Product Review

EasyBib Review

EasyBib is a premium Grammar and spelling checker with a built-in plagiarism detector. It is designed with students in mind, both on the high school and college level.

The “Bib” in EasyBib refers to the creation of a bibliography or works cited page at the end of a term paper or essay. That was the original purpose for this tool. However, recently, they’ve started scanning documents for grammar errors, punctuation mistakes, spelling mistakes, and instances of accidental plagiarism.

If you’re curious to see how EasyBib holds up against services like ProWritingAid or Grammarly, you’ve come to the right place.

At our content marketing agency, we review the best writing apps and grammar checkers so that you don’t have to.

We tested both the free and premium versions of EasyBib to determine its effectiveness as a tool for writers of all ages and skill levels. We took a piece of sample writing and had the system make spelling corrections, grammar suggestions, and check for instances of plagiarism.

See how it fared in this EasyBib review.

Disclosure: These reviews are reader-supported. We might earn a small commission if you purchase something through our site. Learn more

Our Verdict

I only recommend the premium subscription plan. The free plan is entirely too limited and is nothing more than a waste of time. Grammarly might be on the pricey side, you can save 20% with our link. 

Grammarly Best All-Around

$11.66 /mo – before discount
PROS
  • 86% out of 86% accuracy
  • 16+ billion database
  • 150k+ word limit
  • 5 device limit
  • 1-hour response
CONS
  • Only English
  • Expensive without our link

EasyBib Limited Features

$9.95 /month
PROS
  • Great plagiarism detector
  • Citation generator
  • Easy to use
CONS
  • Limited suggestions
  • Tedious sign-up process
  • No additional platforms
  • Questionale customer service page

Grammarly Premium Walkthrough Video

Pros of EasyBib

1. Great Plagiarism Detector

When you visit EasyBib’s website, they spend a lot of time talking about plagiarism. They dive into the various definitions of plagiarism, the reasons why you should avoid it, and heavily tout the effectiveness of their premium plagiarism detection software without going into too many specifics.

The service is really great and super thorough.

It should be noted that plagiarism detection is only offered with the EasyBib premium subscription and cannot be used with the free plan.

To get started with EasyBib, copy and paste your writing into the open form on the right. The service immediately gets to work, checking your content for grammar errors, spelling errors, and punctuation mistakes.

If you want to run a plagiarism check, you’ll have to do a whole new search.

Click on the tab on the left marked Plagiarism. This will bring up a small box that states that the system is ready.

Click Check My Paper to get started.

EasyBib keeps you updated as it works and lets you know that, depending on the length of your writing, it could take up to 10 minutes.

It finished with our sample paper in under two.

This sample article is loaded with plagiarism intentionally so that we can check the effectiveness of plagiarism checkers. It found that a whopping 88% of the text was copied from other sources. It actually identified more instances of plagiarism than most of our top plagiarism detectors.

If you want more information on a source, click on the result, and you’ll find the following screen, with a link to the source in question.

After that, EasyBib can actually help you create a citation if you want to keep the text intact while giving credit where credit is due.

2. Citation Generator

Once you’ve identified instances of unintentional plagiarism, you can cite sources properly to avoid any unpleasantness.

EasyBib, being first and foremost a citation management tool, allows you to create citations with ease. After the system tells you where you’ve accidentally plagiarised, it gives you the source.

Copy and paste the source URL into the citation generator to begin.

It also gives you several citation styles to choose from, such as MLA citations, among others. Make your selection, and you’re off to the races.

Enter the URL, and EasyBib will give you suggestions. Click on Cite, and you’ll be able to start building out your citation formatting.

3. Easy to Use

As a grammar checker, EasyBib was very easy to use once you got through the sign-up process.

There’s a large open document on the right. Paste your text into the document to begin the correction process.

Once you’ve pasted your writing, you’ll see a number of grammatical suggestions on the left. You can take each step by step.

What I particularly like about these suggestions is that they take the time to explain why the selection is wrong. That gives writers a chance to learn something from the tool and apply that knowledge to future writing.

The suggestions it offered were excellent, much like those offered by other premium services that we’ve reviewed.

Cons of EasyBib

1. Limit of 5 Suggestions on Free Plan

Whenever you have a free plan, you’re going to have limitations put in place.

Usually, those limits involve the depth of grammar and spelling corrections offered. EasyBib takes limitations to a whole new level, and it’s almost to the point where you shouldn’t even bother with the free service at all.

