10 Best Academic Writing Apps 2024 (Free & Premium)

Are you a student or professional academic writer? Then, writing 1000 or even more words per day is not a new thing for you.

You have to often research, write and edit academic essays within a few hours. Doing all this on your own can be a daunting task and lead to some errors. Therefore, having the best academic writing apps by your side will help you research and edit your academic writing pieces faster.

Many great academic writing apps are available in the market today. But, we have shortlisted the best 10 apps that can improve and nurture your writing skills. So, let’s get moving.

10 Best Academic Writing Apps for Pro and Amateur Writers in 2024

Whether you are a professional writer or a student scrambling for your college essay, the best academic writing apps can help you write faster and better. After testing different writing tools, we come across these 10 tools that every academic writer must use:

1. Grammarly

Software Rating: 4.9/5

Compatible OS: Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, and Chrome Extension

Useful For: Spell and Grammar Checking

Price: Free forever. The premium for $12 per month.

Grammarly is the must-have academic writing app. This tool helps you produce a flawless writing piece by checking grammar errors, spelling, sentence structure, and whatnot. Grammarly uses advanced AI algorithms to analyze your text and provide suggestions to improve grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

With the premium version, Grammarly can suggest advanced writing styles such as improved readability, sentence structure, and more. For writing emails, blogs, social media posts, and formal papers, it is a perfect writing app.

Top Features

• It can detect basic and advanced grammar errors such as comma splices, fragments, alterations, and more.
• It can check every word in your writing for spelling errors.
• The software can scan the entire document for plagiarism – intentional and unintentional.
• Provides near-human touch by offering tips and advice on your writing style.
• You can add Grammarly extensions to your web browsers or Microsoft Word.

Pros

• The free version is great.
• Simple to use.
• Excellent spellcheck and grammar errors.

Cons

• Most great features are paid.

2. Popplet

Software Rating: 4.9/5

Compatible OS: iOS, Desktop, and Web-based

Useful For: Exploring Ideas and Facts

Price: Free for personal use. A premium plan for $3 per month.

Popplet is a multi-purpose academic writing app that enables you to organize and explore ideas. It is a simple app that can be used to present and understand thoughts in a fun manner. The program allows you to sort all your ideas, information, and facts to create a visual appearance to write compelling content.

Popplet customizes information squares called “popples” that are placed together on a visual canvas known as “popplet board.” It is a great app to create an information board to write well-researched academic content.

Top Features

• Provides a simple yet creative solution to display concepts and ideas.
• A whole team can work on a project and visualize information.
• Popplet activity bars make it easy to generate and manage different popples.
• You can add texts, photos, drawings, and other graphics to your popples.
• Add URLs and annotations to build a competitive popplet board.
• Smooth integration with iCloud, Dropbox, Vimeo, Google Drive, and more.

Pros

• Easy to use.
• Position texts anywhere. 
• Good for students.

Cons

• It only draws on iOS.

3. Evernote

Software Rating: 4.8/5

Compatible OS: Windows, Android, iOS, and MacOS

Useful For: Note Taking

Price: Free for basics. The premium for $7.99 per month.

Evernote is a new academic writing app to take notes and organize them. It is a convenient app to organize your database to write a well-researched writing piece. You can organize all types of data with Evernote, including PDFs, Word Docs, photos, or URLs.

You can simply use a keyword to search for resources for your writing. The simple and clean interface makes Evernote the best data organizing tool.

Top Features

• Evernote can make the text searchable on any type of picture, including presentations, ads, recipes, and more.
• It can navigate anything with a few keywords.
• Premium users get a feature called Content to analyze the content of both text and metadata and then suggest related news articles.
• Work Chat allows you to have an instant chat with your Evernote members.
• Using the web clipper, you can save a web page as an Evernote note.
• Whenever it detects something amiss in a note, it will immediately let you know.

Pros

• Good for team chatting.
• Excellent for team collaboration.
• Powerful keyword search.

Cons

• Most advanced features are paid.
• It is a new app, so it is less stable.

4. iA Writer Pro

Software Rating: 4.7/5

Compatible OS: Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android

Useful For: Text Editing

Price: Starts at $19.99 for each device.

iA Writer Pro is the perfect academic writing platform to set the mood to write. The app lets you focus on your text and make your sentences stronger. You can cut all the noise going in the background and focus on your text.

It has a powerful grammar tool that highlights grammatical errors and language issues. You can keep on correcting your writing and correct redundant sentences on the way.

Top Features

• Allow you to move paragraphs, add images, graphs, and other elements.
• The program supports markdown language, which is opposite to WYSIWYG formatting.
• iA Writer has a file transclusion feature that enables you to pull content into a text file without lifting your fingers from the keyboard.
• The app offers different typefaces that you can set to create a comfortable writing environment.
• It uses different colors to highlight verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, and other sentence elements.

Pros

• Clean UI.
• Markdown language support.
• Minimize distractions while writing.

Cons

• A bit complicated for new users.
• Slightly expensive.

5. Hemingway Editor

Software Rating: 4.6/5

Compatible OS: Windows, MacOS, and Web Extensions

Useful For: Improving Readability Score

Price: Free online version. Full version for $19.99.

Hemingway Editor is the application named after the master of literature himself. This is the perfect academic writing tool to make your writing clear and concise. It is not a deep grammar or spell checker. It helps to strengthen your sentence structure and writing style.

