Comparison
Which AI grading tools keep up with hundreds of submissions a week
Five classes of 30 hand in about 600 pieces of work a month. Most AI grading plans count far fewer, and they count different things, so read the limit before the price.
The Graidable team
Published
Graidable makes one of the tools compared here. Every claim about another tool links to that vendor’s own page.
| Tool | Allowance | At the limit | Class at once | Class scan | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brisk | Daily limit on Free | Wait about 30 minutes | Yes, a folder | Not stated | Free for teachers |
| Class Companion | Not stated | Not stated | Students submit | Not stated | Free plan |
| CoGrader | 350 a month | Not stated | Yes | Yes, sorted by student | 150 a month |
| EssayGrader | 800 a month (Premium) | Not stated | Yes | Yes, per its FAQ | 100 a month |
| Gradescope | No count stated | No limit stated | Answer groups | Yes, by template | Basic plan |
| GradingPal | Unlimited on Pro | Packs from $5 | Yes | Yes, split per student | 50 a month |
| Graidable | 60 a month (Professional) | $0.35 per extra, or pause | Yes | Yes, you confirm | First class free, without a card |
| MagicSchool | Plus: 150 essays per assignment | Upgrade | Yes, in batches | Not stated | 3 assignments, ever |
| TimelyGrader | No count stated | Not stated | Yes, 600 files | Not stated | Preview, 14-day trial |
Brisk
- Allowance
- Daily limit on Free
- Class scan
- Not stated
- Free option
- Free for teachers
Class Companion
- Allowance
- Not stated
- Class scan
- Not stated
- Free option
- Free plan
CoGrader
- Allowance
- 350 a month
- Class scan
- Yes, sorted by student
- Free option
- 150 a month
EssayGrader
- Allowance
- 800 a month (Premium)
- Class scan
- Yes, per its FAQ
- Free option
- 100 a month
Gradescope
- Allowance
- No count stated
- Class scan
- Yes, by template
- Free option
- Basic plan
GradingPal
- Allowance
- Unlimited on Pro
- Class scan
- Yes, split per student
- Free option
- 50 a month
Graidable
- Allowance
- 60 a month (Professional)
- Class scan
- Yes, you confirm
- Free option
- First class free, without a card
MagicSchool
- Allowance
- Plus: 150 essays per assignment
- Class scan
- Not stated
- Free option
- 3 assignments, ever
TimelyGrader
- Allowance
- No count stated
- Class scan
- Not stated
- Free option
- Preview, 14-day trial
In this article
This page compares nine AI grading tools on one question: what happens when you grade a lot? The nine are Brisk1, Class Companion2, CoGrader3, EssayGrader4, Gradescope5, GradingPal6, Graidable7, MagicSchool8 and TimelyGrader9. Graidable is ours. Every cell comes from the vendor’s own pages, read on 6 November 2026.
We think three things decide whether a tool keeps up: the number a plan allows and the unit it counts, what happens when you reach it, and how the work gets in. The price comes after those.
A month of one teacher’s grading
Here is a constructed but ordinary load (Figure 1): five classes, one graded piece of work a week in each. That’s 150 submissions a week and 600 in a four-week month. A secondary teacher with a lab report, an essay and a quiz in rotation lands in the same place.
| Class | Size | Weeks | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Period 1 | 30 | 4 | 120 |
| Period 2 | 28 | 4 | 112 |
| Period 3 | 32 | 4 | 128 |
| Period 4 | 30 | 4 | 120 |
| Period 5 | 30 | 4 | 120 |
Keep 600 in mind while you read the table under the title. A plan that allows 350 a month runs out in the third week.
The nine, in alphabetical order
“Not stated” means the pages we read didn’t say. It doesn’t mean no, so ask the vendor.
Brisk
Feedback as comments inside Google Docs and your LMS.
