Content writing tools are an important set of tools for any content writer.

If you want to see the best content writing tools in one place, then you’ll LOVE this (updated) guide.

Well, you’re in for a treat because I’ve put together a list of the best software for writers.

I personally tested and reviewed 22(+ 2 bonus) free and paid tools.

I compiled them all in one place.

And I recently updated this entire list for 2023.

Let’s dive right in.

• 1. Buzz Sumo
• 2. Answer the Public
• 3. Google Trends
• 4. LSI Keyword Generator
• 5. KeywordTool.io
• 6. Keyword Revealer
• 7. Hubspot Blog Topic Generator
• 8. Coschedule Headline Analyzer
• 9. Inbound Blog Headline Generator
• 10. Google Docs
• 11. Evernote App
• 12. Instapaper
• 13. Feedly
• 14. Airtable
• 15. OneLook Dictionary & Thesaurus
• 16. The Idioms – Largest Idioms Dictionary
• 17. Words to Use
• 18. WordTune
• 19. 750 Words
• 20. Hemingway App
• 21. Grammarly
• 22. SlickWrite.com
• 23. Bonus #1
• 24. Bonus #2

Content writing tools: Various categories

I have categorized the content writing apps into different categories. Content writing in itself is a huge subject.

It contains copywriting, script, ads-writing, etc. But there is a process that makes you a better content writer.

I have distributed these online content writing tools into 7 categories.

• Brainstorming tools.
• Keyword research tools.
• Headline generation tools.
• Notetaking tools.
• Writing​ ​Workflow tools.
• Proof Reading tools.

These apps will surely help you in your content writing journey.

As a content writer, these essential content writing tools help you come up with better content ideas.
It is imperative that you know your audience better, understand their pain points and provide them with a complete useful solution.

Buzz Sumo

It is the best if not one of the best content writing apps available in the market. BuzzSumo helps you understand the freshness of the content. You can query on any keyword and get a list of content that is popular among the audiences and is widely shared.

Cost	Freemium. (30 days free trial)
Features	Spot content patterns and trends, Find new content ideas, Advanced content analysis.
Category	Brainstorming tool.

So BuzzSumo becomes one of the important weapons in the arsenal. It makes sense to create content that will trend.

Answer the Public

As the name suggests “Answer the Public” is the best tool that can provide the question being asked by your prospects. The better you know your audience, it becomes simple to create content for them.

Cost	Freemium. (3 free trials per day)
Features	Keyword research, Content ideas, FAQs
Category	Brainstorming tool.

This tool is one of the underrated tools for keyword research as well. You even get comparison data, this data helps to understand what exactly are your prospects comparing.

Google Trends

You may be using this tool already, if not then you are missing out on the huge opportunity of creating some useful and evergreen content.

Cost	Free.
Features	Visualise, discover trends in people’s search behaviour
Category	Brainstorming tool.

Insights into related topics and questions people are searching for via Google can be accessed via this application to gauge interest in a topic over time and location. It also provides information on past and currently trending topics.

LSIGraph

LSI tools are by far the most underused tools. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are those keywords that Google feels are semantically associated with your keyword.

Cost	Freemium.
Features	Semantically related keywords discovery.
Category	Keyword Research.

For example – Let’s say your keyword is ice cream, so the LSI keywords for it would be cold, temperature, cones and so on…

LSI Keywords are NOT synonyms. Instead, they’re terms that are closely tied to your target keyword.

It helps Google understand the page relevance in a better way.

KeywordTool.io

Keyword Tool Is The Best Alternative To Google Keyword Planner And Other Keyword Research Tools. It is a freemium application.

Cost	Freemium.
Features	Keyword discovery, Competitor analysis, Search Volume analysis.
Category	Keyword Research.

The free version of Keyword Tool generates up to 750+ long-tail keyword suggestions for every search term. You can perform keyword research for various platforms like Youtube, Amazon, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

You can use Keyword Tool absolutely for free, even without creating an account.

Keyword Revealer

Cost	Freemium.
Features	Keyword brainstorming, Competitor Analysis, Backlink analysis.
Category	Keyword Research.

This content writing software is a very good alternative to ahrefs. It shows a wide variety of keyword information.

