Grammarly vs Frase AI: Which AI writing tool is right for you?

The world of AI writing tools has absolutely blown up. We've gone from basic spell checkers to slick platforms that can research, write, and optimize an entire article. While that’s fantastic for productivity, it’s also made things pretty confusing. Which tool do you actually need? And how many subscriptions do you have to pay for just to get one blog post published?

You can see this playing out on forums like Reddit, where marketers and writers are always discussing their "stack." They use one tool for the SEO brief, another for the first draft, and a third for the final polish. It works, but it’s not exactly a smooth process.

Two names that pop up constantly are Grammarly and Frase AI. One is a household name for making sure your writing is professional, and the other is a powerful tool for creating content that actually ranks on Google. They both use AI, but they’re built to solve completely different problems.

Our goal here is to give you a clear, no-fluff comparison of Grammarly vs Frase AI so you can figure out where each one fits (or doesn't) in your workflow. We'll also look at another way of doing things, one that combines research, SEO, writing, and even creating assets into a single step with a tool like the eesel AI blog writer.

What is Grammarly?

You’ve probably heard of Grammarly. It's the digital writing assistant that lives in your browser, email, and word processor, helping you avoid typos and grammar mistakes. At its heart, Grammarly is a sophisticated checker for grammar, spelling, and punctuation that has grown to include a bunch of generative AI features. As one user on Reddit points out, the tool has evolved significantly over time.

Grammarly evolved from advanced spellcheck into full-fledged AI (LLM generative AI to be exact). The tools we use evolve. And Grammarly now neatly fits the kind of category of tools we all frown upon.

Reddit

Its main job is to take something you've already written and make it better. Think of it as your personal on-demand editor. Its core features include:

• Sentence rewriting: It suggests ways to make your sentences clearer and more to the point.
• Tone suggestions: This helps you tweak your writing to sound more confident, friendly, or formal, depending on who you're talking to.
• Style improvements: It catches everything from wordy sentences to inconsistent phrasing.
• Plagiarism detection: It scans your text against billions of web pages to make sure your work is original.

Most people agree that Grammarly is the go-to tool for the final polish. Even writers who use other AI tools for their drafts often run the final text through Grammarly to catch the small details that other AI writers miss.

I run all my final drafts through Grammarly to polish grammar, clarity, and tone. Even after using AI tools, it always catches something I missed.

Reddit

It isn't meant for creating content from scratch, but for improving the clarity, correctness, and overall quality of existing text. It’s designed to make your writing better.

What is Frase AI?

While Grammarly is polishing your sentences, Frase AI is working on a totally different puzzle: getting your content to rank in search engines. Frase AI is a research and optimization tool built specifically for SEOs and content marketers.

It doesn't just help you write; it tells you what to write about to get ahead of the competition. Its key features are all about strategy:

• Content Briefs: Frase AI looks at the top-ranking articles for your target keyword and creates a detailed brief. This includes suggested headings, topics you should cover, and questions to answer, all based on what's already performing well on Google.
• Content Scoring: As you write in its editor, Frase AI grades your content in real-time. It compares your article to competitors based on topic coverage and keyword use, giving you a score that shows how well-optimized your piece is.
• AI Writer: Frase AI also has an AI writer to help you flesh out sections of your brief or generate paragraphs based on the topics it has identified.

Frase AI’s real strength is providing real-time data and SERP analysis, helping creators build content that is comprehensive and data-driven.

I use Frase when I need real time data and SERP analysis. It’s good for building outlines and making sure content hits all key points based on competitor data.

Reddit

It answers the big question every content creator has: "What do I need to put in this article to have a shot at ranking?" It's all about building a strategic, data-driven foundation for your content.

Feature comparison: Grammarly vs Frase AI

It should be pretty obvious by now that while both are AI-powered tools for writers, they aren't really competitors. One is for perfecting the final piece, while the other is for building the strategic foundation. It’s like the difference between an editor and a strategist.

Here’s a quick table to break it down:

Let's dig a bit deeper into a couple of key areas.

Core writing and editing capabilities

This is where Grammarly feels right at home. It’s excellent at refining existing text with a level of detail that most generative AI tools just can't replicate. It catches subtle grammar mistakes, helps you find the perfect tone, and generally makes your writing more readable and professional.

Frase AI’s writer, on the other hand, is more about function. Its main purpose is to help you fill out the SEO-driven briefs it generates. It’s good for getting words on the page and making sure you cover all the important topics, but it’s not designed for crafting elegant, polished writing. The focus is on being comprehensive, not necessarily on craftsmanship.

