Grammarly Alternative: LanguageTool an open-source grammar and spell checker

Grammarly is a popular proofreader who helped millions of people around the world to gain confidence in writing. In this post, you'll learn about an even better open-source Grammarly alternative, called LanguageTool.

A good Grammarly alternative should also be able to automatically proofread the text while you're writing and detect grammar errors, typos, false friends, enhance vocabulary use and suggest citations. A little software helper like that might just help you to save a lot of time, by not having to Google every other word while typing to make sure no spelling errors occurred. The boost in writing confidence happens almost immediately.

The main privacy concern with Grammarly is the fact that all keyboard inputs are being sent to a server and, in theory, Grammarly has access to all the text, messages etc. The Grammarly alternative LanguageTool, on the other hand, enables users who feel confident enough to self-host a server to do that. Instead of your keyboard inputs ending up on a server that is out of your reach and control, you can send it to your own server instead. This process is well documented and explained here.

LanguageTool Features

• Writing in a distraction-free environment helps you focus on producing high-quality texts.
• Your personal dictionary ensures that you never write the same text twice.
• Don’t worry about typos and grammar mistakes. The app scores your text for quality and corrects automatically.
• Texts are securely stored. If your computer or phone dies, you'll still be able to access them from the cloud.
• Picky Mode for professional texts, with advanced style and typographic suggestions to make your life even easier.
• Choose between a dark or light theme depending on your needs at the moment.

LanguageTool self-hosting for additional Privacy

Privacy is not the only advantage of LanguageTool. The optional premium features are way more affordable compared to Grammarly. The set of features and available plugins of both services are almost identical. It now supports 31 languages, each developed by volunteer maintainers, usually native speakers of each language.

• Website: https://languagetool.org/

On a side note, this article is written by a non-native English speaker with the help of LanguageTool, an open-source alternative to Grammarly. If you happen to find any typos, just blame it on LanguageTool… Just kidding.

GitHub 💎 Gems

What are GitHub Gems by PrivacyTools.io? Open-source Software that doesn't fit the privacy topic on the main website PrivacyTools.io but are worth checking out. Most open-source projects are run by privacy-minded people, anyway. From great developers for beautiful people like you. ❤️

GitHub Gems are hard to discover since they are so precious and rare, so please share them with us in our Forum if you happen to stumble upon a Gem. I will make sure to let the world know about them as soon as possible and share the love the developers have put in these tools.