Hemingway Editor vs Readability
Hemingway Editor
hemingwayapp.comReadability
readability.adaptive-enforcement-lab.comSide by side
| Figure | Hemingway Editor | Readability |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $8.33/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 11 | 1 |
| Spec score · AI Readability Checkers | 8.1 (#9) | 8.2 (#7) |
| Intended users | Hemingway describes Editor Plus as helping teams improve mass communications, internal communications, grants, sales proposals, and other written work. | The product site names bloggers, technical writers, documentation teams, students, and curious readers as audiences for its introductory material. |
| Purpose | Hemingway Editor scores writing for readability and highlights sentences and issues that can weaken or complicate a message. | Readability analyzes Markdown files and reports readability scores. |
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 3 desktop$19.99 a month
- Hemingway Editor Classic$19.99, paid once
- Individual 5K$100 a year
- Individual 10K$150 a year
- Team 10K$150 a year
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
Readability analyzes Markdown files and reports measures of reading complexity. It provides grade level, reading ease and estimated reading time calculated at 200 words per minute. The listed grade-level formulas are Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog, Coleman-Liau, SMOG and ARI. It also measures word and sentence metrics and can detect or require MkDocs-style admonitions. Results can be produced as a table, Markdown, JSON, summary or report. Configurable thresholds can fail CI checks when documentation exceeds them, and a.readability.yml file supports path-specific overrides. The project documents a Go command-line tool, Docker, a GitHub Action and pre-commit hooks, alongside CI/CD examples for GitLab CI, CircleCI and Jenkins. Pre-built binaries are listed for Linux and macOS in amd64 and arm64, and Windows in amd64. The project identifies its license as MIT and lists no paid plans. Its documentation cautions that scores measure word and sentence complexity, not accuracy, completeness, context or tone.