Galleys vs ProWritingAid

A toolkit for your sentences, or a developmental edit for your story?

ProWritingAid is the most established writing-improvement tool on the market: grammar, style, readability, pacing and dialogue reports, plus a Manuscript Analysis feature. It is built to make prose cleaner. Galleys is built to answer a different question — does the story work? — the way a developmental editor would, across the whole manuscript, with every issue quoted and tiered.

No account needed.

What ProWritingAid does well

ProWritingAid is excellent at the line level. If your draft has sticky sentences, overused words, passive voice, or dialogue tags that need tightening, its reports find them fast and integrate directly with Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener. It also has years of named author endorsements behind it.

Where Galleys differs

Galleys skips grammar entirely. It builds reference documents (characters, timeline, open promises) before critiquing, then evaluates structure, plot, character arcs, continuity, voice, and theme chapter by chapter. Every issue quotes the passage, gets a severity tier, and comes with a fix, organized into a 5-wave revision plan. You can bring your own API key on Author plans and up for unlimited analyses, and one-time reports mean you don't need a subscription at all.

01 — Feature by feature

Galleys vs ProWritingAid, side by side

Capability	ProWritingAid	Galleys
Grammar & spelling	✓	—
Style & readability reports	✓ 20+ reports	Prose tier only
Editor integrations (Word, Docs, Scrivener)	✓	—
Plot structure analysis	Manuscript Analysis summary	✓ Chapter-by-chapter
Severity-tiered issues with quoted passages	—	✓ Tier 1 / 2 / 3
Continuity & canon checking	—	✓ Cross-chapter, cross-series
Character voice tracking	—	✓ Per character
Prioritized revision plan	—	✓ 5-wave
Genre adaptation & convention tolerance	—	✓
Bring your own API key	—	✓ Author plan and up
One-time purchase (no subscription)	Lifetime license	✓ $19 / $39 per report

ProWritingAid details as of August 2026, from its public site. Tell us if something is out of date: [email protected].

02 — Price per manuscript

What one developmental read costs

ProWritingAid

$10+

per month

Premium tier; yearly and lifetime licenses available

Galleys

$39

one-time, full manuscript

or subscribe from $14/mo

30-day money-back guarantee on every Galleys report. If it doesn't surface issues a developmental editor would catch, we refund you.

For context: a human developmental edit costs $2,000–$4,000 and takes weeks. Full Galleys pricing →

03 — Which one is for you

Choose ProWritingAid if

You mainly need line-level cleanup: grammar, repeated words, readability.
You want suggestions inside Word, Google Docs, or Scrivener as you type.
Your structure is already solid and you're polishing.

Choose Galleys if

You've finished a draft and need to know what's structurally wrong before beta readers or a human editor.
You want issues quoted and ranked, not a score.
You're writing a series and need continuity checked across books.

Galleys vs ProWritingAid: common questions

Can I use ProWritingAid and Galleys together?

Yes, and that's the common workflow: run Galleys first to fix structural problems (Waves 1–3 of the revision plan), then use ProWritingAid for the line-level pass so you don't polish scenes that get cut.

Does Galleys check grammar?

No. Galleys deliberately leaves grammar and spelling to dedicated tools. Its Tier 3 prose notes cover rhythm, word choice, and clarity at the paragraph level, not typos.

Which is cheaper?

For a single manuscript, a Galleys Full Manuscript Report is $39 one-time. ProWritingAid Premium is a subscription starting around $10/month, or a lifetime license. If you only need one developmental read, Galleys is the smaller spend; if you want an always-on style checker, ProWritingAid is.

Read a full Galleys report before you decide

The sample report is open to read without an account. Then analyze a chapter of your own, free.

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