- Monthly allowance
- No count stated: free users can use Brisk several times a day, and batch feedback has an upload limit on Free and no limit on the paid plans
- At the limit
- On Free, you can generally use it again after about 30 minutes; paid plans don’t have these limits
- A class at once
- Yes: upload a folder of assignments from Google Drive, Google Classroom or OneDrive
- One scan of the class
- Not stated; one file per student from a folder, and photos of handwritten math are accepted
- Free option
- Free for teachers, with an upload limit on batch feedback
- Price
- Premium and Intelligence on custom pricing
- Batch feedback gives comments; rubric scoring in batch is an add-on for School & District accounts, per its what’s-new page.
- It does not roster from Google Classroom or send grades back to it, per its help center.
Class Companion
Practice with instant feedback, retakes and an AI tutor.
- Monthly allowance
- Not stated; the help center says it is free for teachers
- At the limit
- Not stated
- A class at once
- Students submit in the app themselves; without student accounts, you paste responses one student at a time
- One scan of the class
- Not stated; photos or PDFs of handwritten responses are uploaded per student
- Free option
- Free plan for teachers, with instant AI feedback and scoring
- Price
- School and district plans by demo; no price shown
- LMS integration is ticked only on the school and district plan.
- The plans page ticks handwritten submissions on Free; a help article lists them under Premium.
CoGrader
Writing assignments in K–12, graded from your rubric.
- Monthly allowance
- Starter 150 and Individual 350 student submissions a month; unlimited on the school and district plan
- At the limit
- Not stated; the unlimited plan is quoted by school size
- A class at once
- Yes: the whole class set in one pass
- One scan of the class
- Yes: scan the class set at the copier; it reads the handwriting and sorts the pages by student
- Free option
- 150 student submissions a month, handwritten included
- Price
- Individual $15 a month billed annually, $19 monthly; schools and districts by quote
- The Individual plan is free through its Advocate program, per its pricing page.
- The pricing page lists Canvas and Schoology on Starter; its FAQ puts them on school and district accounts.
EssayGrader
Essays and longer papers, K–12 and higher ed.
- Monthly allowance
- Basic 100 essays a month up to 1,000 words each, Pro 350 up to 3,500 words, Premium 800 up to 8,000 words
- At the limit
- Not stated; district plans are flexible, on custom pricing
- A class at once
- Yes: an entire class’s essays with a single click
- One scan of the class
- Yes, per its FAQ: scan from a phone, tablet or school printer, and it separates the essays per student
- Free option
- Basic: 100 essays a month, up to 1,000 words each
- Price
- Pro $14.99 and Premium $34.99 a month; districts mix Pro and Premium seats on custom pricing
- Every plan caps the length of an essay as well as the count.
- The pricing page doesn’t say which plans include scanned work.
Gradescope
Instructors grading paper exams and homework.
- Monthly allowance
- No count stated; instructor uploads up to 256 MB a file
- At the limit
- No limit stated
- A class at once
- Answer groups grade similar answers at once, on the Institutional license, for fixed-template exams
- One scan of the class
- Yes: upload PDFs that hold many students and it splits them against the template; matching them to the roster automatically needs the Institutional license
- Free option
- Basic is free after a one-term institutional trial, without AI-assisted grading
- Price
- Institutional license by quote; no plan for an individual teacher
- Its AI reads handwritten English text and math notation when each answer sits on one line, per its guide.
- Canvas, Blackboard, Brightspace, Moodle and Sakai come with the Institutional license.
GradingPal
K–12 science and math, graded from your criteria.
- Monthly allowance
- Free 50, Lite 250 submissions a month; unlimited on Pro and school plans
- At the limit
- On Lite: one-time packs of 100 submissions for $5, or remove the cap for $8 a month billed annually ($10 monthly)
- A class at once
- Yes: turn a class set into reviewed grades
- One scan of the class
- Yes: upload a scanned class set and it separates the PDF into student submissions
- Free option
- 50 submissions a month, no card
- Price
- Lite $14 and Pro $26 per teacher a month, billed annually; schools on request
- Handwritten and photographed work is included on every plan.
- Canvas and Schoology are on a school plan; Google Classroom is on all plans.
