PerfectIt vs textlint

PerfectIt checks professional documents for consistency mistakes and style issues, including hyphenation, list punctuation, acronym definitions, spelling, capitalization, numbers in sentences, headings, comments, extra spaces, and placeholder text. Its built-in styles cover UK, US, Canadian, and Australian spelling, as well as styles for organizations including the European Union, United Nations, World Health Organization, Government Publishing Office, Australian Government, and American Legal writing. Users can create custom style guides and manage terminology and brand voice rules. PerfectIt works inside Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, though PowerPoint access is limited to Elite, Team, or Enterprise subscriptions. Chicago Manual of Style checking requires a CMOS Online subscription. The Windows edition does not connect to the internet or a local network, keeping documents on the computer. PerfectIt Cloud sends documents securely for checking and deletes them afterward; the site says no one else can access them during checking. It does not generate or rewrite text, leaving editorial decisions to the user. Plans are billed per month, and a free 14-day trial is available without credit card information. PerfectIt is based in London and was founded in 2009.

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.