Readable vs textlint
Readable
readable.comtextlint
textlint.orgSide by side
| Figure | Readable | textlint |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $12/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 2 |
| Spec score · Writing Style Checkers | 8.5 (#6) | 8.4 (#9) |
| Integrations | Official pages list Dropbox and Slack applications as integrations. | The documentation lists integrations for editors including Visual Studio Code, Vim, Emacs, Atom, Sublime Text, micro, and NetBeans. |
| Purpose | Readable is an online toolkit for analyzing and improving writing readability and quality. | textlint is a pluggable linting tool for natural language text. |
| Support | Readable advertises an extensive knowledge base plus in-app and email support. | The project directs users to its documentation and community discussions, and asks users to open issues for bugs and feature requests. |
| What it does | Readable analyzes writing for readability, tone, style, language problems and suggested improvements. | textlint is a pluggable utility that checks natural-language text for lint errors. |
Plans
In their own words
textlint
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.