SEO and content optimization features

This is where Frase AI really stands out. Its entire platform is built around SERP analysis, helping you understand search intent and create content that’s more thorough than what your competitors have published. It gives you a data-backed plan for what to write.

Grammarly has no native SEO features. You can definitely use it to polish an SEO article, but it won’t give you any strategic advice on which keywords to use, what topics to cover, or how to structure your content to rank well.

The gap in the modern content workflow

So, you have to pick: a tool for polishing or a tool for optimizing. This really highlights a big challenge in today's content workflow: it can be fragmented. Using specialized tools often means a multi-step process that costs you time and money.

When to choose Grammarly

Grammarly is a great choice for individuals, such as students, professionals, or academics, or anyone whose main goal is to make sure their daily writing is clear, professional, and free of errors. If you're writing emails, reports, presentations, or social media updates, Grammarly is your safety net. It’s a final quality check, not a content creation tool.

When to choose Frase AI

Frase AI is built for SEO specialists and content teams who are laser-focused on creating content that ranks. If your job is all about keyword research, content briefs, and outranking competitors on Google, Frase AI is an incredibly valuable tool for the research, briefing, and optimization stages.

An alternative for end-to-end content generation: eesel AI blog writer

The challenge with using separate tools is that Grammarly doesn't assist with SEO, while Frase AI focuses less on the final polished text and visual assets. This can lead to a workflow that requires juggling multiple subscriptions and manual steps.

This is where a content generator like the eesel AI blog writer comes into play. It’s designed to address this gap by taking a single keyword and producing a complete, SEO-optimized blog post in one shot. It's not just an assistant or an optimizer; it combines elements of both.

Here’s what makes it different and how it streamlines the workflow:

• Context-aware research: It doesn’t just spit out generic text. It actually researches the topic to provide depth, accuracy, and insights that match what people are searching for.
• Automatic asset creation: It generates images, tables, charts, and infographics right inside the article, so you don't have to jump over to another tool to create visuals.
• Social proof integration: It automatically finds and embeds relevant YouTube videos and real Reddit quotes to add credibility and a human element to your content.
• AEO optimization: It structures content not just for old-school SEO but also for AI Answer Engines like Google AI Overviews, making sure your content is ready for the future of search.

The eesel AI blog writer dashboard is designed to be simple. You just enter a keyword, add some basic info about your brand, and let it do the rest.

Pricing breakdown for Grammarly vs Frase AI

Of course, the cost is always a consideration. Here’s how the three tools compare.

Grammarly pricing

Grammarly works on a freemium model.

• Free: Gives you basic corrections for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
• Premium & Business: Unlocks advanced features like tone adjustments, plagiarism detection, full-sentence rewrites, and team style guides. Pricing usually starts around $12/month per user for premium plans. For the latest details, it's best to check their official website.

Frase AI pricing

Frase AI uses a tiered subscription model based on how many articles you can write and optimize each month.

• Solo, Basic, & Team: Plans vary by the number of user seats and articles. Pricing generally starts around $15/month for a solo plan and goes up for teams. Again, check their website for the most current pricing.

eesel AI blog writer pricing

The eesel AI blog writer offers a simple, credit-based model without confusing tiers.

• You can get $99 for 50 blog posts. This price includes everything: the research, writing, SEO optimization, and automatic asset generation. Plus, it's completely free to try, so you can see the quality for yourself before you buy.

To see how different AI writing tools can be combined in a workflow, check out the video below, which discusses how tools like Grammarly and Frase fit into the broader landscape of AI writing apps.

This video explains the different types of AI writing apps to use, providing context for the Grammarly vs Frase AI debate.

Assistant, optimizer, or generator: Which do you need?

The decision between Grammarly and Frase AI isn't about which one is better, but about identifying which tool fits your specific needs. Grammarly is a writing assistant that perfects your words. Frase AI is a content optimizer that builds your SEO strategy. Both are great tools for very different parts of the content process.

But for busy teams focused on scaling their content and getting more organic traffic, juggling multiple tools can be a bottleneck. The time spent moving from a brief in one tool to a draft in another, then to an editor, and finally to a design tool really adds up.

This is why a complete generator like the eesel AI blog writer offers a different approach. It combines the research and SEO intelligence of an optimizer with the writing power of a generative AI, and then adds asset creation to deliver a publish-ready article in minutes.

It's the exact tool we used to grow our own site from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in just three months by publishing over 1,000 optimized blogs.

Stop juggling tools and start publishing. Generate your first blog post for free and see the difference.