As you can see it is pretty easy to understand the competition and keyword difficulty with this underrated content writing app.

Hubspot Blog Topic Generator

As a content creator, you have to always be on the lookout for a new topic to write about. Sometimes you may suffer from topic fatigue.

Cost	Free.
Features	Clicky worthy topic, content topic.
Category	Headline Generation.

Hubspot topic generator totally helps in generating some cool topics. This tool gives you a total of 5 topic ideas. If you become their lead, you get 250 topic ideas right away.

This tool is very easy to use and solves the topic fatigue problem.

Coschedule Headline Analyzer

Now that you have a lot of topics to write about, but not all headlines are the same. Coschedule headline application is a versatile tool.

Cost	Freemium.
Features	SEO score, Headline analysis
Category	Headline Generation.

It analyzes the composition of your headline on various factors like the word count, word balance, sentiment, clarity, etc.

Apart from just headline analysis, this content writing tool provides an SEO score as well, which makes it an SEO writing tool. It provides search competition, keyword trend and keyword variation suggestions.

It is a must-have for any content writer.

Inbound Blog Headline Generator.

Headlines are the most important part of any blog post. Having a headline that makes you want to click is like winning half the battle.

Cost	Free.
Features	Clicky worthy topic, content topic.
Category	Headline Generation.

Unlike portent which randomly throws some headlines, the Inbound blog headline generator actually helps with some sensible and good headlines.

Combining the headline generator with Coschedule’s headline generator you are pretty much guaranteed that your headlines are unique and clickable.

Google Docs

In the day and age of the cloud, it is very easy to become a content writer.

Cost	Free.
Features	Cloud storage, no-install required, easy to start.
Category	Notetaking.

All you need is a laptop and reliable internet. Google Docs is an online word processor.

Google Docs allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating with other users in real-time.

You don’t need to install anything extra.

Google Docs is one of the best free content writing tools. You can write anything, anywhere without the hassle of explicitly saving your work.

Evernote App

Ideas can strike you anywhere, anytime. You as a content writer should be equipped to capture these ideas.

Cost	Freemium.
Features	Clutter-free notes organization
Category	Notetaking.

Evernote is a powerful tool for managing your tasks right alongside all of the information you work with every day.

Evernote makes your life easy for note-taking, organizing, task management, and archiving. The best part about this tool is that you can add text, images, audio, scans, PDFs, and documents.

Instapaper

Instapaper is a service that makes it possible to save, manage, and read articles you’ve found on the internet later. It is one of the must-have content writing tools for beginners

Cost	Paid.
Features	Social bookmarking, Web-content aggregation.
Category	Notetaking.

It can be used to save all exciting articles, videos, cooking recipes, etc.

Instapaper can also be used to read and manage other things that you find on the internet.

The greatest advantage of Instapaper is that it supports cross-platform syncing, so users can access their saved articles and videos on other devices like Android, iPhone, Kindle, etc.

Feedly

Being a content writer it is important to be up to date with industry trends. Here’s where Feedly comes into the picture.

Cost	Paid.
Features	Get the news you want all in one place.
Category	Notetaking.

It is like your AI research assistant, that flags what’s important to you, insights from everywhere, including news sites, blogs, Twitter, and newsletters.

Feedly helps in cutting down unimportant information. You find and organize the
right sources, train the AI tool to filter out the noise and share insights with your team.

Airtable

Airtable is a relational database tool that’s also an online collaboration tool. Before you brush it off as boring because of the word database, know that Airtable is easy to use and extremely versatile.

Cost	Paid.
Features	Manage work, track and organize inventories, plan an event
Category	Notetaking.

You can use it to manage work, track and organize inventories, plan an event, and much more.

Airtable is a hybrid between a spreadsheet and a database. As such, it comes with many features and functionalities that you simply don’t get with your traditional spreadsheets.

OneLook Dictionary & Thesaurus.

It is one of the free content writing tools in the content writing space. It is a potent thesaurus and brainstorming tool for writers of all kinds.

Cost	Free.
Features	Find synonyms, related words, adjectives, rhymes
Category	Proof-Reading.

You can find synonyms, related words, adjectives, rhymes, and a lot of other things!

