Grammarly edits your writing. KOPY writes the reply.

Grammarly is an editor. KOPY is a generator. If you already have a draft, Grammarly’s job is to catch the broken agreement, the accidental tone, the muddy verb. If you have an incoming message and a blank field, KOPY’s job is to put a first draft in that field. Comparing them as two “writing AIs” is how you buy the wrong one and then blog that AI doesn’t work.

I am not going to recast this as another chatbot-versus-keyboard essay. Grammarly’s center of gravity is text you typed. See Grammarly’s product overview. Our center of gravity is text you did not type yet, inside an iOS custom keyboard. Different blank. Different KPI.

• Grammarly: improve existing language.
• KOPY: propose the language, then you glance-edit.
• Most people need an editor some hours and a generator in the hours they freeze.

The blank-field problem is not a grammar problem

People open Tinder and stall. They open Slack and stall. The sentence is not ungrammatical. It is unborn. Grammarly cannot underline a thought you refused to have. KOPY can be wrong, but it is an object you can hit. That is the product.

Grammarly + Harris Poll’s $1.2T poor-communication estimate (2022) and the 2024 State of Business Communication are about failed messages, missing context, and slow cycles — not comma splices alone. Their later gen-AI savings framing (2024) argues generation can claw time back. Fine. Put the generation next to the thread or you spend the savings on app switching. WTI 2025: interruptions every two minutes in core hours. An editor plugin in Google Docs does not pay that tax. A keyboard does not either. A “let me paste this into an assistant, then into Grammarly, then back” circus pays it twice.

KPI	Grammarly (edit path)	KOPY (generate path)
Requires a human first draft	Yes — that is the point	No — draft is the output
Steps to a sendable reply from a blank field	You write N sentences, then edit	3 (keyboard, tone, insert)
Time to first complete draft	Minutes (you are the model)	~2 seconds generate
Grammar / style depth on existing prose	Core competency	Shallow — glance edit only
Dating / Social / Work reply priors	Not the product	Built in
Context switches from iMessage	0 if in-doc; more if you hop apps	0

I still use an editor on long email. I do not use an editor as a personality for a Hinge prompt. If your failure mode is “I wrote something sloppy,” buy Grammarly. If your failure mode is “I wrote nothing,” buy a generator that lives in the keyboard.

Edit versus generate is a sequence, not a war

The honest stack is: generate in KOPY, then if the stakes are high, pass through an editor — or just use your eyes. Most SMS and dating replies should not visit a grammar product. You will sand off the voice. See why AI replies sound robotic. Over-editing a two-line text is how you get LinkedIn in WhatsApp.

The dishonest stack is: stare, write a stiff sentence, run Grammarly, still sound like HR, open a chatbot, paste, copy, paste, Grammarly again. That is how communication tools become a second job. I built the keyboard because I watched myself do the dishonest stack on a Friday night.

Where Grammarly is simply better

Documents. Browser extensions. Teams that need a shared floor for English. People who write 400-word emails and need consistency more than speed. ESL users who already know what they want to say. Grammarly’s Free + Premium/Business shape exists because editing is a volume business across surfaces. I will not invent a Premium dollar figure; it moves. Read their site. KOPY is not trying to be a company-wide writing platform.

KOPY is trying to be good at four modes on a phone. That is a narrower, meaner product. We will lose a feature matrix against Grammarly on “clarity suggestions in Google Docs.” We should. Different OS, different object.

Where a keyboard generator is simply better

Incoming message, no draft, social clock running. Apple’s custom keyboard is the only honest home for that on iOS if you refuse to leave the app. Grammarly’s keyboard experiments, if you have used them, are still in the edit family: they want text. We want the other person’s text as context and your tap as intent.

Tone presets are not Grammarly’s tone slider with a new coat. Ours are reply genres. Disagree in Work mode is not the same as Disagree in Dating mode. An editor does not have to know that. A reply engine does, or it will get someone dumped or written up.

