What Is Sapling.ai?
Sapling.ai is rated 4.0/5 based on 3 reviews on Trustpilot and 4.2/5 based on 14 reviews on G2. With so few reviews, it is very difficult to assess the experience of other users at scale, so we can’t recommend this service to our users yet. Sapling.ai is ranked 8th among the sites that help check content for artificial intelligence involvement.
You may know about the Sapling AI checker, but it’s not the core service Sapling offers. Sapling advertises itself as a product for “customer-facing teams” to help them communicate with customers faster and more efficiently.
Besides this product and the AI checker, Sapling also offers several other tools for free. You can take its grammar and punctuation checker for a run, for example. (But you may not find them useful; we’ll break down why below.)
Sapling also has a Sentence Rewriter tool that tweaks sentences to match a specific tone of voice. Tones are limited to four predetermined options: straightforward, empathetic, confident, and friendly.
All in all, Sapling seems to try and imitate the likes of Grammarly when it comes to its core product. As for the AI checker and other tools, let’s see if they’re worth your time.
Sapling.ai: Our Verdict
While the lack of user reviews was already a red flag for us, we still had to try Sapling ourselves to judge whether it was a reliable tool. Besides the AI checker itself, we also tried its other AI features, like grammar checker and sentence rewriter.
Overall, we were not impressed with Sapling.ai – far from it, actually. The user interface was buggy at times, the AI+human content detection was off the mark, and the grammar and punctuation checkers' suggestions made us laugh out loud at their ridiculousness.
Yes, Sapling does offer some perks, like the free three-day certificate that allows you to share the check’s results. It also has tons of integrations, like extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, email (Gmail, Outlook, etc.), and word processors (Google Docs, Microsoft Word).
However, these perks are simply not worth trusting Sapling AI, especially if you’re planning to run checks before submitting your papers. The tool costs a lot more than most of its competitors, and the user experience leaves much to be desired.
As for other tools, they’re, frankly, laughable. We’re not even entirely sure there’s really any AI behind text suggestions and sentence rewriting.
A Word on the Overall User Experience
When you first discover the answer to the “What is Sapling AI?” question, the tool has its allure. You can check your text for grammar and punctuation mistakes and AI-generated content for free, after all! What’s not to like?
Well, let us talk you through our initial experience with Sapling. When we opened the AI checker and tried to run our first check, we were confused. We tried to paste the text into the field, but nothing was happening. So, we switched from our usual browser (Firefox) to another one (Opera). And lo and behold, the pasting actually worked!
During our first check, the pasted text got truncated (i.e., cut short): the tool allows free users to check only 2,000 characters at once. To give you an idea, that’s about 300-350 words in English, which is… well, almost nothing. If you want to check more, prepare to pay for a Pro subscription.
The check took a good 10-15 seconds, which is slower than other leading AI checkers. We tested the shareable certificate, too, and got the impression that Sapling re-runs the check every time someone follows the link since we had to wait again to see the results.
Sapling.ai Account & Customer Support
If you want to use the browser extension or check out the free trial for the Sapling AI detector, it won’t be as straightforward as you might hope. If you click Get Started in the menu above, you won’t be taken to the registration page. Instead, you’ll be directed to the extension’s page in the corresponding marketplace (i.e., Chrome Web Store for Chrome or Opera users). To create an account, you’ll need to click Sign In and then “New here? Register”, which is counterintuitive.
After creating our account and logging into it, we got automatically enrolled in the 30-day free trial. You can change your language settings for the grammar checkers and turn certain tools on or off.
(Not so) fun fact: we couldn’t for the life of us find the Log Out button in the user account!
Customer support is nothing to write home about. The only way to reach the Sapling customer support team is by filling out a contact form or writing an email directly to support@sapling.ai. We tried the latter, but our email was left unanswered for three days! The response seemed to be copied and pasted from the knowledge base.
How Accurate Is Sapling AI Detector?
So, is Sapling AI detector accurate? Our piece of human-written content got a 6.9% “fake” rating:
We tinkered with the checker using several human-written snippets and got under 10% of "fake content" every time.
Sidenote: we don’t appreciate the phrasing used for the AI content rate. AI-generated content isn’t fake; it’s just not written by a human.
Next, we headed to ChatGPT and asked it to generate a short text:
We pasted it into Sapling as-is, and the tool rightly flagged all of it as AI-generated content:
We repeated the process using text generated by Gemini and Claude, and the results were the same. What’s more, Sapling managed to detect AI text even after we used a separate paraphraser and asked Gemini to rewrite Claude’s output. So, to be fair, Sapling manages to detect AI involvement quite well. We only hope it is more affordable and user-friendly.
How Much Does AI Sapling Detector Cost?
You can use the AI checker for free. However, as we mentioned above, you’re limited in the amount of text you can check in one go. The current limit is a mere 2,000 characters with spaces, so your 1,000-word essay will probably require three to four separate checks.
Other tools – the sentence rewriter, grammar checker, and punctuation checkers – are also available for free, with no apparent character limit.
