Read this article if...
Thinking about trying Winston AI but not sure if it’s worth it? I’ve been using it, and there’s a lot you need to know before making a decision.
I’ll break down the 3 things it does well and the 5 major mistakes it makes. Trust me, #2, and #3 on the list of flaws might change your mind about using it.
If you're curious about pricing, I’ve also discussed what Winston AI costs, plus promo codes that can save you some money. If you’re watching your budget, this part’s for you.
I’ll also cover some solid Winston AI alternatives if you want for other options. And yes, I’ll answer the big question – is Winston AI reliable?
In under 4 minutes, you’ll have the full picture. No sugarcoating, just the real deal from my personal experience and reading 100s of customer reviews.
Grab your coffee, settle in, and let's get started!
Before I forget, here are some quick links to everything covered in this blog:
- Winston AI Review Summary
- What Does it Do Well?
- Where Does it Fall Short?
- What Does Winston AI Cost?
- Top 3 Winston AI Alternatives
- Is Winston AI Reliable? - The Final Verdict
Winston AI Review Summary
If you're in a rush, here's a quick 2-minute summary of this article:
3 Things Winston AI Gets Right
- AI Sentence Highlighting: Winston AI doesn’t just tell you if there’s AI-generated content; it highlights the exact sentences. This makes it way easier to spot where the AI might’ve slipped in.
- Report Sharing: You can share results with anyone using a public link. It’s super useful when you need to show your findings to someone without giving them access to your account.
- Document Upload in Multiple Formats: You can upload just about any file format, like Word, PDF, or even scanned docs. It’s super handy when you’re working with different types of files.
- More on the shiny side of Winston AI below.
5 Things Winston AI Gets Seriously Wrong
- Inconsistent Results: Although Winston AI claims 99% accuracy, it often flags human-written content as AI-generated. Makes it hard to trust the tool.
- Poor Customer Service: If you run into issues, don’t expect much help. Their staff are unreachable and often unhelpful. Users also report trouble with canceling subscriptions and getting refunds.
- No URL Scanning: One of the big issues is that Winston AI doesn't let you scan URLs or domains for AI-generated content. If you're a website owner, this is a huge letdown since other tools offer this.
- No Humanizer Feature: It doesn't help you humanize or rephrase your content to make it more readable or bypass AI Detectors.
- You're Locked into a Subscription: You're locked into a monthly/yearly subscription that's super hard to cancel. This means you're paying for the tool even for months you don't use it.
- Check out the shady side of Winston AI below.
Winston AI Pricing Summary
- Free Plan - If you're just trying out Winston AI, the free plan gives you 2,000 credits for 14 days. It’s great for a quick test, but super limited. You get basic AI content detection, image scanning, and PDF reports, but that’s it.
- Essential Plan ($18/month) - You get 80,000 credits. It covers AI content detection and image detection. You can also generate shareable PDF reports.
- Advanced Plan ($29/month) - This plan bumps you up to 200,000 credits. It includes more advanced features plagiarism detection. But $29 monthly can add up fast especially if you’re not using it often.
- Elite Plan ($49/month) - If you’re willing to spend $49 a month, you get 500,000 credits. This includes everything from content detection to deepfake detection and website certifications. It’s packed with features, but $49 is pretty steep unless you have a big team using it.
- Should you buy Winston AI? Well, not so fast. The biggest catch is that your credits vanish each month if you don’t use them. You're literally locked in a subscription jail.
Well, that was the review in 2 minutes. If you've got 3 more minutes, let's dig deeper into Winston AI - what it does well and where it falls short, and some top alternatives.
Winston AI Review - What Does it Do Well?
Here are 3 things everyone likes about it (including me!):
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AI Sentence Highlighting:
- Winston AI doesn't just say there's AI content; it shows you exactly where. The sentence highlighting feature makes it really easy to find what’s AI-generated.
- It gives a clear visual breakdown by marking sentences, so you don’t have to guess where the AI content might be.
- This is super helpful if you're editing or reviewing a long document because you can quickly pinpoint areas you need to edit.
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Report Sharing:
- You can share your Winston AI results with anyone using a simple public link. No need to create extra user accounts or invite them into your dashboard.
- It’s a time-saver for organizations or teams who need to share reports with multiple stakeholders without overcomplicating things.
- The shared report has all the essential info but doesn't allow others to rescan or access any other documents, which keeps your main account secure.
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Document Upload in Multiple Formats:
- You can upload almost any file type, whether it's Word, PDF, or even a scanned image.