Pricing, Free, and the thing we will not fake

Grammarly has a Free tier and paid Premium/Business offerings. That Free tier is a real editor for a lot of people. KOPY does not offer a fake “unlimited free generations” story. Pro is $12.99/mo. No free trial. You can install the keyboard without paying. You generate replies on Pro. If you need an editor today and a generator never, pay Grammarly and ignore us. If you freeze on replies and your grammar is fine, the inverse.

Communication cost is why this page exists

The $1.2T figure gets abused in marketing. I am using it for a narrower claim: organizations already know bad communication is expensive, and they still buy tools that polish the memo while the Slack reply sits for three hours. WTI’s 275 interruptions are the mechanism. You cannot polish your way out of a queue. You have to emit. Generation is emission. Editing is quality control. Skip QC on low-stakes texts. Do not skip emission.

For how this sits next to assistants (not editors), KOPY vs ChatGPT, KOPY vs Claude, and KOPY vs Gemini. For a typing keyboard rather than an editor, KOPY vs Gboard. Broader map: AI texting assistant comparison. Keyboard roundup: best AI keyboard apps for iPhone 2026.

Tone detection is not a reply genre

Grammarly can flag that you sound abrupt. Useful on a 200-word email you already wrote. Useless when the field is empty: there is no tone to detect. Our tones are not detections. They are intents you declare before language exists. Funny versus Professional versus Disagree is a fork in generation, not a underline after the fact. If you declare the wrong fork, you will get a coherent wrong draft — still faster to fix than a blank. If Grammarly declares you abrupt, you already spent the hard minutes producing the abruptness.

I do not want a red underline party in a dating keyboard. That UI trains people to write for a checker, not for the human. Editors belong on documents. Generators belong on threads. When I mixed them in early builds, users wrote safer, deader texts. We ripped the checker out of the generate path on purpose.

Browser extension versus keyboard extension

Grammarly’s best home is the browser: Gmail, Docs, LinkedIn in Chrome, a sidebar that can see a long field. Our home is UIKit’s input accessory world. Different APIs, different permissions, different user suspicion. A browser extension that rewrites a paragraph is a known bargain. A keyboard with network access is a spooky bargain. I have to earn Full Access in onboarding. Grammarly has to earn a Chrome permission. Neither is “AI writing” as a single market. They are two plumbing systems that happen to emit language.

If your work is 90% Gmail in a laptop browser, Grammarly is in the right pipe. KOPY will feel like a toy you open after hours. If your work is 90% phone threads, Grammarly’s pipe never reaches the bubble. Buy the pipe that touches the field you actually use. I built for the field Apple keeps locked unless you become a keyboard. A generator that cannot reach iMessage is an editor with extra chat. An editor that cannot start a Hinge reply is a spellcheck for a sentence that does not exist.

Team style guides versus four personal modes

Business Grammarly exists because companies want a floor: Oxford commas, banned phrases, brand voice. That is a real problem. It is not our problem. KOPY modes are personal genres, not a compliance layer. Work mode will not stop you from promising a customer a date you cannot hit. It will make the sentence sound like a colleague instead of a dating profile. If you need a style guide, you need Grammarly Business or an actual editor. If you need to answer 15 DMs before dinner, you need a generator. I will not stretch “Work mode” into a policy engine. That would be dishonest positioning and a bad keyboard.

Personalization on our side is closer to “sound like me” than “match the brandbook.” Different dataset, different failure: we can overfit to quirks; Grammarly can overfit to beige. Pick your failure. Beige on a first date is how you get no second date. Quirks on a legal email is how you get a meeting with counsel. Tools should fail in the direction of the job.

Decision rule

If the text exists, Grammarly. If the text does not exist, KOPY. If both are true in one sitting — you generated a reply and it matters — generate first, edit second, never the other way around on a blank field. I shipped a keyboard because I am a generator person who still respects editors. I got tired of tools that only help after I have already done the hard part with my thumbs.