The catch: nobody is building it anymore

Wordtune is still for sale. The plans page takes cards, the Chrome extension installs, and the rewrite button still appears under a highlighted sentence in Gmail. What changed is behind the storefront. According to Calcalist's Ctech (May 19, 2026), AI21 Labs discontinued development of Wordtune in April 2025. In May 2026 the company announced it would lay off 110 of its 180 employees and halt its Jamba language models, leaving Maestro, an enterprise AI-agent platform, as its only active product line. Its engineers were expected to move to Nebius in an acquihire-style arrangement. An earlier report of Nvidia buying AI21 for $2-3 billion never became a deal.

So this review asks the question most Wordtune reviews skip: should you pay for, or keep paying for, a writing tool whose maker has stopped improving it? The free plan, yes. The annual plan, no.

The signs of a product on autopilot are easy to find. The Chrome extension sits at version 9.20.0, last updated April 19, 2026. The iOS app's latest release note reads "Bug fixes and performance improvements." The core rewriter still works. It just won't get better while QuillBot and Grammarly keep shipping.

What it still does well

Wordtune's strength was always narrow, and it still is. You highlight a sentence where you are already writing and it offers several rephrasings in place - no copying text into another tab and pasting it back. The extension runs in Chrome and Edge and works inside Google Docs, Gmail, Slack, LinkedIn, web Outlook, WhatsApp Web and most other text boxes. A standalone Wordtune Editor handles longer drafts.

The rewrites are good at what they are for. A stiff sentence comes back as a handful of plausible alternatives, and one is usually better than what you typed. The tone switch (casual or formal) and the shorten and expand controls are where Wordtune earned its reputation, and Wordtune's own FAQ says they are paid-only.

Spices, summaries and the English-only limit

Spices is the insert menu. Put the cursor after a paragraph and ask for an explanation, a statistical fact, an example or a conclusion. It only works in Google Docs and the Wordtune Editor, not in Gmail or Slack. Check any number the "statistical fact" option adds before you publish it.

Read and Summarize condenses a text or a video. Smart Translate exposes the limit worth knowing before you pay anything: Wordtune writes only in English. It translates into English from ten languages, including Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi and German, but it will not polish your French email.

AI21 has never said which model sits underneath. The FAQ says only "We built our own AI algorithm." With the company's Jamba models halted, expect whatever runs it today to be what runs it next year.

What the free plan is good for

Basic gives you 10 rewrites a day and 3 AI summaries a month, with no card. Spelling and grammar checks are unlimited. Ten rewrites is enough for the job Wordtune does best: fixing the one awkward sentence in an email before you hit send. It is nowhere near enough to rework a 1,500-word draft, and without the tone and length controls you get straight rephrasings only.

That makes Basic the low-risk way to use Wordtune now. If AI21 ever switches the service off, you lose a browser button, not a prepaid year.

Pricing and the iPhone price gap

Prices below were checked on wordtune.com/plans on October 22, 2026. The site shows per-month figures only; the yearly totals are our arithmetic.

Unlimited adds vocabulary, clarity and fluency suggestions plus premium support. Students and educators with a .edu address, and non-profits, get 30% off either billing cycle. There is a business tier with SAML SSO and centralized billing, but no published price - teams are pointed to self-serve signup or the sales team. Wordtune takes cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal.

Two details on the way to checkout matter more than the table. The checkout links default to annual billing, so the $6.99 Unlimited figure you click through on is the yearly rate, billed for the year. And the iOS app sells its own subscription: Premium Monthly at $24.99 and Premium Yearly at $119.99 on the US App Store. That is two and a half times the web's $9.99 monthly price for Unlimited. If you want to pay, pay on the web.

Trial, refunds and cancelling

The paid trial lasts three days and wants payment details before it starts. You are charged when it ends. The plans page is blunt about what follows: "We do not offer refunds but you can cancel your subscription before the next billing cycle." The terms of use add that there are no refunds or credits for partial periods, and that subscriptions renew until cancelled. You cancel from your account page under Manage Plan.

Three days is a short fuse. Miss it on the default annual checkout and you have bought a year of a product that is no longer being developed, with no way back. Trustpilot reviewers describe exactly this, with complaints about being unable to cancel and disputed renewal charges, one of them for $83 - roughly a year of Unlimited. If you do try a paid plan, switch to monthly billing and set a reminder for day two.

What users report

Wordtune's homepage claims "10M+ Users" and a 4.7/5 Chrome extension rating. The Chrome Web Store itself, as of October 22, 2026, shows 1,000,000 users and 3.3 out of 5 from 2.4K ratings. Believe the store.

The iOS app does better at 4.4 out of 5 from 990 ratings, but recent reviews there and on Trustpilot (4.1 from 578 reviews, around 15% of them one-star) keep returning to the same faults. Trustpilot reviewers in September and October 2026 said the iPhone app's Ask Wordtune feature had stopped working for weeks. One App Store reviewer finds the price hard to justify "now that the keyboard feature I enjoyed is no longer available." Bugs that sit unfixed for weeks are what you would expect once development stops, and they are the best argument against prepaying.

What happens to your text

Text you send for a rewrite goes to AI21, and the consumer terms give it a license "to copy, store and use your User Content" to improve "the algorithms underlying the Software and the Services." The privacy policy, last updated August 3, 2025, keeps personal information until AI21 deletes it or you send a valid deletion request. Neither document describes an opt-out from training. The business privacy policy says Wordtune is SOC 2 compliant, that anonymized data may be used to train its AI, and that a DPA is available on request. Keep contracts, client files and anything under NDA out of the free extension.

Alternatives that are still being built

QuillBot is the closest swap for paraphrasing. Premium is $19.95 billed monthly or $99.95 a year - about $16 a year more than Wordtune Unlimited on annual billing - and that extra buys a product that is still being worked on.

Grammarly Pro is the pick if you want grammar checking and generative AI in one extension. It is listed at $12 a month billed annually ($144 a year) or $30 billed monthly, with 2,000 AI prompts a month; the free plan includes 100. That is about 70% more than Wordtune Unlimited per year, for a much broader tool.

ProWritingAid suits long-form writers who want style reports on a whole manuscript rather than one sentence at a time. For the wider field, see our best AI writing tools roundup.

Verdict

Install the free Wordtune extension if you write in English, mostly in Gmail or Google Docs, and want a better version of one sentence at a time. Ten rewrites a day covers that, it costs nothing, and you lose nothing if it disappears.

Do not buy the annual plan. The rewriter is good, but AI21 stopped developing it in April 2025, cut most of its staff in May 2026 and offers no refunds. If the tone and length controls are worth money to you, pay $9.99 month to month on the web, never $24.99 in the iPhone app.

Skip Wordtune entirely if you write in a language other than English, want a tool that will keep improving, or need grammar checking and AI drafting together. QuillBot is the paraphraser to move to; Grammarly Pro is the all-in-one.

Try Wordtune Free