Compare Weava and Quillbot: Which Extension is the Best?

Weava logoWeava
Quillbot logoQuillbot
Weava Highlighter was once a popular choice, but now it’s filled with ads and has a poor user experience. Better options like Web Highlights do the job better without the hassle.
Highlighter Note Taking
Quillbot is an AI-powered writing assistant designed to enhance your writing with features like paraphrasing, grammar checking, and summarizing. Ideal for productivity and improving writing quality.
Writing Education
Key Features
  • Web & PDF Highlighting: Easily highlight text on web pages and PDFs using various colors.
  • Annotations: Add detailed notes to your highlights for better reference and organization.
  • Cloud Syncing: Seamlessly access your highlights and notes across multiple devices.
  • Organize with Folders: Structure your highlights with folders and sub-folders for easy retrieval.
  • Citation Creation: Automatically generate citations for your highlighted text, simplifying your research process.
  • Paraphrasing Tool: Rewrites your sentences to improve clarity and style.
  • Grammar Checker: Identifies and corrects grammatical errors.
  • Summarizer: Condenses long texts into shorter summaries.
  • Citation Generator: Helps you create citations in various formats.
  • Plagiarism Checker: Ensures your content is original.
Our Rating
7.0
8.7
Total users
200,000
4,485,643
Total ratings
2,728
3,036
Average rating
4.1 ⭐
4.6 ⭐
Entry Level PriceFreeFree
Chrome
Chrome Web Store logo
4.1
3.01
2.7K+ ratings
200.0K+Users
Chrome Web Store logo
4.7
4.88
2.9K+ ratings
4.0M+Users
Edge
-
Microsoft Edge Store logo
4.5
4.47
104 ratings
485.6K+Users
Firefox
-
-
Safari
-
-
Features
8.5

Weava offers basic but functional features like web and PDF highlighting, annotations, and folder organization.

The basic functionalities work great but the lack of innovative or advanced functionalities, especially compared to competitors, limits its appeal.

Top 3 Features of Weava Highlighter

1. Highlight Websites and PDFs

Highlighting text with Weava

Similar to our favorite highlighter Web Highlights, you can highlight text on any website or PDF. Choose different colors to customize your highlights and make important information stand out.

2. Organize Research into Folders

Organize in folders

Weava lets you save your highlights and organize them into folders, making it simple to keep your research organized and find what you need fast.

3. Collaborate with Your Team

Share folders with your co-workers

Weava allows you to share folders with your team, making collaboration on research projects easy. Everyone can add and view highlights and notes all in one place.

9.0

Paraphrasing Tool:
Quillbot's paraphrasing tool is one of its standout features. It offers multiple modes like Standard, Fluency, and Creative, allowing users to choose the level of rewriting they need. We found it particularly useful for avoiding plagiarism and improving sentence structure.

Grammar Checker:
The grammar checker is robust, catching errors that many basic spell checkers miss. However, it sometimes flagged correct sentences as incorrect, which can be a bit annoying.

Summarizer:
Quillbot's summarizer is effective for condensing long articles or papers. It provides concise summaries that capture the main points, making it a valuable tool for students and professionals alike.

Performance
7.0

Weava performs adequately when it comes to basic highlighting and syncing. However, the overall performance is marred by the intrusive ads and occasional bugs that make the experience less smooth than it should be.

8.8

Quillbot performs well with small to medium-sized texts, but it can slow down when processing larger documents.

Design
6.0

The design is where Weava really struggles. The interface is cluttered with ads, making it not only visually unappealing but also frustrating to use.

Here's a screenshot showing one of their ads taking up nearly half the height of their sidebar:

Ads are covering half of the sidebar

The overall design feels outdated and lacks the intuitive flow found in other tools. This poor design significantly hampers the user experience.

9.0

User Interface:
Quillbot boasts a clean and intuitive interface. The layout is straightforward, making it easy for users to navigate through different features without any hassle.

Customization:
The tool offers various customization options, such as different paraphrasing modes and the ability to adjust the length of summaries. These features make it adaptable to different writing needs.