It can be combined with Google docs to find engaging alternatives, admirable adjectives, rapturous rhymes for your writing.

The Idioms – Largest Idioms Dictionary.

This is quite an amazing tool for writers and anyone who wants to improve their command of the English language.

Cost	Paid.
Features	Find synonyms, related words.
Category	Proof-Reading.

Thesaurus provides you with the most trusted collection of over three million synonyms and antonyms. It also lets you filter the search results by their relevance, word length, and complexity. This can come in very handy when you’re writing captions for posting on social media.

Words to Use

This tool is helpful in clear, compelling and authentic writing.

Cost	Freemium.
Features	Word reference helper, Industry-related jargons
Category	Writing Workflow.

The Word to Use tool is a new type of word reference that can help you write about anything that is there. It groups subject-related words by parts of speech, rather than thesaurus groups words by their meaning.

WordTune

It is another essential writing tool. Wordtune is great for sentence rewriting. This app can be used as paraphrasing software for academic writing.

Cost	Freemium.
Features	Paraphrasing, AI-powered content writing tool
Category	Writing Workflow.

It is a content writing tool powered by deep AI that understands the context and semantics of written text. This AI-based writing application goes beyond grammar and spelling fixes to help you put your own thoughts into written words.

750 Words

One of my favourite tools that lets you create a new habit of writing every day.

Cost	Free.
Features	Writing practice
Category	Writing Workflow.

You will be given points for writing 750 words per day and the tool will analyze your mindset and feelings as you write.

The workspace is completely private, so you can write whatever comes to mind.

It is a kind of freewriting tool that will help you kick start your writing journey. It shows how much time you took to write your article and how often you got distracted.

Hemingway App

Content writing is way different from academic writing. The main intention is to make reading your content a pleasurable and easy experience.

Cost	Free.
Features	Writing analysis
Category	Proof-reading

Hemingway app is unarguably one of the best free content writing tools in the market.

It provides various readability aspects of your writing. Make sure that you keep your readability score lower than 6.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a writing assistant that offers you specific suggestions to help you improve your writing and it goes way beyond grammar.

Cost	Freemium.
Features	Plagiarism checker, Sentiment analysis, Grammatical correction.
Category	Proof-reading.

It helps you eliminate writing errors and find the perfect words to express yourself.

You can be confident that your writing is not only correct but clear and concise, too. You get real-time feedback about the tone of your writing, punctuation and grammatical issues.

It is a freemium tool, although the free version of this tool is more than enough to cater to almost every content writing need.

SlickWrite

Slick Write is a powerful, free application that makes it easy to check your writing for grammar errors, potential stylistic mistakes, and other features of interest.

Cost	Free.
Features	Grammar check, Sentence structure analysis, Vocabulary Analysis.
Category	Proof-reading.

Whether you’re a blogger, novelist, SEO professional, or student writing an essay for school, Slick Write can help take your writing to the next level. 

#1 Bonus SEO Content Writing Tool – Seobility TF-IDF calculator.

In comparison to keyword density, the TF*IDF allows better optimization of content.

It has since replaced keyword density. Hence, it is a critical element of SEO optimization that can help with ranking.

To reach the desired ratio, TF*IDF tools suggest terms that require an increase or decrease in frequency in a text. A keyword ranking page can be compared with the content of your site using the TF*IDF formula.

It is possible to do such a comparison with your content and to uncover potential optimization opportunities with Seobility’s TF-IDF tool.

#2 Bonus SEO Content Writing Tool – IBM NLU.

This is one of the content writing tools which can mimic Google in understanding the keywords and sentiments of content.

NLU can be used to recognize how your content performs, what is the sentiment of your content.

It even finds the keyword around which content is written.

This set of APIs can analyze text to help you understand its concepts, entities, keywords, sentiment, and more.

Key Takeways

These online tools are pretty impactful in the keyword research process. Combining results obtained from these online tools is pretty insane.

As a content writer, you might be writing engaging articles, ads or website content. It is essential to have the right set of tools so that you generate unique and quality content that will boost your traffic.

Thank you for the time you invested in reading this article in its entirety. It keeps me grounded and focused on delivering value to you as my reader.

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