| Tool | Free tier | British spelling by default | Catches Nigerian academic register | Verified price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LanguageTool | Yes, plus a free public checking API | Only if you set en-GB — and it still argues with you | Almost nothing — measured below | Not readable at source | The default install |
| Microsoft Editor | Yes, inside Word | Yes, if the document language is English (Nigeria) or English (UK) | No, but it has a formality setting | Bundled with Microsoft 365 | Anyone already writing in Word |
| Grammarly | Yes — spelling, grammar, tone display, 100 AI prompts | Only if you set the British dialect in settings | Not documented as a feature | €12 EUR/month Pro, quoted in euros | Browser and mobile writing |
| QuillBot | Yes, with a word limit | Dialect setting available | No — it rewrites, it does not correct register | Site returned 403; no price readable | Nothing in a project you will defend |
| Tesify | Yes | Yes | Partly — it works on the chapter, not the isolated sentence | See the Tesify site | Writing the chapter itself |
Feature columns read from each tool’s own published pages on 23 August 2026. The register column for LanguageTool was measured directly against its public API on the same day, with language=en-GB. The other tools are marked from documentation, because none of them exposes an endpoint that can be tested without an account.
The recommendation: install LanguageTool, set the dialect to British English, and treat its spelling suggestions with suspicion. The runner-up on a tighter budget is Microsoft Editor, which you already have if you write in Word. What follows is the measurement that produced that ranking, and it is not flattering to any of them.
The test
LanguageTool publishes a free proofreading endpoint at api.languagetool.org/v2/check — documented as its only public endpoint, capped at 20 requests per IP per minute and 20KB per request, with the plain warning that it is a free service with no guarantee of performance or availability. Fifteen sentences taken from the register of Nigerian project writing were sent to it on 23 August 2026 with the language set to British English.
| Sentence sent | Result |
|---|---|
| “The respondents was composed of three hundred staff of the firm.” | Caught. Agreement error, suggested “were”. |
| “The study will discuss about the effect of training on productivity.” | Caught. Collocation error, suggested “discuss the”. |
| “The data was collected in the year 2024 from the staff of the organisation.” | Wrong flag. Its only complaint was the British spelling, which it wanted changed to “organization”. |
| “The analysis were carried out using SPSS version 25.” | No match. The same class of agreement error it caught in row one. |
| “It is pertinent to note that majority of the respondents was male.” | No match. |
| “The respondents they said that the training programme was adequate.” | No match. |
| “The researcher is of the opinion that more trainings are needed.” | No match. |
| “The researcher wishes to expatiate on the above.” | No match. |
| “Okonkwo (2021) opined that training is very important to productivity.” | No match. |
| “As a matter of fact, the respondents were of the view that the training was adequate.” | No match. |
| “Kindly note that the questionnaire was administered to three hundred respondents.” | No match. |
| “The respondents were requested to kindly fill the questionnaire.” | No match. |
| “The variables under study are training, productivity and motivation respectively.” | No match. |
| “Off head, the manager could not remember the exact figure.” | No match. |
| “This is to inform that the null hypothesis was rejected at 0.05 level of significance.” | No match. |
Rows one and two are the positive controls: they prove the endpoint was live and answering during the test. Without them, thirteen silent results would prove nothing.
The result that matters most
Read row three again. The sentence “The data was collected in the year 2024 from the staff of the organisation” contains a real problem — “in the year 2024” is three words where one would do — and the checker said nothing about it. What it did flag was organisation, asking to change it to organization, in a check explicitly set to British English.
Nigerian universities follow British spelling. Accepting that suggestion across a whole project would replace every -ise with -ize, every programme with program and every behaviour with behavior, and hand your supervisor a formatting correction on every page. The single most damaging thing a grammar checker will do to your project is a change it is confident about.
Set the dialect before you check anything, and when a spelling suggestion appears, ask whether it is British-to-American before you accept it. Your department’s format rules are the authority here — the guide to referencing the way your Nigerian university actually requires covers where those rules live.