- The OCR compatibility makes it super quick to scan documents from images. No need to mess around with extra tools.
- It’s especially useful for students or researchers who need to check large documents, like papers or scanned books.
Here's a user talking about how Winston AI helped them:
“Their product is intuitive and really easy to use. Their shareable reports are useful when I need to share feedback with someone. I personnaly like using their Chrome extensions also.”
Winston AI Review - Where Does it Fall Short?
Alright, this is where things go wrong, these are the worst 5 things where Winston AI:
-
Inconsistent AI Detection Results:
- One frustrating thing about Winston AI is that it sometimes flags human-written content as AI-generated. It’s hard to rely on a tool when it gets things wrong, especially if teachers are using these tools to grade students' essays.
- One user found that they got different AI Detection score when they used the Chrome extension vs copy/pasting the text into their tool.
- I also ran AI-generated, human-written, and AI-Human mixed text through Winston AI. It got the correct results 9/12 times. So that's only 75% accuracy when they claim 99% accuracy.
-
Terrible Customer Service:
- Cancellation Nightmare: Canceling the subscription is a real hassle. One user mentioned that the support team kept delaying through emails and eventually denied their refund request. Getting your money back is nearly impossible.
- Barely Any Support: If Winston AI has any issues, don’t expect much help. Their customer service is so scarce that you’re basically left to figure things out on your own.
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No URL Scanning:
- One of the biggest letdowns with Winston AI is that it doesn’t scan URLs or entire domains for AI-generated content. This can be super annoying, especially if you're managing a website and need a tool that checks content across different web pages.
- If you’re in charge of managing content on a website, this missing feature could be a dealbreaker, since manually uploading files is a hassle compared to automated URL scans.
-
No Humanizer/Rewriter Feature:
- If you are looking for a tool that not only detects AI content but also helps you humanize your content and make it more readable, then Winston AI is not for you.
- This makes the tool pretty useless for students and marketers, it just tells you an unreliable AI Detection score, doesn't help you or tell you how to improve it.
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Locked in an Expensive Subscription:
- Winston AI only offers monthly subscriptions, with no pay-as-you-go options. If you don’t use the tool regularly, paying a monthly fee might be an overkill.
- Also, plans start at a hefty $18/month, which pretty expensive compared to other AI Detectors.
- Also, unused credits don't carry over to the next month, even on the yearly plan.
Here's a review by Nathan talking about Winston AI's issues:
"The paid plan can be improved and give more credits in the same, the Detection tool needs some learning and can be improved, and customer support needs some overlooking. Integration docs should be easily available with support."
Btw, if you want a tool that doesn't lock you into a subscription, ie., you're looking for a tool that only charges you based on what you use, try AIDetectPlus.You can try it for free (up to 1000 words!) here.
You buy credits based on how much you need and use them whenever you want, they NEVER EXPIRE! You only pay again if you need more credits.
That's it for the detailed review. Do you want to look at some of Winston AI's alternatives? Before that, let's talk about how much it costs!
What Does Winston AI Cost?
They have 4 plans, listed below:
Free Plan ($0)
- The free plan gives you 2,000 credits, but only for 14 days. It includes basic AI content detection and deepfake image detection. Plus you get the OCR feature to scan pictures and handwriting.
- AI Detection costs 1 credit/word while fake image detection costs 300 credits/word.
Essential Plan ($18/month)
- You get 80,000 credits to use on AI content detection and fake image detection.
- It includes everything in Free Plan + the feature to share PDF reports.
Advanced Plan ($29/month)
- This plan gives you 200,000 credits. It adds a few more features, like more advanced plagiarism detection and up to 5 team members.
- It's really pricey if you just need AI detection here and there, instead of every single day.
Elite Plan ($49/month)
- This plan costs a whopping $49 every month and gives you 500,000 credits.
- Of course, it includes everything in the Advanced Plan + unlimited team members and the option to top up your credits. The kicker here is that you can't even top up your credits in the other plans.
- Unless you have a huge team working on AI detection daily, this plan is just overkill for most people.
But there's one thing wrong with all of these plans. They make you pay even on months you don't use the tool. Here's what I'm saying...
- There are better options out there. And these are available at a much more affordable price too.
- For example, AIDetectPlus offers a complete AI Detection and Humanization suite starting at just $5. That's not $5/month, that's $5 one time!
- And that's the best part, your credits NEVER EXPIRE! You can buy as little as 5000 words for a one-time payment of $5 and use them whenever you want. You only pay again if you want more credits.
- If you're interested in a head-on comparison between Winston AI and AIDetectPlus, jump to the section below.
