Quillbot logo
Academic Research · Audio Transcription

Quillbot

Quillbot is an AI writing and creation suite from Learneo, Inc. It paraphrases, checks grammar, summarizes, detects AI text, checks plagiarism, builds citations and translates, across the web, browser extensions, mobile and desktop apps.

Active GDPR compliant Free plan Freemium No public API 13+ Verified by Guidaio
Overview

What is Quillbot?

Quillbot is an AI writing and creation suite published by Learneo, Inc. It began in 2017 in a college dorm, where Anil Jason, Rohan Gupta and David Silin built a paraphrasing tool to help English-language learners write more naturally. The Paraphraser went viral on Reddit in 2018, won early funding through the University of Illinois iVenture Accelerator, and passed its first million users from a small Chicago office in 2019. In 2021 the company joined Learneo, then trading as Course Hero, alongside Scribbr and LanguageTool; by 2023 that writing arm served more than 56 million monthly active users. Since 2025, under chief executive Andrew Grauer, the product has pushed well beyond writing into audio, image and search tools.

What started as a single rewriting tool is now a broad catalogue. The writing side covers the Paraphraser, Grammar Checker, AI Proofreader, Summarizer and AI Humanizer. The originality side adds an AI Detector, an AI Image Detector, a Plagiarism Checker and a Citation Generator supporting APA, MLA and Chicago. A Translator handles 52 languages and dialects, with transliteration for Chinese and Hindi. Beyond text, Quillbot generates images, removes backgrounds, edits photos, builds presentations and websites, converts and edits PDFs, and offers speech-to-text and text-to-speech.

It runs wherever the writing happens: in the browser with no installation, through extensions for Chrome, Edge and Safari, as apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, and as a Microsoft Word add-in. The Chrome extension is rated 4.7 out of 5 with more than six million users.

The company reports 5.3 billion Paraphraser inputs a year, more than 35 million monthly active writers, 225 employees and 150 education and business partners. Access is freemium: a permanent free plan with tight quotas, Premium at USD 12.50 per month billed annually, and a Team Plan priced on request. Learneo is based in San Francisco, with offices in the United States and India, and states that it neither sells user content nor trains on Team Plan inputs.

What it does

  • Paraphrase and rewrite text in up to nine modes, plus unlimited custom modes
  • Check and correct grammar, spelling and punctuation across six languages
  • Detect AI-generated text and images, and screen documents for plagiarism
  • Summarize long documents, with control over summary length
  • Generate citations in APA, MLA and Chicago styles
  • Translate across 52 languages and dialects
  • Generate images, build presentations, and edit or convert PDFs
Audience

When to use Quillbot / When not to

A quick filter to help you decide if Quillbot is the right fit.

When to use Quillbot

  • Students and postgraduate researchers who paraphrase sources, generate APA, MLA or Chicago citations and screen work for accidental plagiarism
  • Non-native English speakers and language learners, the audience the product was built for in 2017
  • Copywriters, content managers and social media managers who rework one message into many formats
  • Editors and proofreaders who want an automated first pass on grammar, tone and fluency before human review
  • Multilingual professionals translating and checking text across 52 languages and dialects

When not to use Quillbot

  • Developers needing programmatic access: Quillbot publishes no public API
  • Organizations that require a signed Data Processing Agreement, as no Quillbot DPA is published
  • Teams under data-residency obligations, since no hosting country or region is disclosed
  • Procurement teams needing a named subprocessor list for vendor due diligence
  • Children under 13, or under 16 in Europe and the UK, who fall outside the stated audience
Get started

How to use Quillbot

A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.

