Unfortunately, the browser extension is proprietary. They used to have an open source one but they stopped maintaining it.

Proprietary was a dealbreaker for me. There is no way to verify that it isn't selling everything I type even if I do have it configured to point at a local server.

I'm also concerned that the extension may eventually no longer work against local servers as well.

https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool-browser-addon/issues/247

As an alternative, there is harper by wordpress: https://github.com/Automattic/harper

It is webassembly and runs entirely in your browser.

EDIT:

I will add that the rest of the languagetool ecosystem continues to work fine. Libreoffice now has a built in client, which you can point at your own hosted server. VSCode [1] also has their own languagetool extension. I use those and those work great. But in the browser I use harper nothing. I should probably install harper.

[1] Well, technically I use [code-oss]https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Visual_Studio_Code), which gets the extension from https://open-vsx.org/

From the accompanying FAQ:

Are there any free alternatives Yes. Our sister brand, QuillBot, offers a free grammar-checking and paraphrasing browser extension that works just as well as LanguageTool for English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese. Give it a try Quillbot

I would care if they haven't fucked people over and especially the open source community.

You can self host the LT service as a docker container.

https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool

Does anyone have any notes on how to self host it and ideally some feedback on what it is to self-host it?

Their local model is also pretty nice

After reading this, I installed the local server and just routed the extension there. Took less than 20 min.

My only concern is the desktop app has no server selection setting.

Ooof. I think it's a pretty useful tool, but not worth anything close to what they're asking for a paid subscription.

People here don't seem to understand that this is only for the browser extension, you can still use the site directly...

I guess they harvested enough user data by now and don't need to give it away for free anymore, well it had some uses but not enough for me to pay for

Wtf

I really wish there was one better than Gramerly and now this....

Worth paying for. Honestly guys selhost for yourself and family contribute to project you depend on, and pay for everything else you don't have the time to do that too.

Its free as in freedom, not free as in beer. Their still FOSS even so this isn't even a rug pull imho. The worst thing is it requires an account which hurts the privacy aspect of that. One the few times something like Meta mask actually makes sense... Maybe some way to get an token generated and sent for use rather than a blanket account

Are there any alternatives besides the local model?

Tbh as long as the libreoffice extraction stays free then no problem imo.

Well, Since their alternative Quillbot does not support Firefox. I might switch to Grammarly