I compared 4 AI writing tools and found ChatGPT is by far the best one

• Zulie Rane is a full-time content creator.
• She says that many of the writing AIs are expensive and not worth the money.

AI is the new crypto. Every single startup bro who saw the writing on the wall has pivoted from pushing too-good-to-be-true financial products to pushing too-good-to-be-true AI products instead.

But it's worse, actually. Because ChatGPT is free, for now at least. Yet almost every single one of those new AI writing tools that are "better" than ChatGPT? You pay them somewhere between $9.99-$49.99 a month (only $8.99/month when billed annually!).

I looked into fourpopular AI writing tools and found that they're all actually worse than ChatGPT. Here's the list of overhyped, expensive AI writing tools I recommend avoiding.

1. Jenni.ai

Jenni AI, which I've reviewed in full, is an AI writing tool that promises to supercharge your content creation with high-quality content. The marketing material claims you can write emails, articles, essays, and more. You get 200 free AI-generated words per day. After that, it's $20/month when billed monthly.

How it works

You provide Jenni AI with a short brief, like, "I am writing an article about the very best cat food," and it drafts a short paragraph. From there, it works a bit like a turbo-charged Google autocomplete. You can start writing and then allow Jenni AI to suggest autocompletion options. You can accept the suggestions, or see more variations.

Why it's bad

Jenni AI produced poor-quality writing.

On the second line, you can see Jenni generated a typo.

It also made up citations, which is bad anyway, but especially bad for an AI tool that promises to help you write research papers.

Jenni generated the text, but I was not able to find that study, suggesting it doesn't exist.

Why I recommend ChatGPT instead

When I tested the exact same prompt on ChatGPT, it gave me a better title, more in-depth writing, and no made-up studies.

When I explicitly asked for studies, it pointed me in the direction of a mix of real and made-up studies.

In short, I got the same output in slightly better quality, but for free.

2. Quillbot AI

Quillbot AI is a paraphrasing tool for writing content, which I've reviewed in full. It promises to "enhance your writing." It's marketed to students and professionals to help ensure their words meet the right tone. It offers seven rewriting modes. You can choose to have Quillbot help you summarize, go more fluent, more formal, simpler, more creative, longer, or shorter.

It's got a freemium model. You can access two rewriting modes — standard and fluency — for free, or pay to access five additional modes. The cost is $19.95 when billed monthly.

How it works

On the freemium model, you can paste up to 125 words at a time to the paraphrasing tool. You can also use the grammar tool (same as Grammarly) and the summarizing tool for free. The co-writing tool and the plagiarism checker were paywalled.

Why it's bad

When I used Quillbot's tool, I found its definition of "to paraphrase" seems to simply mean to spin a roulette wheel on synonyms and choose one at random.

Here's an example:

You can see "peacefully napping" becomes "taking a calm slumber," whatever that means. It also paraphrased "coworkers" to "employees," which is just incorrect.

I found the quality of the paraphrasing to be poor. I suspect Quillbot AI is mostly used as a plagiarism tool by morally bankrupt SEO bloggers who borrow and paraphrase content from their competitors, and harried students.

Why I recommend ChatGPT instead.

If I were a morally bankrupt SEO blogger, I wouldn't want to pay $19.95 a month for a paraphrase when ChatGPT can do the same thing:

It's not a great paraphrase, but it's about the same as Quillbot AI's quality. And it's free.

3. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is for marketers, plain and simple. It's streamlined to help you write blog posts, social media posts, and emails. There's a free trial that gives you 2,000 words for free per month. The next plan is $49/month.

How it works

It's a very simple workflow. I tested out the blog use case. You give it a title, some keywords, and a tone to aim for. Then it walks you through an outline and some talking points, which you can edit, before generating the article.

Why it's bad

This was one of the better AI tools I tested. The article was good, didn't repeat itself too much, and had an actual tone rather than sounding like word salad as so many AI text generators do.

It wasn't perfect – for example, I prompted it with the title, "The 7 Best Types of Cat Food For Picky Cats," and the initial outline it generated only had five types of cat food, along with two talking points that weren't a type.

Plus, when I went back to try to fix the talking points, it did not let me re-generate the article as I had used all my words in the free plan.

Why I recommend ChatGPT instead

When I gave ChatGPT the same prompt, it actually generated seven types of food. The tone was engaging, as specified. While I could have done a better job myself, it was also free to use compared to Copy.ai's $49/month price tag.

4. Rytr

Last but not least, I checked out Rytr, which markets itself as a jack-of-all-AI. It promises to write emails, blog posts, social media posts, landing page copy, product descriptions, story plots, and more. It has a forever-free plan which generates 10k characters, which is about 1,800 words. The unlimited plan costs $29/month.

How it works

I found Rytr to be very intuitive to use. You can choose a pre-determined use case, like Blog Outline, or go for the "Magic Command" option where you tell it what you want it to do.

Why it's bad

The text it generated was uninspiring and bland. It also didn't make sense at times. For example, within the "kibble" section of the article, Rytr generated text talking about canned food.

The formatting also left a lot to be desired. It left spaces in the wrong places and did not create an auto-formated list as I'd expected. Additionally, it invented things. I didn't expect AI hallucinations on a topic as dry as cat food, but Rytr surprised me by hallucinating a nonexistent cat treat brand called "EkoRazors."

Why I recommend ChatGPT instead

ChatGPT was easier to use, generated higher quality work, and is free. When I gave ChatGPT the same prompt as I did Rytr, it created a basic listicle about cat food types. The formatting was perfect and did not invent any random cat treat brands.

Learn to use ChatGPT before spending money

The main takeaway? From generating titles, outlines, or fully-fleshed-out blog posts, ChatGPT was as good as, or better, than any AI tools I've tested. And for now, it's free.

The main advantage the AI tools have is that they've been designed for a specific purpose. However, with the right prompts, ChatGPT can do the exact same thing.

Whether you're a marketer or a freelance writer like me, I recommend you take the time to educate yourself on good ChatGPT prompts before you shell out anywhere from $9 to $49/month on shoddy AI tools.

Zulie Rane is a content creator, and freelancer.