Are there any Winston AI promo codes?
- Yes, there are, I tried one out myself since you can't try all their features on the Free Plan. Here's a quick list of websites where you can find promo codes (I'm not an affiliate or sponsor, just sharing info I found):
- Love Pik
- DealSpotr
- Tenere Team
- Many more affiliate sites offer these discount codes. You can find them by just googling for 'Winston AI promo codes'.
Are there any Winston AI alternatives? Here are the top 3...
You probably know the good and bad about StealthGPT now. Before taking the final call, let's look at a few alternatives. Here are the top 3:
#1 - Winston AI vs AIDetectPlus
I know what you're thinking—this blog's on aidetectplus.com, so of course I'm biased. And yeah I am! But my love for AIDetectPlus is all about the cold, hard facts. Here's what I mean:
- What's the same: Both tools offer AI Detection solutions. They are both pretty easy to use.
- Where is AIDetectPlus Better?
- Unlike Winston AI, AIDetectPlus offers different detectors based on your needs. We have specific tools for students (essays/papers), marketers (blogs etc), and teachers.
- Also AIDetectPlus helps you humanize your content, again different humanizers based on what you need. We have specialized humanizers for students (essays/papers) and marketers (blogs etc).
- AIDetectPlus is 10x more affordable than Winston AI. That's because you only pay once for your credits, they NEVER EXPIRE!. Unlike Winston AI, you only pay us again if you need more credits.
- Our customer support is way better (pinky promise!). We usually respond to all queries within 12 hours.
- Where is Winston AI Better? Winston AI also offers plagiarism and deepfake detection while AIDetectPlus doesn't.
- Verdict: If you're looking for fake image detection, Winston AI is the tool for you. If you're looking for great and affordable AI text detection specialized to your needs, AIDetectPlus is the one for you.
#2 - Winston AI vs Turnitin
- What's the same: Again, both tools offer AI and plagiarism detection solutions.
- Where is Turnitin Better?
- Turnitin is the industry standard for AI detection in schools and colleges.
- Turnitin is professor-only, which means students can't use it to cheat AI detection.
- Turnitin integrates with other school software and is much more accurate than Winston AI.
- Where is Winston AI Better? Again Winston AI offers deepfake image detection that Turnitin doesn't. And Winston AI is free to use for everyone.
#3 - Winston AI vs Originality AI
- What's the same: Both tools offer AI and plagiarism detection.
- Where is Originality AI Better?
- Originality AI also offers features for fact-checking and readability checking although it also doesn't help you humanize your content.
- Unlike Winston AI, Originality does have site scan, so you can run detection on your site just using the URL.
- Where is Winston AI Better? Better at fake image detection. Also Winston AI is much more affordable, Originality starts at $20/month for just 1000 credits.
Is Winston AI Reliable? - The Final Verdict
Short answer - Not quite!
Here's why:
- Reason #1: Unreliable Results: Winston AI claims to have 99% accuracy but in my tests, it scored less than 75% accuracy.
- Reason #2: You're locked in a subscription: They make you pay for monthly/yearly plans so they can keep charging you even if you're not using the tool. Also, their subscription is hard to cancel.
- Reason #3: Awful Customer Service: Their support staff is hard to reach and unhelpful. Also getting a refund is hard.
This review by Rathik (former Winston AI user) sums it up perfectly:
“Customer care can we improved, and the essential plan needs to be get increased upto 2,00,000 words minimum. Chat and email support should response early. Advanced AI detection needs more improvement."
So, what's the alternative?
Not to brag, but AIDetectPlus handles all of Winston AI's issues. Here’s how...
Well for starters, we offer an actual free trial of 1000 words where you can try all our features. But more importantly:
- #1 Completely error-free humanization: Our unique algorithm humanizes text perfectly—no grammar errors, no meaning lost, and it passes AI detectors with 97% accuracy.
- #2 Credits NEVER EXPIRE: Once you buy the credits from us, they're yours forever. You only pay again if you need more credits.
- #3 Way better customer support: We’re a small, caring team, you wouldn't be stuck talking to an AI chatbot. We reply to all our customers within 12 hours, often quicker!
- #4 Specialized Detectors & Humanizers: We offer specialized detectors & humanizers for students, educators, and marketers. Pick the one that fits you from our menu above.
That's it! I hope this review gave you all the details on StealthGPT and some solid alternatives. If you're curious about AIDetectPlus, check out our website or kickstart your 1000-word free trial. No credit card or phone number needed — just your email, and you're good to go!