEO and AI visibility tools at lower general costs, though Jasper excels in creative long-form without as much technical depth. Versus Copy.ai, it offers a more comprehensive content pipeline, but Copy.ai prioritizes rapid ad generation over thorough audits.
Users appreciate the speed for scaling content, with tools like Instant Article Writer delivering SEO blogs in 10 seconds. The Brand Voice feature customizes outputs from uploaded documents to ensure consistency. Multilingual support aids global teams, while Photosonic creates complementary images from prompts. Enterprise compliance includes SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, and HIPAA standards, with zero-retention AI for data security. Recent 2025 updates enhance prompt diversification and query expansion using Reddit and People Also Ask data.
Potential drawbacks include occasional formulaic tones that require edits for nuance, as well as higher tiers for unlimited generations. The free plan limits advanced features like GEO tracking. Support varies by plan, with priority options for paid users. Integration with WordPress and Google Analytics streamlines the publishing process. For teams, it supports multiple users and projects, with Slack channels on upper plans.
Practical steps include starting with the free trial for basic generations, then upgrading for audits. Test the Paraphrasing Tool on drafts before publishing. For bloggers, combine Blog Outlines with Keyword Extractor for targeted posts. Marketers should utilize the Action Center every week to monitor citations and refresh content proactively.
Wordtune by AI21 Labs
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Helps students better write their assignments
- Great for marketers as it can help them craft better emails, ads, and more
- An invaluable tool for non-native English speakers
- The free plan is somewhat limited
Wordtune is an AI-powered writing assistant that refines your text with paraphrasing, grammar corrections, tone adjustments, and summarizing capabilities. It integrates seamlessly into your workflow, offering contextual rewrite suggestions that align with your writing style. Whether you’re drafting an email, crafting an essay, or summarizing a report, it aims to make your words clearer and more impactful. The tool supports translation from 10 languages into English, making it accessible for non-native speakers. Its Chrome extension and mobile apps ensure you can use it anywhere, from Gmail to social media platforms.
The core strength lies in its rewrite suggestions. Unlike basic synonym swappers, Wordtune analyzes context, offering rewrites that match your intent, whether you want a casual tone or a formal one. The tone-switching feature is intuitive, allowing you to toggle between professional and friendly modes with a single click. For students, the summarizing tool is a standout, condensing long articles or videos into concise summaries with citations for credibility. The Smart Synonym generator helps diversify vocabulary without losing meaning, and the Continue Writing feature can jumpstart a stalled sentence, though it’s not always spot-on.
Compared to competitors like Grammarly and QuillBot, Wordtune balances versatility and simplicity. Grammarly excels in grammar and spelling precision, while QuillBot focuses on paraphrasing depth. Wordtune, however, excels in tone flexibility and summarization, making it an ideal choice for users who require a versatile tool. Its pricing includes a free tier with basic features and a premium plan for advanced capabilities, which aligns with industry standards but may feel restrictive for heavy users on the free plan.
The summarizing feature is a hidden gem, especially for academic or professional use. Feed it a lengthy document, and it delivers a tight summary, saving hours of reading. The translation feature also helps non-native English speakers sound fluent, though it only outputs in English. The Chrome extension is lightweight, embedding into your browser without slowing it down, and the mobile apps are equally smooth for on-the-go edits.
Drawbacks exist. The tool requires an internet connection, which can be a hassle offline. Its suggestions, while solid, sometimes lack the creative flair necessary for artistic writing, and the free version limits access to premium features, such as advanced tone adjustments. Compared to Grammarly’s deep grammar checks, Wordtune’s corrections are less comprehensive but still effective for most users.
To get the most out of Wordtune, use it for quick edits on emails or social posts, leverage the summarizer for research, and experiment with tone settings to match your audience. It’s a reliable tool for refining your writing, but don’t rely on it for highly creative tasks or offline work.
Smodin
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- One tool for different writing needs
- The plagiarism checker is included
- Rewriter tool produces solid text
- The free plan is really limited (not sure why it exists)
Smodin is an AI-powered writing tool that is used by students, writers, and businesses all over the world.
As with other similar tools – it enables anyone to write anything, anytime. These would include things like articles, blog posts, essays, cover letters, product descriptions, reference letters, and more.
You don’t have to start from scratch, though – you can rewrite the existing article in seconds. Let AI do the hard thing for you.
Or you can check some text for plagiarism. AI knows AI and will help teachers detect when their students rely heavily on modern tech to do the work for them.
Beyond students and teachers, Smodin can also help website operators write articles and blog posts, thus keeping the site more interesting to users and search engines.
As of October 2023, the tool has more than 3 million users, including 30k+ universities and 100k+ businesses.
