Paperpal Review: Should You Use It in 2025?

Paperpal: Comprehensive Review

Want to know if Paperpal is worth your time and money? In this review, I'll show you what this AI research assistant can (and can't) do.

Evaluation Criteria	Editor's rating
Research Paper Integration	4.2/5(Very Good) Robust paper analysis with summary and ability to chat with the document.
Outline Builder	3.5/5(Good) Offers detailed outlines and templates but lacks crucial features for section expansion and customization.
AI Writing	3.2/5(Good) Produces natural academic content but struggles with context awareness and lacks modern features like autocomplete.
Citation Management	3.8/5(Good) Limited editing capabilities and lack of inline functionality.
Grammar & Style Check	3.2/5(Good) Convenient background grammar checking with easy-to-apply suggestions but fails to catch deliberate errors.
Plagiarism Detection	3.4/5(Good) Effective plagiarism detection but not integrated into the main editor.
Multi Language Support	4/5(Good) DeepL integration maintains an academic tone across languages, but AI features are limited only to English.
Export Options	4.5/5(Very Good) Nearly perfect, only lacking LaTeX support.
Pricing	Free plan available. Paid plan starts at $25/month
Final Score	3.72 out of 5

I put Paperpal through rigorous testing to answer the questions that matter to researchers and students. This review goes through real-world academic use cases, testing everything from research assistance to AI writing capabilities.

By the end, you'll have a clear picture of whether this tool deserves a place in your toolkit or not. If you're ready, let's dive into it!

What Is Paperpal?

Paperpal is an AI writing assistant for academic documents that offers grammar checking, language suggestions, and manuscript editing. It works with Word and browsers, supporting multiple languages.

Paperpal Features

After testing dozens of AI writing assistants, I needed to know: does Paperpal actually deliver, or is it just another overhyped AI tool? The results of my investigation were... unexpected.

I'll pull back the curtain on everything I discovered – both the good and the not-so-good. Whether you're a student racing against deadlines or a seasoned researcher preparing your next publication, you'll want to read this before making your decision.

1. Research Paper Integration

I've tested Paperpal's research integration extensively. Here's what I liked: it handles multiple research papers at once, instantly generating brief summaries. Uploading and processing papers took just seconds, and the summaries captured every key finding I needed.

You can also have an actual conversation with your research papers. Just ask questions like "What were the main findings?" or "How did they conduct their experiments?" and Paperpal pulls exact answers from the text, complete with references.

I found this incredibly useful when working with complex papers.

While testing this tool, I discovered it actively suggests related papers. This saved me hours of manual searching and led me to several valuable studies I would have missed otherwise.

2. Outline Builder

The outline generator comes with several predefined templates to choose from. The tool generates very detailed outlines, which I found helpful as a starting point

The generated outlines are comprehensive, but they come in a raw format that needs manual formatting. You'll need to spend some time cleaning up the structure and adjusting the formatting to match your document style.

The biggest drawback I found is the lack of flexibility. Unlike some competitors, Paperpal doesn't let you expand specific sections or add new ones to the generated outline.

You'll need to make these modifications manually, which can be time-consuming when working on complex documents.

3. AI Writing

The text Paperpal generates sounds natural and maintains an academic tone – you won't need to worry about robotic-sounding content in your papers.

However, the tool lacks an autocomplete feature, and more importantly, it doesn't automatically understand your paper's context. When I asked it to write a conclusion, it couldn't do so until I specifically highlighted the key points in the text editor.

Another issue I encountered was with the paraphrasing feature. While it changes the text structure, it doesn't maintain your writing style, which can lead to inconsistent tone throughout your document.

4. Citation Management

Paperpal's citation management has a steep learning curve. You can search for and add citations by text, but the process isn't as smooth as I expected.

The tool offers over 10,000 citation styles – but I found this overwhelming rather than helpful.

What's more frustrating is that you can't edit citations once they're added. Your only option is to remove and re-add them. Also, there's no inline citation feature, which means more manual work.

On the positive side, Paperpal automatically generates your bibliography. This works well and saves time, especially when dealing with multiple references.

5. Grammar & Style Check

Paperpal runs grammar checks automatically in the background, which I found convenient - no need to manually trigger the checker.

Making corrections is straightforward - you can apply grammar suggestions with a single click. The suggestions I received were generally good and helped improve the text quality.

However, when I deliberately inserted errors to test the tool's accuracy, it missed several of them. This suggests you shouldn't rely solely on Paperpal for proofreading your academic work.

6. Plagiarism Detection

While Paperpal's detection works well, it's not integrated into the main editor. You'll need to export your document and upload it separately to run the check.

The detection itself is reliable - it successfully identified copied content during my tests. I also ran the tool against AI-paraphrased content, and these sections passed the plagiarism check without issues.

One thing to note: the extra steps of exporting and uploading make the process more time-consuming than it needs to be. It might get frustrating if you want to check different versions of your work regularly.

7. Multi Language Support

Paperpal uses DeepL for translations. You can translate any selected text into different languages, and the quality is what you'd expect from DeepL.

The AI writing tool can generate content in multiple languages, and impressively, it maintains an academic tone regardless of the language chosen. During my tests, the generated text remained formal and suitable for academic papers.

But there's a big limitation: the paraphrasing tool only works with English text. When I tried it on a Spanish text, it turned it back into English.

8. Export Options

The tool lets you export your work to both PDF and Word formats, and I was pleased to find that everything transfers correctly.

All elements were kept intact: citations, tables, and formatting stayed exactly as they appeared in the editor. The bibliography also maintained its proper formatting after export.

Paperpal Pricing

Paperpal is offering a free plan to all users. If you want access to premium features, you'll have to subscribe to a paid plan which starts at $25 per month.

Free
$0/month
- AI uses per day
- Unlimited citation generations
- 1 submission readiness report
Prime
$25/month
- AI uses per day
- Unlimited citation generations
- Unlimited submission readiness reports