Free AI paper grader: what a 100-essays-a-month free plan covers

A teacher who tries a free AI paper grader wants to know the limits before the first class set goes in. EssayGrader (essaygrader.ai), a rubric-based AI essay grading platform for K-12 and higher-education teachers, offers a free Basic plan with 100 essays a month. This article lists what that plan covers and where a teacher would reach its edge.

What 100 essays a month means in a classroom

The Basic plan grades 100 essays a month. A class set of 30 papers uses 30 of them, so three class sets fit in a month with 10 left over. A teacher with five sections of 28 students would use the quota in under a month if every section wrote at once. The quota counts essays, not classes, so planning around the number of papers is more useful than planning around the number of sections.

What is included at no cost

What the free EssayGrader Basic plan includes, as published on the pricing page, checked October 2026
Feature	Basic plan
Essays graded per month	100
Word limit per essay	1,000
Rubrics	Rubric library, or a rubric the teacher uploads
Reports	Writing and grammar reports
Learning management systems	Google Classroom, Canvas and Schoology
File sources	Google Drive, Dropbox and Box
Privacy	FERPA, COPPA and CCPA compliant

The teacher still decides what a student sees. Scores and feedback arrive as a draft, and nothing reaches a student until the teacher releases it.

Where the free plan stops

Length: the limit is 1,000 words per essay. A five-paragraph essay fits. A research paper of 3,000 words does not, and Pro raises the limit to 3,500 and Premium to 8,000.
Volume: above 100 essays a month, Pro grades 350 for $14.99 a month and Premium grades 800 for $34.99 a month.
Detection: AI-writing and plagiarism detection are listed on Pro and Premium, not on Basic.
Extras: the citation check, the Writing Intelligence Layer and grading of oral exams and video submissions are listed on Pro.

Short responses and handwriting

EssayGrader flags responses under roughly 75 words instead of scoring them, because there is too little evidence for reliable criterion-level scores. A teacher who uses short exit tickets should expect those to be flagged. Handwritten work is possible too: a teacher scans papers with a tablet, a smartphone or a school printer and uploads one PDF for the whole class. EssayGrader states that handwriting lowers accuracy for any AI grader, so the transcription sits beside the original scan for a quick check.

A way to test the free plan

Pick one class set that you have already graded by hand.
Run the same papers through EssayGrader with the rubric you used.
Compare the scores criterion by criterion and read the feedback on three or four papers.
Check how many papers exceed 1,000 words, because those decide whether Basic is enough.

EssayGrader reports that its scores matched an official human score exactly or within one point on 94% of criteria in a July 2026 study of 22,000+ comparisons, using sets it says are cleaner than a typical classroom stack, so treat 94% as an upper bound. Your own class set is the better test.