If you want to check longer texts, you’ll need a Pro subscription. It costs $25/month, which is somewhat steep, but you can bring down the monthly costs by opting for annual billing. You’ll then pay an equivalent of $12/month.
If you want to take the premium version for a test drive, Sapling offers a free trial for that purpose. However, it doesn’t disclose how long the trial lasts anywhere on the website, and even when you create your account, the welcome message doesn’t specify its duration. Only after you confirm your email address will you see that the trial lasts 30 days:
What About Other Sapling Tools?
As we mentioned at the beginning, Sapling AI detection isn’t the only free tool on the table. So, by sheer curiosity, we decided to test Sapling’s other free tools.
We started with the grammar checker: we pasted one of our texts into it and reviewed the suggestions. While there didn’t seem to be any word count limit, the suggestions themselves made us laugh at times. Here’s one:
Yes, the tool literally suggested we add a space between a noun and the ’s! Considering such suggestions, we don’t think Sapling can rival the likes of Grammarly in this department.
The punctuation checker was no longer helpful. Suggestions often didn’t make sense to us. Here’s an example:
Finally, there’s the sentence rewriter. We pasted a sentence from one of our website’s texts and hit Rewrite Sentence. The results were quite funny, too:
Out of five suggestions, only one actually reads like something written by a human. The rest of the sentences looked robotic and awkward; we’d never publish one of them.
Overall, we don’t think these extra tools are worth your time, even if they’re free. You’ll be better off with virtually any other decent grammar checker!
How Sapling’s Browser Extension Stacked Up
First, we checked out the reviews for the browser extension. On the Firefox Browser Add-Ons page, reviews are few (only 25) and underwhelming:
On the Chrome Web Store’s page, the ratings are somewhat better:
So, we decided to install the Chrome extension in Opera and see how it stacks up. We pasted a text in a field on a random website, and the extension worked as a grammar checker, albeit some suggestions were somewhat ridiculous:
This extension is only meant to be a writing assistant. On that front, it’s quite user-friendly – but it’s still far from a solid rival for other checkers, especially considering the price tag.
On the page with the Sapling AI content detector, we saw there were two links to Chrome extensions:
When we clicked Install Sapling AI Content Detector, however, we were redirected to the main page of the Chrome Web Store.
Sapling.ai vs AI+Human Content
Now, how accurate is Sapling AI detector when analyzing AI output tweaked by a human? We decided to edit a bit the two paragraphs generated by ChatGPT and have Sapling.ai check it. The tool returned a 100% "fake" result, even though there was some human input:
Next, we decided to mix that text with a couple of paragraphs written by a human from scratch. In this sample, the second and fourth paragraphs were completely original, yet the whole text still got flagged as 100% AI-generated:
Ideally, the rate of AI-generated content around 50% would be more appropriate for this text. That said, it’s a common problem with free AI checkers. Certain tools like GPTZero, however, can recognize the text as a mix of AI-generated and human-written content:
In a Nutshell: Sapling.ai’s Pros and Cons
If you’re looking for a reliable and user-friendly AI checker, SaplingAI isn’t the best option on the table – but it’s not the worst, either. It manages to detect purely human-written or AI-generated content well, but AI+human content confuses it.
That said, there are too many downsides for us to recommend Sapling.ai. The subpar, bug-full user experience, slow customer support, limited free version, and steep pricing outweigh the pros.
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Is Sapling.ai legit?
The AI checker Sapling offers seems to be legit, albeit it’s not perfect. It can accurately detect purely human-written and AI-generated content. But if you edited AI content or mixed it with a human-written one, it’ll probably flag it as 100% “fake,” regardless.
Can I rely on Sapling’s AI grammar checker?
We’d advise you against it. The free version of the Sapling AI grammar checker suggests corrections that are laughable and would actually add mistakes to your text. You’d be better off with other checkers like Grammarly or LanguageTool.
Does Sapling.ai cost money?
You can use the AI Sapling detector for free, but you’re limited to 2,000 characters with spaces per single check. The Pro version, which also gives you access to premium grammar checker suggestions, costs $25/month ($12/month if you opt for annual billing).
Is Sapling.ai a scam?
Sapling.ai's website does have a somewhat scammy vibe, considering the number of bugs and the lack of detailed information. The lack of reviews online doesn’t help, either. That said, the checker works as promised, and we didn’t find any hard proof that Sapling.ai is a scam.
Is Sapling.ai safe to use?
While some users are suspicious of the permissions the Firefox extension requires, the web version of the tools seems to be safe to use overall. We advise you not to paste any sensitive personal data into any fields, be it Sapling or any other AI content checker.
Is Sapling.ai reliable?
Somewhat. It can accurately detect purely AI or human-written content but struggles with untangling human-written paragraphs from edited AI-generated ones. That said, the grammar and punctuation checkers are not reliable at all; we advise you to steer clear of them.
*Screenshots used for review and criticism purposes fall under the 'fair use' doctrine of the United States Copyright Law.
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