Essay vs Paperpal
Essay
essay.appPaperpal
paperpal.comSide by side
| Figure | Essay | Paperpal |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $8/mo | $11.58/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 3 | 15 |
| Spec score · AI Essay Writers | 9.0 (#5) | 8.9 (#7) |
| Citation styles | Essay formats in-text citations, footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies in APA, MLA and Chicago styles. | Its citation generator supports more than 10,000 citation styles. |
| Documentation and support | The official help center provides writing philosophy, tutorials, advanced-feature articles, videos, mobile guidance and a roadmap link. | Paperpal maintains a Help Center with FAQ categories for features, free usage, data privacy and security, plus email support at [email protected]. |
| Integrations | Zotero is the documented external integration and can synchronize a user’s reference library. | Official pages list a web app, Microsoft Word add-in, Google Docs support, Chrome extension and Overleaf support. |
| Privacy | 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. | Paperpal says it never uses user documents, uploads, or personal information to train its AI models and allows users to delete documents. |
| Support | The site lists [email protected] for support and contact. | Paperpal provides a Help Center and lists [email protected] as its contact email. |
| What it does | Essay is a structured writing workspace for planning, drafting, revising, citing and sharing written work. | Paperpal is an AI academic writing and research assistant covering drafting, editing, research, citations, document checking and submission preparation. |
Plans
Paperpal
- Prime$144 a year
- Prime$25 a month
- Pro$348 a year
- Pro$59 a month
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Prime$12 a month
- Paperpal Prime$25 a month
- Prime Monthly$25 a month
- Pro$29 a month
In their own words
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.
Paperpal
Paperpal is an AI research and academic writing workspace for students and researchers, combining writing help, citation tools, and academic checks. Users can upload references and PDFs, ask questions, and receive cited findings from more than 300 million verified research articles. Writing tools cover academic suggestions, paraphrasing, tone changes, word reduction, grammar, proofreading, and citation formatting. Its checker suite looks for plagiarism and AI-writing patterns, checks references, and assesses journal submission readiness. Paperpal runs on the web and as a browser extension; it also offers a Microsoft Word add-in and browser-extension support for Google Docs and Overleaf. The free plan includes 200 language suggestions, five generative AI uses per day, 7,000 plagiarism-check words per month, and five daily AI-detection scans of up to 1,200 words each. Prime costs $144 a year billed annually, or $25 a month billed monthly. Pro costs $348 a year billed annually, or $59 a month billed monthly. Paperpal says it does not train its AI models on user documents, uploads, or personal information, and allows document deletion.