AI Paraphrasing Tools: Best & Worst Options for 2026

Over the past few weeks, my team and I have been deep in the trenches, putting a wide range of AI paraphrasing tools to the test. It's fascinating to see how far these digital assistants have come, especially when considering the rapid evolution of tech giants like Google, which recently celebrated its 25th birthday.

Why? A spirited debate broke out in our office about which paraphrasing tool is the best. We wanted to settle it once and for all by answering a simple but surprisingly complex question:

Which AI paraphrasing tool is actually the best?

After trialling dozens of options, comparing speed, accuracy, tone, and contextual awareness, I believe we’ve finally found our winner.

Sure, the verdict is subjective (everyone values different features) but our findings reveal clear patterns about what separates a great AI tool from one that just regurgitates and repackages AI slop.

In the process, I’ve learned a lot about how these systems think, rewrite, and adapt to human nuance.

So, what did we do? Well, I went off and ran a little experiment on five shortlisted tools recommended by my team. I wanted to determine how good they are at real-world writing.

For me, that’s rewriting marketing copy and tightening up blog articles.

Before I share my experiences with these tools, I just want to quickly mention a few things I’d avoid when considering paraphrasing tools:

● Anything that strips out your personality and replaces it with bland filler.

● Rewrites that sound like they were written by someone who’s never spoken them out loud.

● Paragraphs stuffed with empty words just to hit a word count.

● Tools that leave you stuck with whatever version they decide is “better.”

I won’t go over which tools I dislike, so you’ll have to settle for my list of pet peeves above for now.

For testing the best paraphrasing tools, I used the same short paragraph across every tool to see how each one handled tone, clarity, and structure.

Here’s the paragraph I used:

“I’ve been testing different AI paraphrasing tools to see which ones actually make writing easier. When I look for paraphrasing tools, I’m really just trying to find something that keeps my tone while improving flow. Sometimes when I write, I overthink every word and the meaning gets lost. I want a tool that helps me rework my ideas clearly while still sounding natural.”

I tested this same paragraph across five paraphrasing tools my team recommended to see which ones actually made it better. Let’s look at the results.

5 Best AI Paraphrasing Tools (My Test Results)

1 - Rephrase AI

I’d heard a lot of good things about Rephrase AI from my team, so I was genuinely looking forward to testing it for myself.

Good news! Rephrase AI didn’t disappoint.

Signing up and getting started was simple. The interface is clean, professional, and easy to use.

It just feels more thoughtfully designed than most other paraphrasing tools. There’s a sense of polish to it.

What I like most is that Rephrase AI doesn’t overwhelm you with endless writing styles.

Some tools have dozens of “tone” options, which is a little overwhelming.

Rephrase AI keeps things simple with four distinct profiles:

1. Academic

2. Professional

3. Casual

4. Creative

These profiles are built around four rephrasing controls:

1. Formality

2. Complexity

3. Brevity

4. Creativity

It’s these rephrasing controls that make Rephrase AI different from any other paraphrasing tool I’ve tried.

The problem with most paraphrasing tools is that they constrain your writing style.

My writing style doesn’t fit neatly into any category.

I’m sure most feel this way.

Luckily, Rephrase AI gave me plenty of room to fine-tune the writing style.

As you can see below, I played with the rephrasing controls to shape and mold the output into what I needed.

I noticed that reducing the “Formality” control led to an even more natural output.

Raising the “Creativity” control resulted in more inventive sentence structures.

I recommend adjusting these controls one at a time to better notice the nuances in their effects.

Oh, and spoiler alert… I’m yet to see another paraphrasing tool offer a feature like this.

I’m surprised they’ve overlooked this.

It’s rather brilliant on Rephrase AI’s part.

The rephrasing controls take this tool to a higher level when producing human-like writing.

Overall, I’m really impressed with Rephrase AI. This is one of the few tools that has genuinely improved my writing flow without stripping away my natural voice.

2 - ProWritingAid

The next tool I tested was ProWritingAid, which is a free paraphrasing tool that comes with a few interesting features I haven’t seen elsewhere.

It offers four different modes:

1. Readability

2. Fluency

3. Transition

4. Sensory

On top of that, it gives you extra options like switching your text from first person to third person, changing tense, expanding from notes, or summarizing.

Some of these features are genuinely unique. I haven’t seen the ability to switch perspective (first to third person) in other tools, which could be useful in certain types of writing.

For what I needed today, though, I just wanted a straightforward paraphrasing test. Since there wasn’t an option to make the tone more casual, I went with the “Readability” mode.

When I clicked Paraphrase, it generated the rewritten version almost instantly, within about three seconds. The new version was slightly shorter than the original, which isn’t a bad thing.

Scanning through it, I noticed a few small stylistic differences, like missing commas where I’d normally include them. That’s probably just a personal thing, but when I’m working quickly, I like knowing those small punctuation details are already handled.

ProWritingAid seems like a reliable tool. I like that it doesn’t overcomplicate things and just produces clear, readable output. The extra editing modes are a nice bonus, even if they’re not essential for paraphrasing.

3 - Scribbr

The first thing I noticed about Scribbr when I opened it was the language flexibility.

You can translate the tool interface and your results into multiple languages, including American English, French, Spanish, and German.