You get five suggestions.

That’s it.

Just five.

First, you’ll get a pop-up ad touting the premium service. Thankfully, this was the only intrusive ad I encountered while using the free plan.

Below, you’ll see that there are 38 total suggestions, but I only see the first five because of the shackles placed on free users.

I understand the need to limit free services, but this is a little silly.

Giving someone only five suggestions for their entire article or paper is ridiculously limiting.

Even the experts from our MasterClass review would attest to that.

The plagiarism detector is also a premium-only service, and you won’t be able to use it on the free plan.

2. Questionable Customer Service Page

A strong customer service department is the backbone of any business.

Unfortunately, there isn’t one here.

When I clicked on the Support page for EasyBib, my Chrome browser freaked out.

It immediately let me know that my connection was not private. For most people, this is a full stop. Cybercrime permeates every corner of the internet, so when something like this warning hits my screen, I take it seriously.

Were I browsing around for a service to use for myself, I would have left EasyBib forever right there. But for the purposes of this review, I fired up a VPN for some enhanced encryption and security and soldiered on.

When I got to the page, I was dismayed to find a knowledge base with no readily available contact information.

I searched for a few common questions and came up with nothing. And these were simple questions like “how many languages do you include” and “how large is your plagiarism database?”

Finally, I clicked on one of the articles it was suggesting. It was on cancellations. It was a useful and informative piece, complete with screenshots.

At the very end of the article, I found a tiny button that linked to a contact form. So direct contact is possible, you just have to dig for it.

I went to the contact page and started filling out the form.

I selected that I had a general question, and the dropdown box that popped up was interesting.

It immediately asked me why I wanted to cancel.

What the what?

I said nothing about cancellation. I thought maybe it was because I was looking at a cancellation article, so I tried again from an article about the citation builder.

Same thing.

My question had nothing to do with cancellation.

EasyBib is like an insecure significant other who, when you say you have a question, responds with, “WHAT, WHY DO YOU WANT TO BREAK UP WITH ME?”

I just wrote “NA” in all of its ridiculous required fields and asked a simple question about the plagiarism detection database.

As of this writing, I have yet to receive a response.

3. Tedious Sign-Up Process

Creating a premium account with EasyBib was annoying.

It wanted the usual information like your email and password, but then it started in with a bunch of questions I found to be unnecessary.

First, it wanted to know if I was a student, teacher, or parent.

Well…I’m none of those things. So I just selected student to get the process moving.

Now it wanted to know what level of education I was participating in, what university I was with, and what year I was. How is any of this relevant to purchasing a subscription?

Once that was done, thankfully, I was able to enter my payment information and start my trial membership.

4. No Specific Information on Plagiarism Detector

As I mentioned before, there is a lot of information about plagiarism on this site and why you should want to use a plagiarism detector.

However, there is no actual information on EasyBib’s plagiarism detector. I wanted to know the size of the database, so I scoured the site and came up with nothing.

After reading through the entire site, I learned that plagiarism is wrong and why you shouldn’t do it. But I didn’t learn anything about EasyBib’s plagiarism detector save for a throwaway line about “billions” of sources.

5. No Additional Platforms

EasyBib is only available through the easybib.com website. There are no mobile apps or desktop applications to speak of.

That’s very limiting, especially considering that mobile internet use is insanely popular, and some students might need offline corrections on their papers.

EasyBib Costs, Plans, & Payment Options

There is only one premium subscription for EasyBib. It is called EasyBib Plus. It comes with the plagiarism detector, enhanced grammar corrections, advanced feedback, MLA style, and more than 7,000 other writing styles.

It costs $9.95 per month.

The plan comes with a three-day free trial.

The only payment method accepted by EasyBib is a debit or credit card. They don’t take PayPal, Bitcoin, or anything else like that.

Do I Recommend EasyBib?

Yes and no. I recommend it for students looking to check their essays and expand their writing style.

Just for students, though.

I think EasyBib would appreciate that because this was clearly designed with students and academic writing in mind. If you’re looking for a quality and affordable plagiarism detector that also dabbles in grammar and spelling, this is the service for you.

I only recommend the premium subscription plan. The free plan is entirely too limited and is nothing more than a waste of time.

But with the lack of customer service and a tedious sign-up process coupled with no mobile support whatsoever, I can’t recommend it for grammar and writing to working professionals like professional writers, authors writing a book, and teachers.

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