Essay writing is a crucial skill for millions of people. Whether you are a student, a professional, or just someone looking to articulate ideas clearly, essays is a short and useful format that can be very valuable. But let's face it—writing essays can be tedious and time-consuming. Thankfully, AI essay writers are here to make things much easier. These tools can help generate ideas, correct grammar, and even draft entire essays. With many free and freemium options available, anyone can leverage technology to enhance their writing.

In this detailed guide, we'll delve into the best free and freemium AI essay writers available, ethical considerations, and tips on choosing the right tool for you.

Why Use AI to Write Essays?

Several compelling reasons make AI essay writing tools increasingly popular:

• Save Time: AI tools can assist with brainstorming, research, and drafting, allowing you to focus more on refining your work.

• Combat Writer's Block: Struggling with the first sentence? AI can generate ideas and outlines to get you started.

• Enhance Clarity: Many tools offer grammar and style suggestions, ensuring your essays are clear and error-free.

• Improve Research: Some tools connect with research databases, making it easier to find sources and evidence.

Top Free and Freemium AI Essay Tools

Here's a detailed look at some of the best free and freemium AI essay writers available today. I tried most of them for writing, not just essays, but various formats of text, and can approve that all of them actually help in writing. Let me give you 4 options.

1. ChatGPT

Overview: This is as basic as you can get in terms of AI and Writing. ChatGPT by OpenAI is one of the most useful an simple AI tools. You can ask it to write essays on various topics, generate ideas, or even create outlines. Just literally ask it to write an essay on your topic of interest. The main advantage is how it understands human language. But there are ways to make ChatGPT even better, I will show you how near the end of this article.

Features:

• Interactive: You can interactively ask it to generate essay ideas or entire paragraphs.

• Contextual Understanding: It understands the context and generates relevant text.

• Free Plan: The basic version is available for free, making it accessible to everyone.

Pros:

• Universal and can handle various writing tasks.

• Continuously learns and improves with updates.

• Easy to use and interact with.

Cons:

• May sometimes generate content that needs fact-checking.

• Limited free usage; premium plans offer more capabilities.

• May be difficult to switch between models, to use advanced features and to write prompts.

  

2. Hemingway Editor

Overview: Hemingway Editor is excellent for refining your essays. It suggests changes to improve readability and highlights complex sentences and passive voice. It is literally a text editor that works as a web application. It shows you text stats, provides suggestions, and integrates AI functions like shortening, adding detail or paraphrasing.

Features:

• Readability Score: Provides a readability score to gauge the complexity of your writing. It is based on a widely accepted readability score system.

• Highlight Problem Areas: Highlights hard-to-read sentences, passive voice, adverbs, and more. Hemingway highlights sentences with yellow and red. Red are the sentences that are difficult to read, and yellow are mostly fine but can be slightly imprved.

• Free Version: The free version offers basic readability checks and suggestions for clarity. This enables you to use free account to transform a certain number of sentences. That would be more than enough for a couple of essays.

Pros:

• Simple and easy to use.

• Focuses on making your writing concise and clear.

• Instant feedback on readability.

Cons:

• No advanced grammar checks.

• The free version has limited features compared to the premium version.

3. Rytr

Overview: Rytr is affordable and feature-rich, making it an excellent tool for anyone on a budget. It helps you write in multiple styles and tones.

Features:

• Multiple Styles: Adjust the tone to fit your needs, be it academic or casual.

• Plagiarism Checker: Ensures your content is original.

• SEO Help: Offers tips to optimize your essays for search engines.

• Freemium Plan: Limited free usage with an option to upgrade for more features.

Pros:

• Versatile with various writing styles.

• Built-in plagiarism checker.

• Affordable and flexible plans.

Cons:

• Some features are limited in the free version.

• May require a learning curve to utilize all features effectively.

4. Google Gemini

Overview: Google’s Gemini is another robust option for essay writing. Earlier Google has done Bard, but Gemini is an even better version of that AI model and chatbot. It leverages Google’s vast data to provide contextual understanding and generate relevant content.

Features:

• Various Styles: Can handle formal, academic, and conversational tones. That is one of the easiest features to use when you want to define style, but I need to say that any chatbot can easily do the same if you just guide it, f.e. 'write in academic style'.

• Contextual Understanding: Understands the context better, thanks to Google’s comprehensive data.

• Free Plan: Gemini offers a free plan for basic usage.

Pros:

• Versatile and can adapt to various writing styles.

• Strong contextual understanding.

• Free plan available for basic use.

Cons:

• Limited features in the free version.

