Academly vs Essay
Academly
academly.ai
Essay
essay.appSide by side
| Figure | Academly | Essay |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $24/mo | $8/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 3 |
| Spec score · AI Essay Writers | 9.0 (#2) | 9.0 (#5) |
| Founder | Dom identifies himself as Academly's founder and says he built it after encountering fabricated citations from a general AI tool. | Prospeo identifies Julian Peterson as founder; Clay also lists him as founder. |
| Privacy | The site states that it is GDPR compliant and does not train AI models on user documents. | Essay’s privacy policy says personal information is collected and used with consent for providing its services, and identifies its basis as PIPEDA and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code. |
| Support | The site lists support by email at [email protected]. | The site lists [email protected] for support and contact. |
| What it does | Academly is a web thesis-writing workspace that drafts academic chapters from PDFs supplied by the user. | Essay is a structured writing workspace for planning, drafting, revising, citing and sharing written work. |
Plans
In their own words
Academly
Academly is a web-based thesis-writing platform that generates academic writing from PDFs users upload. Users select pages from their sources, generate drafts, check citations, and assemble chapters into a thesis. The site says citations link to uploaded PDFs and verified page references. Chapter generation covers theory, methodology, discussion, and conclusion. Academly also describes an integrated Mayring workflow for coding interviews, forming categories, and generating findings. Free tools listed on the site include a thesis topic generator and literature search. Academly presents itself for Bachelor’s and Master’s thesis writers and researchers. The site says it is GDPR compliant and does not train AI models on user documents; it also lists email support. The free plan includes 60 Student Points on signup, basic summaries, automatic citations, and PDF uploads up to 5 MB. Pro costs $24 a month and includes 2,000 Student Points refreshed monthly, uploads up to 50 MB, chapter builders, qualitative analysis, and multiple export formats. Author costs $45 a month, and Lifetime costs $399, paid once.
Essay
Essay is a structured writing platform for planning, drafting, editing, citing, and sharing written work. Its tools include outlines, a distraction-free drafting space, rewriting, and reordering. Writers can collect research in notes, organize it, and link it to an essay or outline. They can share work with friends, teachers, or peers, using feedback categories to guide review. Essay also supports citations, reference management, bibliography formatting, and academic exports. Listed export formats include PDF, Word, Docs, and Markdown; Pro includes Zotero integration and academic export. The Free plan allows 3 essays, a 5,000-word count, 12 notes, and 10 personalized topic recommendations. Core costs $8 USD per month billed annually, while Pro costs $12 USD per month billed annually. Essay is available on iOS and the web. Its roadmap lists working offline as a live feature and native Android and iOS apps as planned. The site presents Core for everyday writers and Pro for academics and researchers, with uses including dissertations, proposals, creative writing, and research papers.