Best Grammarly Alternative for Mac: Fix Writing in Any App

Grammarly is the default name in writing assistance, but it has a shape that doesn't fit everyone: it lives mainly in your browser and a few integrations, it nudges you toward a monthly subscription, and your text travels to its servers to be checked. If you've searched for a Grammarly alternative — maybe a free one, maybe one people actually recommend on Reddit — you're usually after one of three things: it should work everywhere on your Mac, it shouldn't cost a recurring fee, and it shouldn't send everything you write to the cloud.

WunderType takes a different approach to all three.

What WunderType does differently

WunderType is a macOS menu bar app. You select text in any application — Mail, Notes, Slack, Pages, your code editor, a web form — press a keyboard shortcut, and the corrected or rewritten text replaces your selection in place. There's no separate window to paste into and no browser extension to babysit. It works the same in every app because it operates at the system level.

It also runs on the AI model you choose. Point it at OpenAI for cloud quality, or run a local Ollama model so your text never leaves your machine — a genuine answer to the privacy concern that sends many people looking for a Grammarly alternative in the first place.

How they compare

• Where it works: Grammarly — browser, desktop app, some integrations. WunderType — every app on macOS, via shortcut.
• Pricing: Grammarly — freemium with a recurring Premium plan. WunderType — a Mac app, no subscription treadmill.
• Privacy: Grammarly — cloud processing. WunderType — local (Ollama) or cloud (OpenAI), your call.
• Beyond grammar: Grammarly suggests fixes. WunderType also rewrites, translates, summarizes, and runs your own Custom Prompts — text actions you define yourself.

See it in action

Say you've typed a quick message and the grammar is rough:

Their going to send the the report tommorow, but i think we should of reviewed it first before it goes out to the client.

Select it, press ⇧⌘G, and WunderType returns:

They're going to send the report tomorrow, but I think we should have reviewed it first before it goes out to the client.

Same idea as Grammarly's corrections — except it just happened inside the app you were already working in, with no popup and no copy-paste.

Is there a free Grammarly alternative?

If "free" really means "no subscription and no data leaving my Mac," running WunderType with a local Ollama model gets you there: the model runs on your own hardware, so there's no per-month fee for the AI and nothing is uploaded. If you'd rather have top-tier cloud quality, you can plug in your own OpenAI key and pay only for what you use.

The real difference: Custom Prompts

Grammarly decides what "better writing" means. WunderType lets you decide. Create a Custom Prompt called "Fix Grammar," "Make it Professional," or "Translate to Spanish," give it a shortcut, and it works system-wide. It's less a grammar checker and more a programmable layer over all of your writing.

Download WunderType from the Mac App Store and fix your writing in any app — without the subscription or the cloud.