Jenni
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Lets you write up to 10 times faster
- Includes support for multiple languages
- Chat with PDFs comes included
- Mobile support is still not there
Jenni is an AI-powered service for researchers, designed to help them “supercharge their next research paper.”
Instead of doing it all by yourself, you can use Jenni’s AI assistant to get suggestions whenever you are stuck or expand your notes into full paragraphs. As a result, you can write up to 10 times faster while making sure you are crafting the original work.
This is made possible with Jenni’s autocomplete features, as well as its ability to paraphrase and rewrite content for you. Heck, you can even start with your PDF files and even chat with them to uncover insights with ease.
All in all, there is a reason why Jenni is used by more than 1 million academics and writers. As of September 2023, it has helped write over 970 million words — from academic essays, journals, to top-ranking blog posts.
Among the organizations using Jenni are the University of Cambridge, MIT, Aston University, University of Melbourne, Harvard University, and Google, to name a few.
QuillBot by Course Hero
👍 Pros
👎 Cons
- Straightforward and efficient
- Really good at paraphrasing
- Integrates with Microsoft Word
- You'll have to pay for Plagiarism Checker and Co-Writer tools
QuillBot is an AI-powered writing assistant that refines text with tools for paraphrasing, grammar checking, tone analysis, and more, making it a go-to for students, professionals, and content creators. Its Paraphraser reworks sentences in modes like Standard, Fluency, or Creative, keeping meaning intact while boosting clarity. The tool integrates with Chrome, Word, and Google Docs, streamlining workflows. It is built for clear communication without overriding your voice.
The Grammar Checker catches errors like misplaced commas or subject-verb issues, while the Tone Detector shows how your text might come across, formal, casual, or persuasive. These help polish emails, essays, or blog posts. Compared to Grammarly, QuillBot focuses more on creative rewriting than deep contextual edits. CoWriter offers similar features but emphasizes detailed style analysis, while QuillBot keeps things simpler.
The Citation Generator supports APA, MLA, and Chicago styles, saving students and researchers time. The Plagiarism Checker scans against billions of web pages to ensure originality, though it may flag common phrases. The AI Detector identifies AI-generated text, which is particularly useful for academics and editors. QuillBot’s free version offers basic tools, with premium unlocking advanced modes like Humanize and higher limits, at pricing competitive with similar tools.
Users praise QuillBot for its ease and flexibility. Its 4.7/5 Chrome Store rating from millions shows strong trust. Students find it invaluable for essays, professionals use it for polished reports, and content creators, such as those in Creative mode, use it for fresh angles. English language learners benefit from improvements in fluency, which enables them to turn rough drafts into natural text.
Drawbacks include the Paraphraser sometimes offering similar suggestions across modes, limiting variety. The interface, while clean, may confuse new users navigating multiple tools. Premium features require payment, which could frustrate those on the free plan. Still, the core tools are robust, and partnerships with brands like Microsoft add credibility.
Start with the free version to test core features. Use the Paraphraser for quick rewrites, the Grammar Checker for cleanups. Try the Citation Generator for your academic work, and consider upgrading to premium for advanced features. Experiment with modes to match your goals, and you will see why millions rely on QuillBot for sharper writing.
How can AI tools for writing essays help you?
The obvious answer is that they can generate entire essays for you, but that would be cheating and could also put you in trouble. Instead of doing that, you can use AI to:
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Generate drafts
Just explain to the AI what you want to write an essay about, and let it do its magic. Then you should substantially change it to make it truly yours – and undetectable by algorithms. As you would imagine, this also helps you beat writer’s block.
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Create summaries
Your essay may be based on some other work, like a book or a really long article. You can use AI to sum up that book (or more of them) for you and use that newly generated content as a starting point for your essay. Moreover, you can further ask AI to tweak the generated summary to your liking.
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Rephrase texts
Or you may want to just say the same thing as an existing article but in your own words. The easiest way to do this is to first ask AI to rephrase the text and then change it to fit your needs. Instead of changing the entire text, you may “get away” with tweaking several sentences and words.
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Get ideas for your essay
Not sure what to write about? Ask AI for ideas by explaining your situation. The algorithm can quickly generate a dozen ideas, and it is up to you to choose which of the proposed subjects works for you. Or if you haven’t got the idea you’re looking for – just keep asking it until you get the one you like.
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Write other stuff
We haven’t seen a single service that is exclusively dedicated to writing essays, as pretty much all of them can do all kinds of writing. So, if you’re already paying for some AI tool, you should use it to generate other kinds of content, as well. These could include articles, blog posts, ebooks, ads, social media posts, and much more.
As far as AI is concerned, there is little to no difference between an essay and a blog post, or any other written content for that matter. It will do the job and generate all kinds of texts for you with ease — all you have to do is ask.