How much does Grammarly cost? $12 or $30, and the difference is only how you pay
Grammarly Pro is $12 a month billed annually and $30 month to month, a 150 percent swing on billing cycle alone. What the free plan covers and when paying is worth it.
Verdict
Grammarly Pro is $12 a month billed annually, or $30 month to month. Same plan, same features, 150 percent difference on billing cycle alone. The free plan covers grammar and 100 AI prompts a month.
The answer#
| How you pay | Cost |
|---|---|
| Free | $0 |
| Pro, billed annually | $12/mo (about $144 upfront) |
| Pro, month to month | $30/mo |
Same plan. Same features. 150 percent difference.
$216 a year
What monthly billing costs you
$360 a year month to month, against $144 annually. For an identical product.
Why people see two different numbers#
Because almost every article quotes $12 without saying it is the annual rate.
You read $12, you sign up, you pick monthly because committing to a year feels risky, and you get charged $30. Nothing went wrong and nothing was hidden. The published price is just the best-case one.
This is common in software. What is unusual is the size of the gap. Most tools charge 20 to 30 percent more for monthly. Grammarly charges 150 percent more.
What the free plan actually includes#
More than most people assume:
- Grammar, spelling, and punctuation
- Basic clarity suggestions
- 100 AI prompts a month
- Works in the browser, in Gmail, in most editors
What you are paying for on Pro is the rewriting: tone adjustment, full-sentence rewrites, the plagiarism checker, and 2,000 AI prompts instead of 100.
Who should pay#
Worth $144 a year: you write for a living, or writing is a real part of your job. Client emails, proposals, published content. The rewriting features save time you can actually measure.
Stay free: you write a handful of emails a day and want the typos caught. The free plan does that completely, and 100 prompts a month is more than occasional use needs.
Do the maths carefully: teams. Business pricing is per seat, and on a writing tool that not everyone opens daily, per-seat pricing gets expensive fast. Count who will genuinely use it rather than buying seats for the whole company.
The fuller picture, including where it sits against dedicated AI writing tools, is in our Grammarly review.
The short version
What works
- The free plan is genuinely useful rather than a trial, covering grammar, spelling, and 100 AI prompts a month
- Annual billing at $12 is reasonable for anyone writing daily
- It works in the browser, in email, and in most editors, so there is nothing to remember to open
What does not
- Paying monthly costs 150 percent more than annual for exactly the same product
- The $12 figure quoted everywhere is the annual rate, which makes month-to-month feel like a penalty when you discover it
- Business and Enterprise pricing is quoted per seat and adds up quickly for a team
Frequently asked questions
- Is Grammarly $12 a month?
- Only if you pay for a year upfront. Grammarly Pro is $12 a month billed annually, which means paying around $144 in one go. Month to month, the same plan is about $30. The $12 figure is the one quoted in most articles, which is where the confusion comes from.
- Why is Grammarly $12 for some people and $30 for others?
- It is the billing cycle, not a discount or a promotion. Annual billing is $12 a month, monthly billing is $30. The features are identical. It is one of the largest annual-versus-monthly gaps in consumer software, at roughly 150 percent.
- Is the free version of Grammarly enough?
- For most people writing occasional emails, yes. The free plan covers grammar, spelling, punctuation, and 100 AI prompts a month. What you lose is the tone and clarity rewriting, the plagiarism check, and the larger prompt allowance. If you write for a living, the paid tier earns its money; if you do not, the free plan is not crippled.
- How much is Grammarly for a team?
- Business pricing is quoted per seat and sits well above the individual rate, with Enterprise quoted directly. For a small team the arithmetic is worth doing carefully, because per-seat pricing on a writing tool adds up faster than people expect for something not everyone uses daily.
Written by
Tashawar Awais
Researcher and editor
Tashawar handles verification and editing. Every figure in a review is checked a second time before it goes out, and anything that cannot be traced to a vendor page or a documented source is either qualified or cut. Where pricing is genuinely unclear, as it is with Canva team plans or Close CRM tiers, the article says so and tells the reader to confirm directly instead of quoting a number with false confidence.
- Second check on every published figure
- Removes claims the sources do not support
- Flags pricing that changes without notice