Trying to find the best way to express yourself isn’t always easy, but online paraphrasing tools may help. Or maybe you’re struggling to pare down a long essay to better meet the word count requirements. The good news is that you don’t have to try to do it manually. Just let these tools paraphrase what you’ve already written.
Why Use Paraphrasing Tools
If you’ve never used a paraphrasing tool, the purpose is simple – rephrase, condense, and find alternative words. Whether it’s research papers, social media posts, blog posts, or anything else, these tools help with the following:
- Avoiding plagiarism: when you’re researching information online, you may not mean to write it exactly like the source material, but it does happen sometimes. Paraphrasing tools help detect possible plagiarism and reword content to avoid it.Improve overall wording: do you keep using the same words or just want to spice up your text a bit? By paraphrasing your current text, you can avoid repetitive text and make everything flow better.Create multiple versions of the same text: if you’re trying to avoid Google penalizing you for duplicate content, you can paraphrase the same content multiple times to ensure unique content on each blog or website you’re posting to.Reduce word count: often, paraphrasing tools cut out superfluous words to reduce your word count. This is ideal if you’ve gotten wordy and need to quickly pare things down.Improve your writing skills: seeing how these tools rewrite your content may also help boost your own writing skills thanks to synonyms, better phrasing, and more efficient copywriting.
1. SpinBot
Price: Free (ad-supported)
SpinBot is one of the best, free online paraphrasing tools. It has two versions: Text Spinner and Paraphrasing Tool. While each works similarly, you can reduce or increase the word count using the Paraphrasing Tool. Unlike many available tools, Spinbot is completely free and handles up to 10,000 characters or approximately 1,000 words at a time.
Before you use the tool, turn off any ad-blockers, as they interfere with it, then copy the text you want to paraphrase and paste it into the field provided. I used the Paraphrasing Tool for this example.
Once you’ve pasted your text, choose whether to ignore capitalized words, such as proper names and any specific keywords (ideal if you’re writing SEO content). Then click “Basic Paraphrase” for a simple paraphrased version.
Use the slider at the top to increase or reduce the word count. If you want an even better version of your content, click “Advanced Paraphrase.”
2. QuillBot
Price: Free (limited) | Premium $19.95/month or $99.95/year
QuillBot is like SpinBot but “on steroids” and is definitely the more professional online paraphrasing tool. It has the following features:
- Multiple paraphrasing modes: Standard, Fluency, Expand, Shorten, Formal, Simple, and CreativeChoose three to four synonymsAdd freeze words and phrases (things you don’t want to change)Content summarizer to see just the main pointsImproved grammar writerPlagiarism detector
The free version is limited to 125 words, one freeze word, Standard and Fluency modes, and 1,200 words in the summarizer. The premium version gives you unlimited words, 6,000 words in the summarizer, all modes, faster processing speeds, a plagiarism checker, and advanced grammar rewrites.
The premium features make it a worthwhile investment if you plan to paraphrase content often or just summarize content to make it easier to do research.
3. Wordtune
Price: Free for up to 280 characters | Premium for $9.99/month
Wordtune offers more than just a website to paraphrase content. You can also download it as a Chrome extension and use it directly on your favorite sites, such as Gmail, Slack, LinkedIn, and Facebook. The free version is extremely limited, usually only handling one or two sentences or up to 280 characters, but it’ll give you a simple rewrite. You only get ten rewrites per day. For social media posts or a sentence you can’t get quite right, free is more than enough.
You’ll want the Premium version to really get the most out of Wordtune. It allows you to paraphrase unlimited words and choose between a casual and formal tone. Easily expand or condense your content based on your needs. If you’re using this for business purposes, you can request custom pricing for your entire team.
What’s nice is that the tool offers multiple versions of the same content at one time, which is ideal for creating multiple rewrites simultaneously.
4. Paraphrase Online
Price: Free
Paraphrase Online is one of the simpler online paraphrasing tools. You don’t really have any extra features to play around with. The only real thing you can do beside paraphrasing your content is click words to see synonyms: hover your mouse over the content to see which words you can click on.