  1. Open the site and type, paste or upload your text straight into the editor, with nothing to install
  2. Pick the tool you need: Paraphraser, Grammar Checker, Summarizer, AI Detector, Translator or another from the suite
  3. For paraphrasing, choose a mode, two on the free plan and nine on Premium, then adjust the synonym slider
  4. Create an account to unlock account-linked features and the privacy controls
  5. Install the Chrome, Edge or Safari extension to use the same tools inside any website
  6. Add the iOS or Android keyboard and app, or the macOS or Windows desktop app
  7. Install the Word add-in to work directly inside your documents
  8. Save your work in Quillbot Flow, with 10 MB of storage on the free plan and 100 MB on Premium
  9. Open Extension Settings, then View All Settings and the Data and Privacy menu, to switch off input storage or model training
  10. Upgrade to Premium when the free quotas bite, and pause the subscription from the Account page when you are not using it
Quick read

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • A genuinely usable permanent free plan rather than a countdown trial
  • Unusually broad feature coverage for a single subscription
  • Available everywhere: web, three browsers, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Word
  • A documented training opt-out, and no training at all on Team Plan inputs
  • Compliance posture that can be checked: GDPR, CCPA, PCI DSS, CASA Tier 2 and Data Privacy Framework certification
  • A real, contactable Article 27 GDPR representative in Ireland
  • Low entry price for the scope, backed by an established group and a track record since 2017

Cons

  • No public API, so nothing can be wired into another product
  • The headline price assumes an annual commitment; no month-to-month rate is published
  • Team Plan pricing is not public and goes through a sales conversation
  • Input storage is on by default, and the training opt-out only reaches account holders using extension 4.37.0 or above
  • No hosting country or region is disclosed, and neither a subprocessor list nor a Quillbot DPA is published
  • Free-plan quotas are tight: 125 words per paraphrase, three images a day, twenty chats
  • No refund of unused subscription time once an account is deleted
Pricing

Pricing & Plans

A permanent free plan is available at no cost. The lowest paid entry point is Premium at USD 12.50 per month, billed annually. Team Plan pricing is not published and is quoted on request.

Free - USD 0 per month
  • 125-word paraphrasing in two modes
  • basic grammar correction
  • 125-word humanizing limited to six uses a day
  • 1
  • 200-word summaries
  • limited AI detection
  • 20 chats
  • three images a day and 10 MB of Quillbot Flow storage
Team Plan - price on request
  • everything in Premium plus team usage metrics
  • a user management dashboard
  • centralized billing
  • data controls
  • and priority assistance and account management
  • with no model training on member inputs
Special offers — 37% off Premium when billed annually rather than monthly · A dedicated student discount, presented on its own plans page · Volume discount from five members upward, billed on a single invoice · Subscriptions can be paused from the Account page, with no billing during the pause
Prices and plans listed above may evolve. Always check the official pricing page before subscribing.
Trust & Privacy

Data, GDPR & hosting

A consolidated view of how Quillbot handles your data.

GDPR overview

GDPR compliance is claimed explicitly. The Trust Center states that Quillbot works to comply with the GDPR, and the claim comes with concrete, checkable mentions: certification under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Frameworks and the UK Extension, adherence to the CCPA, PCI DSS, and CASA Tier 2 verification. An Article 27 representative is named for the EEA and UK, Privacy Rep Office Limited in Dublin, reachable at learneo@rep-office.com. Learneo, Inc. is identified as data controller, with a privacy contact at privacy@learneo.com and a dedicated rights-request webform. Transfers outside the EEA rest on the Data Privacy Framework, adequacy decisions and standard contractual clauses, and users may complain to their supervisory authority. Note that the policy consulted is the version taking effect on 21 August 2026.

Who owns the data?

Learneo, Inc. is the data controller for personal data processed through Quillbot. Ownership of the text itself stays with the user: the vendor states that your writing belongs to you and that you retain all rights to it, and that it sells neither your content nor your data. Personal data is shared with service providers acting as processors or subprocessors, with payment processors, and with affiliated Learneo entities, under contracts restricting what those parties may do with it. No third-party provider is permitted to train its own AI models on customer data.