Value for Money
6.8

The free version of Weava offers basic features, and their premium plan at $3.99/month is priced similarly to competitors.

However, given the ads in the free version and the overall user experience, you can find better value in alternatives that provide more features and a cleaner interface for the same or even lower cost.

9.0

Free vs. Paid:
While the free version offers basic functionality, the premium plans unlock a wealth of features that significantly enhance the tool's utility.

Cost-Effectiveness:
Compared to its competitors, Quillbot is slightly cheaper than Grammarly but more expensive than LanguageTool. From our perspective, Quillbot doesn't offer more value than LanguageTool, so we believe it should be priced similarly. However, it currently offers significant discounts on their plans, which makes it a very good investment in your writing.

Ease of Use
6.5

Weava’s basic highlighting functionality is straightforward, but the poor design and mandatory account creation add unnecessary friction. The ads make navigation cumbersome, and while it’s not difficult to learn, using the tool effectively can be a challenge due to these barriers.

7.8

Quillbot's onboarding process is impressive, and the tool is easy to use right from the start. We quickly grasped most of its features. However, when compared to top competitors like Grammarly, it doesn't feel quite as natural or seamless to use.

Security & Privacy
7.0

Weava does take steps to protect user data, and their privacy policy is clear about not selling personal information. However, the requirement to create an account and the potential for data collection through ads could be a concern for privacy-conscious users.

8.8

Data Handling:
Quillbot ensures that user data is encrypted and securely stored. However, like many AI tools, it does send data to its servers for processing, which may raise privacy concerns for some users.

Third-Party Services:
The tool uses third-party services for certain features, which could lead to data being processed outside of the EU. Users should be cautious when handling sensitive information.

Conclusion

Weava Highlighter may still be a popular choice, but its current state leaves much to be desired. The overwhelming presence of ads and a clunky design significantly detract from the user experience, making it hard to justify its use when other tools offer a more polished and ad-free environment.

If you’re serious about your productivity, it’s worth exploring alternatives like Web Highlights, which delivers all the benefits of Weava without the downsides.

Quillbot is a flexible AI writing tool that does a great job with paraphrasing and grammar checking.

While it has a few minor downsides, like occasional mistakes and some privacy concerns, its overall performance and affordability make it a solid choice. In the end, choosing the best writing tool is also a matter of personal opinion. If you want to improve your writing and boost productivity, Quillbot is definitely worth a look.

However, it still cannot compete with Grammarly as the best writing tool in this category. In our eyes, Grammarly is worth the more expensive price.

Install Weava
Install Quillbot
Our Recommendation

In our comparison between Weava and Quillbot, Quillbot came out on top, scoring 8.7.

Quillbot is the most widely used, with over 4 million users and 3k+ reviews—and it also delivered the strongest performance in our tests. User reviews for Quillbot reflect our findings, while we rate Weava lower than users do.

Notably, Quillbot has the highest user rating in the Chrome Web Store at 4.58, which supports its strong performance in our review.

There are big differences between these extensions, so it's important to look at the details below to find the best fit for your needs.

  • Looking for the richest feature set? Quillbot stands out with a rating of 9. On the other hand, Weava lags behind in this area with a rating of 8.5.
  • Need top performance? Quillbot stands out with a rating of 8.8. On the other hand, Weava lags behind in this area with a rating of 7.
  • Design lovers, take note: Quillbot stands out with a rating of 9. On the other hand, Weava lags behind in this area with a rating of 6.
  • Want to get the most for your money? Quillbot stands out with a rating of 9. On the other hand, Weava lags behind in this area with a rating of 6.8.
  • If you hate complicated tools, Quillbot stands out with a rating of 7.8. On the other hand, Weava lags behind in this area with a rating of 6.5.
  • With privacy and security becoming ever more important, Quillbot stands out with a rating of 8.8. On the other hand, Weava lags behind in this area with a rating of 7.

If you want a quick recommendation, Quillbot is our top pick. But as always, the best choice depends on what matters most to you.