While it doesn’t give the most perfect rewritten content, there don’t seem to be any daily limits. However, in testing, pasted content cut off at approximately 1,000 characters. To do more, paste your content in chunks.
5. SEO Wagon
SEO Wagon is actually a collection of numerous SEO tools, such as an article rewriter, a plagiarism detector, backlink checker, page rank checker, and a keyword density checker. For the purposes of paraphrasing, you’ll want to use the Article Rewriter tool.
Everything on the site is free to use, though the site is ad-supported. The great news is that you can paraphrase anything from a sentence to a full blog post or article, though the longer your content is, the longer it takes the tool to process it. For instance, a 1,000-word article took around five minutes to complete, while a paragraph took around 30 seconds. All changes are presented in various colors to make them easy to review.
There is one drawback to this tool, though: If you try to spin the same text more than once, it’ll be flagged as spam, and you won’t get a new version.
6. Paraphrasing Tool
The aptly named Paraphrasing Tool is one of the best free online paraphrasing tools available. It analyzes every word to create the best-sounding version of the original text. It uses AI and the NLP (neurolinguistic programming) technique to create more realistic-sounding variations.
In tests, the content actually flowed better than other free tools and was comparable with premium tools. Of course, you are limited to 10,000 characters at a time, but there’s nothing to sign up for, and the tool works quickly, which is always a plus. If you have more than 10,000 characters, just enter your text 10,000 characters at a time.
7. Grammarly
Price: Free | Premium starting at $12/month
Grammarly doesn’t work quite like other paraphrasing tools. Instead, it’s more like having a grammar teacher standing over your shoulder, correcting you as you write. The free version simply provides you with suggestions to improve conciseness, helps you determine the tone of the content, and eliminates spelling and grammatical errors. You will need to sign up for a free account to use it.
To get the most from Grammarly, you’ll want to upgrade to the Premium plan, which adds full-sentence rewrites, tone suggestions (to change the tone if needed), and word choices. For businesses, you can upgrade and get additional features starting at $15/month/member. For professional writers, Grammarly is a great tool to add to your arsenal.
Grammarly is available for most major browsers, Windows, Mac, Microsoft Office, and Google Docs. You can also use the online Grammarly Editor.
8. Paraphrasing.io
Paraphrasing.io is as simple as it gets. No sign-ups; just paste your text and paraphrase it. Surprisingly, this free tool lets you choose the tone of your rewritten content. Switch between regular, formal, creative, and academic. Formal is set by default, but it’s easy to change it. There’s even a plagiarism detector and summary tool.
You’re limited to 500 characters at a time, so it’s best for sentences and short paragraphs. You can either copy your text into the editor or upload a TXT, DOC, or DOCX file directly. The only downside is that it’s ad-supported, and the “Paraphrasing” button is placed below a banner ad under the editor.
9. CleverSpinner
Price: $9.90/month or $85/year, three-day free trial available
CleverSpinner doesn’t offer a free version, and you’ll need a credit card to sign up for the three-day free trial. However, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. The tool is designed to not only pick synonyms but analyze the context of the content to ensure the new version flows just like a human wrote it.
In addition to paraphrasing content, CleverSpinner ensures that everything is completely unique to pass any CopyScape checks. The advanced AI can rewrite 500 words in just a few seconds. While the price may not make it worth it for casual users, for anyone who needs to paraphrase a lot of content or create multiple versions of the same content, it’s well worth checking out.
10. Dupli Checker
Price: Free | Multiple premium plans starting at $10/month
Dupli Checker is one of the more generous free online paraphrasing tools. Easily get rewritten versions of up to 2,000 words (not characters, unlike most other tools) at a time. The site is heavy on ads, which may turn many users off.