Reuse rights

Users keep the rights to the text they produce and may reuse Quillbot output without asking permission, as the vendor claims no ownership of it. On the vendor's side, inputs and usage data serve to deliver the service, improve it generally and personalize it, including sampling inputs and tracking which suggestions users accept. Input storage is on by default. Extension users on version 4.37.0 or above get two controls: one stopping input storage, and one, for account holders, stopping inputs being used to train the models. Text inputs from Team Plan users are never used for training, and Quillbot does not access sensitive fields such as passwords or card numbers.

Data retention & training

Retention summary
Personal data is kept for as long as the account stays open, then for a commercially reasonable period needed to fulfill the purposes set out in the privacy policy. Longer retention is possible where it is needed to meet legal obligations, enforce the terms, fight spam, defend rights, resolve disputes or collect fees owed. Storage periods are set case by case, weighing the amount, nature and sensitivity of the data, the risk of harm and the purpose of processing. Account email addresses are held for as long as the account exists. Users can opt out of storage for certain content through their service settings, though doing so may limit functionality. Data may be kept indefinitely once anonymized or aggregated. Deleting an account forfeits any remaining subscription time, without refund.
Trains on customer data
Configurable
Training opt-out available
Yes
GDPR contact

Hosting summary

Quillbot does not disclose where user data is hosted. No hosting country, region or cloud provider is named on the site or in the privacy policy, so no data-residency commitment can be relied on. What the documents do give is corporate geography: Learneo reports offices in the United States, India, the Netherlands, Germany and Canada, and service providers in the United States and throughout the world, while the Trust Center narrows this to offices in the United States and India. Cross-border transfers are explicitly contemplated and are covered by certification under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Frameworks and the UK Extension, by European Commission adequacy decisions, and by data protection agreements incorporating standard contractual clauses. The domain resolves to a Cloudflare anycast address, which says nothing about where the data actually rests. Buyers with data-residency obligations should treat hosting location as unanswered and raise it with the vendor directly.

Watch-outs

Things to keep in mind

Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Quillbot.

  • Leaning on a paraphraser can quietly erode the skill it replaces, since rewriting is how writers learn to think a sentence through
  • Academic misuse is a genuine risk: a paraphrased source still needs a citation, and rewording to slip past a similarity check is misconduct whatever tool produced it
  • AI detection and plagiarism scores are probabilistic, and treating them as proof can wrongly accuse an honest writer or clear a copied text
  • Input storage is on by default, so drafts, personal details and client material may be retained unless the controls are actively switched off
  • The training opt-out is not universal, reaching only account holders on extension version 4.37.0 or above and leaving everyone else without it
  • Nothing tells you where your data physically lives, and cross-border transfers are explicitly contemplated in the privacy policy
  • Fluent output is persuasive output, and machine-smoothed text can carry factual errors that read as authoritative
Setup

Setup & Integrations

Technical difficulty

Setup is effortless. The web app runs straight from the browser with nothing to install: type, paste or upload text and start working. An account is needed only for account-linked features and the privacy controls. Extensions for Chrome, Edge and Safari, apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, and the Microsoft Word add-in all install in a click from their respective stores. There is no API key, no configuration and no deployment work. The one thing worth hunting for is the privacy settings, tucked away in Extension Settings under View All Settings, then Data and Privacy.

Deployment

Web appMobile appBrowser extensionDesktop appPluginChrome extensionIOS appAndroid app

Apps stores

Integrations

Google Chrome Microsoft Edge Safari Microsoft Word MacOS Windows Android IOS

Supported languages

EnglishSpanishFrenchGermanPortugueseChineseHindi
Company

Behind Quillbot

Company name
Learneo, Inc.
Founded
28/12/2017
Country of origin
🇺🇸 United States
Headquarters
2261 Market Street #10569, San Francisco, CA 94114, United States of America
UBO
INFORMATION_NOT_FOUND
UBO country
INFORMATION_NOT_FOUND
Domain registrar country
🇺🇸 United States
Legal contact
Support contact

