Hemingway Editor vs UltraWordCounter
Both help you write more clearly, but they focus on different things. Hemingway Editor is a dedicated clarity editor. UltraWordCounter is a free writing suite that includes a readability score alongside counting, SEO, and social tools. Here is an honest side-by-side.
| Feature | Hemingway Editor | UltraWordCounter |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free web app; paid desktop app | Core tools free forever; the three Pro tools are free up to 800 words, then $12 a month for unlimited use |
| Account required | No | No |
| Readability grade | Yes | Yes |
| Passive voice flagging | Yes | Yes |
| Inline clarity highlighting (adverbs, hard sentences) | Yes | Readability score and passive voice |
| Word, character, and sentence counter | Basic | Full counting suite |
| Keyword density and SEO tools | No | Yes |
| Amazon FBA and social media tools | No | Yes |
| Free writing guides | No | Yes, dozens |
| Runs in your browser | Yes | Yes |
The short version: choose Hemingway if inline clarity highlighting is your main need. Choose UltraWordCounter if you want a readability score plus word counting, SEO, and social tools together, free and in your browser.
Preview: the Pro highlighting
This is a preview of what the inline highlighting looks like inside the Pro tool, on an example paragraph. This page does not analyze your own text. The box below only counts words. The live highlighting lives in the SEO Keyword Density Analyzer.
💡 Quick answer: Inline highlighting colors your writing in place so you can see exactly what to fix: long sentences in yellow, very long ones in red, passive voice in green, adverbs and complex words underlined, and weak or filler words flagged. Unlike a single readability score, it points at the precise words and sentences slowing your reader down, which makes editing fast.
Why a readability score is not enough
A grade or an ease score is a useful summary, but it is only a number. It tells you your writing is hard to read without telling you which sentence is the problem. So you are left rereading the whole piece, guessing at what to cut. Highlighting removes the guesswork by marking the exact spots, the way a good editor would leave notes in the margin.
What the colors mean
Each color maps to a specific clarity problem. Yellow marks long sentences that are getting hard to follow, and red marks very long ones that likely need to be split. Green marks passive voice, where the subject is acted upon instead of acting. Underlines flag adverbs and complex words that often have simpler replacements, and a separate color flags weak, hedging words like very and really that add length without meaning.
How to edit with highlighting
Work through the strongest signals first. Split the red sentences, then the yellow ones. Rewrite the green passive constructions into active voice where it reads better. Then look at the underlined words: many adverbs and qualifiers can simply be deleted, and many complex words have a plainer synonym. Each edit is small, obvious, and immediately improves the flow.
Why clarity helps your SEO
Readability is not just a writing nicety. When visitors land on a page that is hard to read, they leave faster and return to the search results, and that pattern works against you. Clear, scannable writing keeps people on the page longer and reading further, which supports your rankings. Editing for clarity is editing for SEO.
The privacy difference
Many editing tools ask you to paste your unpublished draft into their servers. This one does not. The highlighting runs entirely in your browser, so your writing never leaves your device. For anyone working on client content or unreleased material, that is not a small detail, it is the whole point.
This guide shows an example. The Pro tool highlights your text.
The paragraph above is a fixed example. The SEO Keyword Density Analyzer highlights your own writing live as you paste it, marking long sentences, passive voice, adverbs, complex words, and weak phrases, alongside a full readability suite and SEO checks. The preview shows what that looks like. This page only counts words; the tool does the highlighting.
See your long sentences, passive voice, adverbs, and weak words highlighted in place, plus full readability and SEO analysis. Free to try, no account, nothing leaves your browser.
Try the SEO Analyzer free →