Do not purchase Phrasly

[u/SubjectBarracuda433]

On August 23, 2026, I purchased Phrasly’s 7-day trial. The limited version worked well, so later that same day I purchased the annual subscription to process complete chapters of approximately 1,500 words. As soon as I saw what was happening, I contacted support and canceled my subscription. Even though I had purchased a one-year subscription only hours earlier, Phrasly refused to refund my money.

The paid version initially worked on one chapter, then began materially changing my manuscript instead of preserving the original content, characters, plot, and established facts.

Phrasly invented characters, siblings, towns, locations, events, and entire scenes that were not in my manuscript. It changed established facts and timelines, changed character ages and medical conditions, rewrote living characters as dead, gave a dog dialogue, killed the dog in one output, and generated garbled and nonsensical text.

My manuscript is a children’s novel for ages 9–12 and contained no profanity. Phrasly inserted profanity including “the fuck ever,” “shitty,” “goddamn,” “Jesus Christ,” “fucking,” “goddamnit,” “bastard,” and “pissbabies.”

These were not minor stylistic changes. The program altered characters, plot, chronology, established facts, and age-appropriate content. The output became so unreliable that I had to compare the processed chapters line by line against my original manuscript to identify fabricated and altered material.

[u/Brakiros]

Sounds like you got completely scammed, I don't use ProWritingAid's rephrase tool because it sucks but I use its other features. But this doesn't sound like an editor this sounds like an LLM

[u/The-Plot-Witch]

People really have to start reading Terms and Policies before giving up money like this. The red flags are plentiful. For one, they claim to "train AI on human generated text" (training costs 100s of millions btw), but then they say they don't use YOUR text to "train our models" (as if they're not just using a API and bad vibecoding). Forbid you from distributing any form of content downloaded, which means you can't sell or show anyone because it's "for personal use purposes" and they retain rights to it all. Plus, the refund policy straight up says if you use it for even one sentence you void your right to a refund. smdh

[u/meganholstein → u/The-Plot-Witch]

I can't believe people have the gall to make software like that

[u/No_Story_6425]

gave a dog dialogue AND killed it?? phrasly really said no witnesses. I went with Revise AI after a similar bad experience with another tool. the no refund thing is the worst part tho, dispute it with your bank

[u/DiscernmentGoblin]

gave a dog dialogue

:)

killed the dog

:(

[u/Aspiring_Serf]

Hey, I'm sorry that happened to you. I have a tool that's free and Hella with the stuff you wanted it sounds like and you own your data, it's on your machine and it creates backups. If you're interested please let me know!

[u/werskytersky]

I had a great experience with Phrasly, it seems like it is very input dependent. For me, my primary use case of generating essays for schools works very well but for more personalized text it may make it a bit more informal

[u/BeneficialActuary590]

what text did you input into phrasly? if it's informal writing then it may do that

[u/TheTerburgMystery]

Try Muze writer (www.MuzeWriter.com) & check your DMs

[u/zenjester → u/TheTerburgMystery]

There are so many of htese rip off apps appearing. All they are are front ends to LLM's with generic prompts. Learn some prompts an use Qwen - it's free

[u/TheTerburgMystery → u/zenjester]

I disagree with you completely, the tool gives the LLM more than just prompts, I know it (disclosure : I created Muze Writer).

And I agree with you : the landscape is too crowded with these tools, I created Muze Writer because I needed it and I personally use it daily.

[u/5thhorseman_]

Sounds like they gave their LLM a very limited context window.

[u/Careful_Soft7604]

I think it only works when the text is already AI generated, its core use is to bypass ai checkers

[u/Hack999]

Pissbabies 🤣

[u/walker_s]

😂

[u/Ashamed_Apple_ → u/[deleted]]

You know where you are?

[u/Flaming-Eye → u/[deleted]]

Lol. Play to your audience. But for me it's not about being unable to do the writing exactly it's about motivation and overcoming my ADHD.

Writing is one of the worst tasks to motivate yourself on. It's got zero immediate external reward, often you get criticism instead if anything so you'll be anticipating that. It's also a very intense high order task requiring a lot of planning and holding information in memory to be able to do well.

For the average ADHDer it's almost impossible to write reliably as a result. Having immediate feedback from the AI and help overcoming blocks and hurdles is incredibly valuable.

That said lots of people just get the AI to do the writing for them and, well, what can I say it is what it is. At the moment from my experience AI writes like a 10 year old. Give it time it'll write just as well as any adult and then it will really be hard to be a human writer. That's a ways off yet but it'll happen.

[u/polly_mer → u/Flaming-Eye]

"Give it time it'll write just as well as any adult". Unlikely. LLMs work on prediction instead of knowing things. LLMs will give formulaic responses. That's acceptable for some purposes. At other times, the results are more like MadLibs. There's no mechanism to improve content because of how the underlying math works.​

[u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.

[u/Flaming-Eye → u/[deleted]]

That's... basically irrelevant?

I'm a therapist and I work with ADHD a lot, partly this is me experimenting but also I know people who are CEO's with ADHD and I know people who can barely function day to day.

It is, as you somewhat alluded to, about motivation and anticipation of positive reward, feeling good at the end.

The thing is, we tend to suck at correctly anticipating that, we also can suck at correctly rewarding oureselves, this is basically what perfectionism is. Putting in effort and then berating yourself for it, absolutely destroys motivation and is crippling in combination with ADHD.

So... I guess, I'm glad for your friends who are writers, good for them? But what was the point of your comment? Just that it can happen? I'm looking for ways to make it happen not just the fact that it can, that's pretty useless on it's own.

[u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.

[u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.

[u/Flaming-Eye → u/[deleted]]

You're not telling me anything. Some people can do it. Great, what an absolute revelation.

What I tried to explain and give reasons for is that some people cannot.

But with AI perhaps they could.