Why the thirteen misses are all the same miss
Look at what got through: expatiate, opined, as a matter of fact, kindly, off head, trainings, this is to inform that. Two of them — “the respondents they said” and “the analysis were” — are genuine grammatical errors. The other eleven are not errors at all in any technical sense. They are perfectly well-formed English sentences in the wrong register: the register of a memo, a formal letter, a church announcement or a conversation, carried into a document that is none of those things.
A checker checks grammar. Your supervisor is checking register. Only one of those jobs has been automated, and it is not the one that produces the red ink.
The inventory to search for yourself
No tool in the table will find these. Use Find, and give it twenty minutes.
| Search for | Why a supervisor marks it | Write instead |
|---|---|---|
| opined | Journalese; almost extinct in academic English outside Nigeria and India | argued, stated, maintained, reported |
| expatiate | Fine in speech, archaic in writing | explain in detail, elaborate on |
| as a matter of fact, in actual fact | Conversational filler that asserts nothing | delete |
| kindly | Correspondence register; a project does not address its reader | delete, or make it a statement |
| this is to inform that | Memo opening | delete and state the finding |
| it is pertinent to note that | Six words announcing that a sentence is coming | delete |
| trainings, researches, equipments, personnels, staffs | Uncountable nouns pluralised | training, research, equipment, personnel, staff |
| respectively (when there is nothing to pair) | Only correct when two lists map onto each other in order | delete |
| the respondents they said | Resumptive pronoun repeating the subject | the respondents said |
| discuss about, emphasise on, comprise of, request for | Extra preposition | discuss, emphasise, comprise, request |
| in the year 2024, in the month of May | Padding | in 2024, in May |
| off head, by heart | Spoken Nigerian English | from memory, or delete the sentence |
| very important, highly significant | Boosters that a panel reads as unearned | important, significant — or a number |
That last row overlaps with a bigger question — how strong a claim your data licenses at all — which is set out in the guide to how strongly you can state your findings in Chapter Five.
The ranked shortlist
1. LanguageTool — install it, then argue with it
Free, with add-ons for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari and Opera, plugins for Word, Google Docs, Apple Pages and LibreOffice, and desktop apps for Windows and macOS. It catches real subject-verb agreement errors and real collocation errors, which is more than nothing and is exactly what your first proofread should remove.
Set the dialect to British English before you start, and expect it to still suggest American spellings. On 23 August 2026 the premium page returned “There was an issue displaying the prices. Please try again later.” instead of a figure, so no naira price is quoted here. Its public API documentation also asks users not to send automated requests, and caps suggestions at 30 misspelled words — so use the add-on, not the endpoint.
2. Microsoft Editor — the runner-up on a tight budget, because it costs nothing extra
If your chapters are already in Word, Editor is present. Set the document language to English (United Kingdom) or English (Nigeria) and the spelling problem largely disappears, because the dictionary is chosen rather than guessed. It is also the only tool here with an explicit formality setting, which is the closest anything gets to the register problem, and the only one that does not send your unpublished data to a server.
3. Grammarly — the strongest free tier, in the wrong currency
Its published free plan on 23 August 2026 covers writing without spelling and grammar mistakes, a tone display and 100 AI prompts. Pro adds full-sentence rewriting, tone adjustment, unlimited suggestions, plagiarism and AI detection, and 2,000 prompts.
Two warnings for a Nigerian final year student. The plans page served €12 EUR per month — there is no naira price, and your bank’s card and conversion charges land on top of whatever figure you see. And the plagiarism and AI detection in Pro is not the check your department runs; a clean result there predicts nothing about your official similarity score, as set out in the comparison of plagiarism checkers for Nigerian students.
4. QuillBot — the wrong tool for this job
Its front page returned HTTP 403 to a plain request on 23 August 2026, so nothing about its current plans or pricing could be verified at source and none is quoted here. More importantly, paraphrasing is not register correction. Running a Nigerian paragraph through a rewriter produces different words carrying the same register problem, and it moves you toward text you did not write — which is the thing your department’s integrity policy is about. Where that line sits is discussed in the guide to whether you can use AI to write your final year project in Nigeria.
