alex vs textlint
alex
alexjs.comtextlint
textlint.orgSide by side
| Figure | alex | textlint |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 2 |
| Spec score · Writing Style Checkers | 7.5 (#22) | 8.4 (#9) |
| Configuration | Users can configure Alex with .alexrc files or a package.json field, and can allow or deny specific rules. | Configuration can be stored in .textlintrc JSON, YAML, or JavaScript files, or in a package.json textlint field. |
| Integrations | The official site lists integrations for Atom, Sublime, Gulp, Slack, Ember, Probot, Vim, and Contentful. | The documentation lists integrations for editors including Visual Studio Code, Vim, Emacs, Atom, Sublime Text, micro, and NetBeans. |
| License | The GitHub repository identifies the project as open source and links to its MIT license. | The core project is released under the MIT license with copyright attributed to azu. |
| Purpose | Alex helps find gender favouring, polarising, race related, religion inconsiderate, and other unequal phrasing. | textlint is a pluggable linting tool for natural language text. |
| Support | The official site welcomes suggestions, feature requests, and issues through GitHub Issues, and provides an email address for contacting the maker. | The project directs users to its documentation and community discussions, and asks users to open issues for bugs and feature requests. |
Plans
In their own words
textlint
textlint is a free, open-source tool for checking natural-language text against rules users install and configure. It parses text into an abstract syntax tree, evaluates that structure, and reports errors or warnings. Markdown and plain text are supported by default, while plugins can add HTML and other formats. The tool has no bundled default rules, so users need to select and set up the checks they want. Its CLI can automatically fix problems and produce output in multiple formats. The project lists integrations for Visual Studio Code, Vim, Emacs, Atom, Sublime Text, micro, and NetBeans, and text checks can run in GitHub Actions workflows for commits and pull requests. The CLI can also run as an MCP server, allowing AI assistants to lint and fix text using a project’s textlint configuration. For browser use, @textlint/editor is described as an offline text-linting extension. Developers can use the package’s high-level APIs to integrate textlint into applications. It requires Node.js 20 or later and is MIT-licensed.