Grammalecte vs Harper

Grammalecte is free, GPL 3 open-source software for checking French grammar and typography. It detects punctuation, spacing, typography, repeated words, hyphenation, capitalization, agreement, conjugation, confusions, and pleonasms. Users can enable or disable error categories and choose Classic, 1990 Reform, or All Variants spelling dictionaries, with Classic selected by default. Suggestions use several mechanisms, and an OCR option can detect errors in text produced by optical character recognition. A formatter addresses recurring errors and restructures text; its conjugator covers about 8,000 verbs. Grammalecte is available as a desktop app and browser extension on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Listed integrations include LibreOffice or OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, a command-line interface, server, and Python package. The FAQ says writing is analyzed locally, with no data collected or text transmitted. The maker says the checker does not perform semantic analysis, can miss mistakes, and may produce false positives. There is currently no version compatible with Chrome’s new extension API.

Harper is a free, open-source grammar checker that flags capitalization, spelling, awkward phrasing, and grammar errors. The maker says checks run locally, with no cloud round-trips, telemetry, or LLM in the loop, and that suggestions appear in under 10 ms. Harper is available through browser and editor extensions, a language server, a JavaScript library, a Rust crate, and native apps. Listed integrations include Chrome, Brave, Edge, Firefox, VS Code, Cursor, Obsidian, WordPress, Neovim, Zed, Helix, Emacs, and Sublime Text. Its language support covers English and British, American, Canadian, Australian, and Indian English dialects. Harper Desktop lets users toggle rules, add dictionary entries, select a dialect, and turn checking on or off per app. The desktop app is labeled beta for macOS 14 or later, and the Windows desktop app is also described as a beta; its binary was not signed at the time of the listed post. Harper is free, with no account or credit card required.