Two things none of them does
None knows which chapter it is reading. “This study will examine” is correct in a seminar proposal and wrong in a bound project, and no sentence-level checker can see the difference.
None reads your data. A checker passes “the findings prove that training increases productivity” over a correlational study without hesitation. The grammar is perfect. The claim is indefensible, and that is the sentence a panel will open with.
There is a third gap worth naming, because students often expect a checker to close it and none of them can: “it does not flow” is a comment about missing sentences between your sections, not about the sentences you already have. That fix is set out in the guide to writing the sentences that join your chapters together.
The workflow
- Set the document language to British English before you write anything, and check it again on any machine you did not set up yourself.
- Draft with the checker switched off. Suggestions during drafting cost more attention than they save.
- Run the checker once the section is finished. Accept agreement and punctuation fixes. Reject every British-to-American spelling change.
- Run the Find list above. This is the pass that removes the red ink.
- Read the section aloud. Register is audible before it is visible, and you already know how a seminar presentation should sound.
Fix the register inside the chapter, not one sentence at a time
Tesify works on the chapter you are actually writing, so a suggestion knows whether it is looking at a proposal or a finished methodology — the one thing no sentence-level checker can know. There is a free plan to start on, over 9,000 students have written more than 15,000 chapters with it, and every word is still written by you. Current plans and naira pricing are on the Tesify site.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best grammar checker for a Nigerian final year project?
LanguageTool, set to British English. It is free, has add-ons for Word, Google Docs and every major browser, and catches real agreement and collocation errors. Microsoft Editor is the budget runner-up because it is already inside Word and does not send your text to a server.
Will a grammar checker catch the things my supervisor marks?
Mostly not. Of fifteen typical Nigerian project sentences sent to LanguageTool’s public API on 23 August 2026, thirteen returned no match — including opined, expatiate, as a matter of fact, kindly, trainings and off head. None of those is a grammar error; all of them are register errors.
Why did the checker want to change “organisation” to “organization”?
Because it defaults toward American spelling even when the check is set to British English. Nigerian universities follow British spelling, so that suggestion is wrong for your project. Reject every British-to-American spelling change it offers.
Is “opined” acceptable in a project?
It is understood, but it reads as journalese and is rare in current academic English outside Nigeria and India. Use argued, stated, maintained or reported, chosen for how strongly the source actually established its point.
What is wrong with “kindly” in a project?
It belongs to correspondence. A final year project does not address its reader, so there is nobody to be polite to. Delete it, or turn the sentence into a statement of what was done.
Can QuillBot fix my English?
It paraphrases rather than corrects, so it produces different words carrying the same register problem, and it moves you toward text you did not write. Its site also returned a 403 on 23 August 2026, so no current pricing could be verified.
How much does Grammarly cost in naira?
No naira figure is readable at source. The plans page served €12 EUR per month for Pro on 23 August 2026, and your bank’s card and conversion charges apply on top. Confirm what your own card is billed before a group commits to it.
Should my project use British or American spelling?
British, unless your department says otherwise in writing. Whichever you use, be consistent throughout — a project that mixes “behaviour” and “behavior” attracts a correction on every page it happens.
Can these tools help me pass the plagiarism check?
No, and treat any tool that claims it can as a risk rather than a solution. A consumer pre-check compares against a different corpus from your department’s system, so a clean result predicts nothing about your official score.
Is it cheating to use a grammar checker?
Correcting spelling and grammar is ordinary editing and is accepted everywhere. Full-sentence rewriting and paraphrasing sit closer to the line, and some Nigerian departments now ask for a declaration of AI assistance. Read your department’s rule and follow it.
Do I need to pay for any of this?
No. The free tier of LanguageTool plus Word’s built-in Editor plus the Find list in this article will remove most language corrections from your chapters. Paid plans buy convenience, not the register knowledge that produces the corrections in the first place.
What is the fastest single pass before submission?
Search your project for these twelve strings: opined, expatiate, as a matter of fact, kindly, this is to inform, it is pertinent, trainings, researches, respectively, discuss about, in the year, and very important. Twenty minutes, and it removes most of the language marks a Nigerian supervisor writes.