Dupli Checker has a variety of tools available for text analysis, SEO research, image editing, and more, but you’ll be most interested in the Paraphrasing Tool. While there are no usage limits on the free tool, premium plans give you more words at once along with larger plagiarism checks. The $10/month plan lets you rewrite up to 30,000 words at a time.
11. Plagiarism Detector
Price: Free | Premium plans starting at $20/month
Plagiarism Detector is first and foremost about preventing plagiarized content, but there’s also a paraphrasing tool and grammar checker. The free version of the paraphrasing tool lets you rewrite anywhere between 50 to 2,000 words at a time. In my testing, it didn’t paraphrase as much of the content as other tools, only rewriting around 25% versus the 50% to 90% that others did.
However, it’s a good option to quickly rephrase a sentence or short paragraph, especially if you’re struggling to find the right word or synonym. If you want to work with more text at a time, upgrade to get 72,000 words a month and 240 plagiarism detection searches. For most users, the free version is sufficient.
12. SpinnerChief
Price: Free | Premium plans starting at $57/month, $107/year, or $307/lifetime
SpinnerChief is one of the more advanced online paraphrasing tools. The free version lets you create basic spun (rewritten) text of up to 150 words at a time. You’re limited to 20 spins or rewrites per day. However, for individual sentences or short paragraphs, it works incredibly well and shows you both structural and word changes.
The premium versions give you unlimited usage, more advanced paraphrasing, more synonyms, batch spinning, grammar checks, and much more. You can test drive the premium version for three days for $7. There is also special pricing for teams, and the lifetime license is a good deal.
13. SpinRewriter
Price: $47/month, $197/year, or $497/lifetime
SpinRewriter uses ENL (emulated natural language) to quickly paraphrase any text. There’s a five-day free trial available if you sign up for the yearly plan. You can cancel as soon as you test it out. The tool is designed for users who need to rewrite the same article numerous times, such as marketers or bloggers posting similar content on multiple sites.
When rewriting content, you can upload your own or even search Google for content using keywords. Then, select your settings, such as rewriting just sentences or entire paragraphs. You can create up to 1,000 versions of the same article. While SpinRewriter is pricey, it can be an invaluable tool for bulk paraphrasing.
14. PrePostSEO
Price: Free | Premium starting at $50/year
PrePostSEO offers paraphrasing for free. Use it as often as you would like. I was able to rewrite a 1,000-word article for free. Easily copy and paste content or upload documents. You can also choose from Simple, Advanced, Creative, and Fluency paraphrasing modes along with excluding specific words, such as keywords.
If you want to rewrite larger articles, you’ll want to upgrade. The basic plan starts at $50/year, lets you check 5,000 words at once, and also gets rid of ads and those annoying captchas.
PrePostSEO also offers a plagiarism checker and summarizer. Just like with the paraphrasing tool, you can upgrade word count limits in the premium plans.
Frequently Asked Questions
Image credit: Deeezy via Pixabay.
Are paraphrasing tools ethical?
While plagiarizing content is never ethical, paraphrasing tools create new versions of existing content. Some people use it to copy articles, essays, and research papers online to create their own without having to do any extra work. This is kind of a gray area, but the most ethical use of these tools is to revise content you’ve written yourself. Whether you just want it to sound better or you need a second version, you’re still working with content you created and not someone else’s.
If you’re trying to copy content from another site to summarize or paraphrase but the site won’t let you, try these methods instead.
Is paraphrased content plagiarism-free?
Not always. While most tools promise mostly plagiarism-free content, you should always verify whether the new content is unique or not. You can even use the plagiarism checkers offered by many of the tools above.
If you’re manually trying to paraphrase your content, try these difference checker tools to see how much the content has been changed.
Are there any paraphrasing mobile apps?
While there are some apps, most are poorly rated and cumbersome to use. It’s usually easier to use the websites above and download the text to your mobile device.
Crystal Crowder has spent over 15 years working in the tech industry, first as an IT technician and then as a writer. She works to help teach others how to get the most from their devices, systems, and apps. She stays on top of the latest trends and is always finding solutions to common tech problems.
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