Hemingway Editor vs Readability Formulas
Hemingway Editor
hemingwayapp.com
Readability Formulas
readabilityformulas.comSide by side
| Figure | Hemingway Editor | Readability Formulas |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $8.33/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 10 | 1 |
| Spec score · AI Readability Checkers | 8.1 (#9) | 7.6 (#19) |
| Spec score · Readability Checkers | 8.0 (#11) | 7.6 (#18) |
| Intended users | Hemingway describes Editor Plus as helping teams improve mass communications, internal communications, grants, sales proposals, and other written work. | The site names writers and editors, educators, marketing professionals, healthcare providers, and government agencies as users who may benefit. |
| Privacy | Hemingway says it does not store document content after processing or use customer writing to train AI models. | The privacy policy says text processing runs through local scripts in the user's device browser and submitted text is not stored on a server or accessible to the site. |
| Purpose | Hemingway Editor scores writing for readability and highlights sentences and issues that can weaken or complicate a message. | The site offers free tools to score text and identify the reading and grade levels readers need to understand it. |
| Support | Hemingway directs users who need help to email [email protected]. | The site asks users to contact it about difficulties, bugs, mistakes, or scoring discrepancies. |
Plans
Hemingway Editor
- Individual 5K (annual)$8.33 a month
- Individual 10K (annual)$12.50 a month
- Team 10K (annual)$12.50 a month
- Individual 5K (monthly)$10 a month
- Hemingway Editor 3 desktop$19.99, paid once
- Hemingway Editor Classic$19.99, paid once
- Individual 5K$100 a year
- Individual 10K$150 a year
- Team 10K$150 a year
- EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor scores writing for readability and highlights sentences and issues that may weaken or complicate a message. Editor Plus adds rewriting for wordy sentences and passive voice, grammar fixes, and controls for tone, length and style. It also provides document review with writing feedback and suggestions, and supports importing and exporting Word, Markdown and HTML files. The Classic desktop app works offline and keeps writing on the computer; it can publish to WordPress or export HTML and Markdown for a blogging platform or CMS. Hemingway Editor is available on web, macOS and Windows. The free plan is available. Individual 5K annual access costs $8.33 a month, billed as 100 USD annually, and includes 5,000 AI sentences per month. Hemingway Editor 3 desktop costs $19.99, paid once and does not include new AI features. Hemingway says document content is discarded after processing and is not used to train AI models. For analysis or rewriting, content is sent through Hemingway to an LLM provider, currently OpenAI, Google or Anthropic, and then discarded. Editor Plus does not yet have SOC 2 or ISO certification.
Readability Formulas
Readability Formulas offers tools to score English text and estimate the grade level and age of readers likely to understand it. Its Readability Scoring System includes formulas such as Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, SMOG, Dale-Chall, Spache, FORCAST, Fry and Raygor. Text can be pasted or supplied as .txt, .docx, .rtf, .html or .pdf files. Text Statistics reports measures including syllable count, average sentence length, abbreviations, proper nouns and passive voice. The beta Robert Gunning Editor helps locate difficult words and wordiness, with editing tools for phrases, nominalizations, fuzzy words and weak verbs. Batch Processing, also in beta, scores multiple texts with one or more formulas. A Chrome and Microsoft Edge extension can score highlighted web text, open the editor and show word statistics. The privacy policy says processing runs through local browser scripts and submitted text is not stored on a server or accessible to the site. The Synonym Finder connects to Datamuse and may transmit one word at a time.