You simply have to paste your content into the app, and it will color-code all difficult, broken, and complex sentences. The app also provides an overall readability score of your writing.

Top Features

• Hemingway Editor offers different formatting options such as headings, bold, italics, bullets, quotes, and more.
• Using different colors can highlight problematic sentences so you can rework them.
• It provides complete information about the readability of your writing.

Pros

• Free for editing online.
• Improve your writing style.
• Great for improving readability. 
• Useful to improve SEO score.

Cons

• Not good for editing longer pieces.
• Only highlight complex sentences, don’t correct them like Grammarly.

6. ProWritingAid

Software Rating: 4.5/5

Compatible OS: Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, and Web Extensions

Useful For: Grammar Checking

Price: Free with basic features. The Pro version starts at $79.

ProWritingAid is a powerful academic writing platform that offers top-class grammar and style checking solutions along with in-depth reports to improve your writing style. The program has a unique combination of suggestions, videos, and articles to make writing fun for you.

It is a simple yet interactive platform for writers to improve their writing style and detect grammatical errors.

Top Features

• ProWritingAid has a solid security and privacy policy compliant with GDPR.
• Offers smooth integration with Google Docs, Gmail, Microsoft Words, and more.
• It helps to enhance your brand reputation and consistency.
• In-depth writing reports enhance your writing skills.
• The free version allows you to edit online without downloading the app.
• Premium users can get over 50 plagiarism checkers per day, which is perfect for academic purposes.

Pros

• Easy to use.
• Integration with other apps.

Cons

• The free version can only edit 500 words at a time.

7. Calmly Writer

Software Rating: 4.4/5

Compatible OS: Windows, MacOS, and Linux

Useful For: Distraction-free Writing

Price: Free

Calmly Writer has amplified the traditional word processor to the next level. True to its name, Calmly Writer makes writers calm and removes all the distractions around them. It is a simple, unobtrusive, and clean app with dozens of text formatting options.

You will find a special Focus Mode to type without any distractions so you can focus on the paragraph you are editing at the time.

Top Features

• You can format text by simply selecting or also using keyboard shortcuts and markdown language.
• Your document will autosave, so you will never lose your writing.
• Calmly Writer offers a variety of color themes between dark, light, dark blue, dune, or old school mode.
• Other features include typewriter sounds, customizable text caret color, export to Word, and more.

Pros

• Clean UI.
• Good for focusing on writing.
• Smart punctuation.

Cons

• In the end, it is just a text editor, no fancy features.

8. WriteMonkey

Software Rating: 4.3/5

Compatible OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Android

Useful For: Writing and Editing

Price: Free

WriteMonkey is a cost-free and distraction-free academic writing and editing tool. It is one of the oldest style editors in the market with a minimalist work environment. WriteMonkey is a great tool for distraction-free writing.

The program is useful for publication agencies that have to do bulk editing daily. Also, it has an old-school and markdown editor look.

Top Features

• It is a portable editor that you can put in the USB or use online.
• Ability to fully customize the editor using separate colors, fonts, and more.
• Supports Markdown Extra, WikiCreole, and Textile markup standards.
• It is keyboard-friendly software that allows you to manage all commands through your keyboard.
• Intuitive austere progress bar to control sentence or whole writing length.

Pros

• Clean UI.
• Extremely lightweight.
• Portable and customizable.

Cons

• No user manual.
• Limited features.

9. Reedsy

Software Rating: 4.2/5

Compatible OS: Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android

Useful For: Book Editing

Price: Free

Reedsy is the best academic writing app for creating ebook manuscripts. It is a comprehensive platform to edit and promote ebooks. On this platform, you can also hire professional ghostwriters, marketers, editors, book cover designers, and other talented people to publish a book. It is also great for indie writers to type, edit and promote their ebooks online.

Top Features

• It has a WYSIWYG editor that helps to format content faster.
• Collaborative editing allows two or more editors simultaneously on a project.
• It is a great marketplace to find professional writers and editors.

Pros

• Verified writing resources.
• Easy to use.
• Free webinars.

Cons

• Limited features for academic writers.
• Registration is mandatory before editing.

10. LibreOffice Writer

Software Rating: 4.1/5

Compatible OS: Windows, Linux, and MacOS

Useful For: Writing and Editing

Price: Free

LibreOffice Writer is an open-source and free word processor and publishing package. It has a similar interface to Microsoft Word and Corel’s WordPerfect. It has several remarkable publishing and editing features to support professional writers, such as spreadsheets, presentations, and calculator. Overall, you can write and edit anything with this app.

Top Features

• Auto-correct dictionary to improve your vocabulary and word selection.
• Capable of opening and storing to several formats, including DOC, DOCX, XHTML, RTF, and more.
• Built-in drawing, form building, and calculation tools.
• It can import and edit PDF files.
• It can be exported in EPUB ebook format.

Pros

• Quick bug fixing.
• Excellent customer support.
• Powerful data security.

Cons

• Sometimes corrupts.

Let’s Improve Your Academic Writing!

Whether you are a student or a professor working on a research paper or college essay, just grab the best academic writing tool to improve your writing skills now. These apps for academic writing will improve your writing and make it faster to edit and publish your piece. So, we have already mentioned the best 10 academic writing apps; you can now start using a free version of these tools and select the best one for yourself. Meanwhile, don’t forget to follow us on social media for informative guides