Hemingway Editor is a 🏷️#web-app for 🏷️#writing that scores prose for readability and flags the constructions that hurt it, built in 2013 by brothers Adam and Ben Long. The browser version is free. A desktop application sold as a one-time purchase adds offline editing and direct publishing, and a subscription tier, Hemingway Editor Plus, adds AI-assisted rewriting metered by volume.

The tool applies a small set of legible rules rather than a general grammar model. It assigns a US reading-grade score and color-codes the draft: yellow for sentences that run long, red for sentences dense enough to lose a reader, blue for adverbs and weakening phrases, green for the passive voice. That constraint is the entire position — it does not correct spelling, argue style, or rewrite for you in the free tier; it makes structural excess visible and leaves the judgment with the writer. Against broader assistants like 📝Grammarly it competes by being deliberately narrower, and the name states the target register: the plain declarative sentence.

Key Features

• Readability grade — Assigns a US reading-grade score to the draft and updates it as sentences are edited.
• Sentence highlighting — Yellow marks sentences to shorten or split; red marks sentences dense enough that readers lose the thread.
• Adverb and passive-voice flags — Blue marks adverbs and weakening phrases; green marks passive constructions.
• Desktop application — A one-time purchase adds offline editing and publishing straight to a blogging platform.
• Hemingway Editor Plus — A subscription tier that rewrites flagged sentences with AI, priced by rewrite volume.