Scribbr also offers several other tools on its platform, such as a text summarizer, AI grammar checker, plagiarism checker, and proofreading and editing tool.

But in this case, I was focused purely on the paraphrasing tool, which, interestingly, is built in partnership with QuillBot.

So, naturally, I was curious to see whether Scribbr would produce a similar kind of paraphrasing output.

The tool generated the text within a few seconds. One of the first things I liked was how it highlights different sections of the paraphrased output. You can hover or click on words and phrases, and it gives you drop-down suggestions with replacement options.

It feels more interactive than most paraphrasing tools. In fact, it reminds me of ZeroGPT and DeepL.

This shows that there’s clearly more going on here behind the scenes in terms of how the AI generates content. The dropdown suggestions are well chosen and contextually relevant. From my perspective, that’s one of Scribbr’s biggest strengths.

As for the rewritten text itself, it’s fine. The text is clear and natural enough to use as a base. I wouldn’t say it’s dramatically better than what you’d get from QuillBot, but it’s certainly on par.

The interactivity makes it feel more usable. In terms of the writing, it’ll give you a strong foundation rather than the finished product. You can quickly edit and improve it further, either inside or outside of Scribbr.

4 - Kroolo

Another tool I tested was Kroolo. This is a free paraphrasing tool with a design that feels very similar to Scribbr. It has that standard look you often see with online paraphrasing tools, not particularly distinctive.

One thing I’ve noticed across tools like this is how much design can influence the writing experience. With Rephrase AI, for example, the elevated design gives you the sense that you’re about to produce better work. Maybe that’s just a psychological thing, but it does make a difference.

Kroolo doesn’t quite give off that same feeling.

In terms of functionality, Kroolo offers several modes:

● Natural

● Standard

● Formal

● Fluency

● Simple

● Shorten

● Expand

Personally, I tend to gravitate toward a “Casual” mode (if there is one) because that’s often closest to how a human would naturally write, but that isn’t available here. So for this test, I went with “Natural” mode.

After clicking Paraphrase, the tool generated the output quickly. Interestingly, the result was slightly longer than the original text. Most tools tend to make things shorter, so that was unexpected.

The rephrased text itself reads well. The “Natural” mode actually comes quite close to what happens when I reduce the “Formality” control on Rephrase AI, which I still consider the tool to beat.

Overall, Kroolo does a good job. The interface is straightforward, and the writing feels fluid. It doesn’t have the same level of design polish or control as Rephrase AI, but the “Natural” mode produces solid, readable output that feels authentic enough for most day-to-day writing tasks.

5 - Shy Editor

Finally, I tested Shy Editor. When you search for it on Google, the meta title actually says “Free paraphrasing tool (ad-free and no sign-up required).” That might seem like a small thing, but after testing plenty of tools packed with pop-ups and distracting ads, it’s a real relief.

Ads can completely ruin the experience, especially on mobile. The fact that this tool is ad-free immediately makes it more usable.

The layout is as simple as it gets. No frills or surprises. You get a clean space where you can paste your text and choose your settings. In some ways, it’s even more stripped-back than other tools I’ve tried, which actually makes it quite pleasant to use.

With the writing modes, Shy Editor gives you around ten options: Standard, Fluency, Natural, Formal, Academic, Business, Simple, and Creative, among others.

For this test, I chose “Natural” since I figured that could produce the most human-sounding results.

After clicking Paraphrase, it took a couple of seconds longer than some of the other tools, but nothing major. The rewritten text looked good and was very close to my original tone.

The changes were subtle but still meaningful. The tool didn’t overdo it, and it didn’t sound robotic.

It doesn’t try to do too much, and sometimes that’s exactly what you want.

I’ll Keep Coming Back To This Paraphrasing Tool

As always, I enjoyed testing some of the latest AI paraphrasing tools.

I found that each one brought something different to the table, and it’s been interesting to see how much these tools have in common.

After trying them all, I’ve got a much clearer sense of what actually matters to me when I’m rewriting text or tightening up copy.

Rephrase AI is still, hands-down, my favorite. The tool genuinely feels like it was made for writers.

The clean interface, the flexibility across the four writing profiles, and the ability to adjust formality, complexity, brevity, and creativity make it incredibly useful.

After tinkering around with the rephrasing controls, the output read the way a person actually talks.

ProWritingAid surprised me with its range of modes. It’s more of an all-in-one writing tool, but the paraphraser works well.

The output was clean and easy to read, and while I’d have liked a “natural” tone option, it’s still a good choice for general rewriting.

With Scribbr, I liked how interactive it was. Being able to hover over parts of the text and swap out words using drop-down suggestions felt like a smart addition.

It’s powered by QuillBot, so the paraphrasing quality felt familiar to me.

Kroolo had a more standard interface, but the “Natural” mode produced surprisingly strong results.

I wish the design were a little more polished, but the writing output itself was clean and natural.

Shy Editor was a nice change of pace. The layout is simple, and the “Natural” mode delivered readable, subtle paraphrasing without overdoing it.

Rephrase AI remains the one I’d keep open in a tab.

The rest each have their strengths, of course, but Rephrase AI is still the benchmark for me.

This is the one that consistently improves my writing.