Fundraising

2018 - initial funding won through the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign iVenture Accelerator, as recounted on the company's own About page
2021 - Quillbot became part of Learneo, then trading as Course Hero; the About page describes the move but discloses no amount
Third-party financial aggregators report roughly USD 4.34 million raised across two rounds before the acquisition, and date the Course Hero deal to 19 August 2021; these figures appear nowhere on the site and remain unconfirmed

Social

Official links

Resources

All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free version of Quillbot?
Yes, and it is permanent rather than a countdown trial. The free plan caps paraphrasing at 125 words in two modes, summaries at 1,200 words, image generation at three a day and AI chat at twenty conversations, with 10 MB of document storage.
How much does Quillbot Premium cost?
Premium is USD 12.50 per month, billed annually, and the site advertises 37% off for paying annually. Team Plan pricing is not published and is quoted on request, with a volume discount from five members upward on a single invoice.
How do I pay, and can I pause my subscription?
Payment is by credit or debit card, or through PayPal. A subscription can be paused from the Account page without cancelling, and you are not billed during the pause. Deleting your account forfeits any remaining subscription time, with no refund.
Does Quillbot offer an API?
No public API documentation could be found anywhere in the product catalogue, so programmatic integration does not appear to be available. The robots.txt file does disallow an /api-access path, but no such public page exists, so this is worth confirming directly with the vendor.
Is my text used to train Quillbot's AI models?
By default, yes: inputs and usage data are used to improve and personalize the service. Extension users on version 4.37.0 or above can switch off input storage, and account holders can also switch off training. Text inputs from Team Plan users are never used for training.
Which languages does Quillbot support?
The Translator covers 52 languages and dialects, the Paraphraser 23, and grammar checking six. English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese and Hindi are named explicitly on the site; the full list of 52 is not published as a list.
Is Quillbot GDPR compliant?
Compliance is claimed explicitly in the Trust Center and supported by certification under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Frameworks, adherence to the CCPA and PCI DSS, and CASA Tier 2 verification. An Article 27 representative, Privacy Rep Office Limited, is named in Dublin.
Where is my data hosted?
Quillbot does not say. No hosting country, region or cloud provider is disclosed. Learneo reports offices in the United States, India, the Netherlands, Germany and Canada, and service providers worldwide, with transfers covered by the Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses.
What is the minimum age to use Quillbot?
The service is not intended for children under 13 in the United States, or under 16 in Europe and the United Kingdom, or below the local age of consent. Users above the age of consent but under 18 are asked to get a parent or guardian's permission.
On which devices and platforms does Quillbot run?
It runs in any browser with no installation, plus extensions for Chrome, Edge and Safari, apps for iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, and a Microsoft Word add-in. Premium works on all your devices, but on no more than ten at the same time.
Conclusion

Should you pick Quillbot?

Quillbot has grown from a single paraphrasing tool into one of the broadest AI writing suites available for the money. For USD 12.50 a month on an annual commitment, a user gets rewriting, grammar checking, summarizing, AI and plagiarism detection, citation generation, translation across 52 languages, plus image, presentation and PDF tools, on every platform they are likely to write on. The permanent free plan is restrictive but real, which makes the product easy to evaluate without spending anything. Eight years of operation and the backing of Learneo give it a stability that many AI writing tools lack.

The compliance story is stronger than most: GDPR compliance is claimed in plain words, the Data Privacy Framework certification is externally verifiable, and an Article 27 representative is genuinely named and contactable. Against that, the gaps matter for organizations rather than individuals. There is no public API, no published Data Processing Agreement, no named subprocessor list, and no disclosure of where data is hosted. Input storage is on by default, and the training opt-out reaches only account holders on a recent extension version.

For students, researchers, non-native English writers and content professionals, this is a strong and fairly priced choice, provided its detection scores are read as indications rather than proof. For a procurement team with data-residency requirements or a developer needing programmatic access, the answers are simply not published, and would have to be obtained from the vendor before any commitment.