• May sometimes generate generic content, as most AI chatbots. Can be solved if you know how to do better prompts. I have written an article about that. Link: https://writingmate.ai/blog/becoming-an-ai-prompt-engineer-a-guide-to-a-new-career-path

Link to Google Gemini: https://gemini.google.com

Brief Mention: Grammarly

Grammarly is an invaluable tool for essay writing, offering more than just basic grammar and spelling checks. Its advanced features include real-time feedback on clarity and style, AI-powered suggestions to refine thesis statements and essay structure, and a plagiarism checker that scans billions of texts to ensure originality. Grammarly also supports automated citation generation in multiple formats, helping maintain proper academic referencing. The premium version enhances these capabilities with more extensive writing suggestions and comprehensive plagiarism detection, making it a powerful assistant for producing polished, coherent, and impactful essays​. While its free version is limited, it’s effective in catching basic errors, making it a useful supplementary tool rather than a primary essay writer.

5. ChatLabs

ChatLabs is an exceptional tool for essay writing, offering versatile capabilities that go beyond simple AI text generation. With access to multiple AI models such as GPT, Gemini, Mistral, Llama or Perplexity, ChatLabs allows users to blend different AI-generated pieces for a more nuanced and human-like touch. This multi-model approach enhances the GPT experience, enabling users to select the best model for their specific writing needs.

Moreover, ChatLabs is equipped with features that assist in both the pre-production and post-production stages of content creation. This includes refining AI-generated content to ensure it reads naturally, thanks to the AI Detection Assistant that helps make AI-written text more human. Additionally, ChatLabs can generate images or illustrations, adding a visual element to essays and making them more engaging.

One of the standout features of ChatLabs is its ability to enable any model to search the web, providing up-to-date information and expanding the research capabilities for essay writers. This tool not only supports content generation but also enriches the overall writing process with comprehensive enhancement functions. For users looking to maximize their effectiveness with ChatLabs, knowing a few good prompts can significantly improve the outcomes, and resources like guides on AI prompt engineering can be particularly helpful.

By integrating these advanced functionalities, ChatLabs proves to be an invaluable resource for creating polished, well-rounded essays that meet high academic and professional standards.

Link: https://writingmate.ai/labs

Picking the Right AI Tool

Choosing the right tool depends on your individual needs:

• Type of Content: Are you focused solely on essays, or do you need different types of content?

• Budget: Determine how much you’re willing to spend on premium features.

• Ease of Use: Look for a user-friendly interface. Many tools offer free trials, so take advantage of them to find the best fit for you.

Ethical Considerations

Using AI tools comes with ethical responsibilities:

• Assist, Don’t Replace: Use AI tools to improve your writing, not to do all the work.

• Stay Honest: Always adhere to your school or employer’s guidelines when using AI.

• Human Touch: Always review and edit AI-generated content to ensure it meets your standards.

Tips for Ethical AI Use

Ethical considerations go beyond just following guidelines. Here are some tips to ensure you’re using AI responsibly:

• Transparency: Always disclose if you’ve used AI in your work. Academic institutions and employers appreciate honesty.

• Originality: Use AI to generate ideas but ensure your final work reflects your original thoughts and perspectives.

• Review: Always review AI-generated content for accuracy and coherence. AI tools are not perfect and may produce errors or irrelevant information.

What is Your Full Writing Potential?

Ready to elevate your essay writing with those tools? I think they can help you craft compelling and polished essays effortlessly. Whether you’re a student facing tight deadlines or a professional looking to enhance your reports, these AI tools offer the assistance you need. They will help to write faster, in a better way, enhance style and structure, and to do much more. So by incorporating these tools, you can save time and improve the quality of your writing. Each of these options can meet different needs, so explore them to see which one fits you best.

For more detailed articles and tips, check out our blog. We publish new tutorials, reviews and AI-related news on a regular basis, and we love what we do. Hope you will find it useful as well.

Today, leveraging AI for essay writing can be a game-changer. From saving time to improving clarity, these tools offer numerous benefits. The best part? Many of these powerful tools are available for free or at minimal cost. In summary, tools like Hemingway Editor and ChatGPT offer strong free plans, while Rytr and Google Gemini provide freemium options that are both effective and affordable. Even Grammarly, despite its basic free version, can be a helpful supplementary tool. ChatLabs, on the other hand, combines multiple AI models ad capabilities, helps with custom assistants, helps to build your esaay prompt library and may be better if you want to build a full AI workflow for your writing.

So you can start exploring these AI tools today.

See you in the next articles,
Anton