GraidableOur tool
Handwritten or typed work, graded from your own rubric.
- Monthly allowance
- Student 10 and Professional 60 students graded a month; reading the work and reviewing don’t count
- At the limit
- You choose in your billing settings: keep grading at $0.35 per extra student on Professional ($0.49 on Student), or pause until the next period
- A class at once
- Yes: upload the class’s PDFs, photos or a zip, see the cost, and start the grading
- One scan of the class
- Yes: it sorts one scan of the whole class to your students by the name or number on the page and the file name; you confirm the sorting
- Free option
- Your first class is free without a card: up to 30 students within 30 days, once your email is confirmed; the first plan then starts with 20 free gradings
- Price
- Student $9.99 a month and Professional $24.99, or 20% less paid yearly; schools on request
- One student graded is one grading; a grading that fails or is cancelled isn’t counted.
- Each suggested point shows where on the student’s page it comes from.
MagicSchool
A set of teacher tools, with a student side.
- Monthly allowance
- Class writing feedback: Free has 3 assignments in total, ever, of 35 essays each; Plus has unlimited assignments of 150 essays each
- At the limit
- Upgrade to Plus; the free cap is for life and doesn’t reset
- A class at once
- Yes: feedback is sent in batches; the same limits table also says up to 100 submissions per assignment on every plan
- One scan of the class
- Not stated for class writing feedback
- Free option
- Free plan: 3 assignments of class writing feedback, 35 essays each, ever
- Price
- Plus $12.99 a month, or $8.33 a month billed annually; enterprise on custom pricing
- On Enterprise, class writing feedback falls back to the free limits without the Learning Outcomes add-on, per its help center.
- Canvas and Schoology for class writing feedback are on Enterprise.
TimelyGrader
Instructors and TAs grading written work.
- Monthly allowance
- No count stated; Starter lists unlimited courses and unlimited bulk uploads
- At the limit
- Not stated
- A class at once
- Yes: up to 600 files per upload in its help guide, 1,500 on its instructors page; grading runs while you close the page
- One scan of the class
- Not stated; one file per student, and image PDFs are read by OCR
- Free option
- The free plan previews AI grading; a 14-day Starter trial grades final submissions
- Price
- Starter $12 a month, or $10 a month billed annually; institutions on request
- Canvas, D2L and Moodle import assignments, rubrics and submissions on the Institution plan.
- Its help guide and its instructors page give different upload maximums.
What 600 a month does to each plan
Two individual plans cover our 600 as published: EssayGrader Premium, at 800 essays a month, and GradingPal Pro, with no cap. CoGrader’s Individual plan (350) and GradingPal Lite (250) run out partway through the month. GradingPal is the only one of those that sells more: packs of 100 for $5, or the cap removed. CoGrader and EssayGrader don’t say what happens at the cap, so ask before the third week finds out for you.
MagicSchool counts differently. Plus has no monthly cap; it limits each assignment, to 150 essays in one row of its table and 100 submissions in another. Five classes of 30 fit either way if each class gets its own assignment.
Brisk, Class Companion, Gradescope and TimelyGrader publish no count at all. For Gradescope that is because it is sold to institutions. For Brisk, the paid plans say no limit and the free plan has a daily one.
The school and district plans of CoGrader, GradingPal and Brisk say unlimited. If several teachers in your department grade at this volume, one quote can come out cheaper than five individual plans.
Paper changes the arithmetic
If your students hand in on paper, the count that matters is scans. A tool that splits one scan per class turns our month into 20 trips to the copier. A tool that wants one file per student turns it into 600 files to name and upload.
CoGrader, EssayGrader, Gradescope and GradingPal say they split a scanned class set into students. Gradescope does it against a fixed template, and matches the pages to your roster automatically on the Institutional license only. Brisk and TimelyGrader take a folder of files, one per student.
Ask before you pay for volume
Five questions for the vendor
- What does the plan count: submissions, essays, students, words or pages?
- Does the count reset each month, or is it a lifetime total?
- What happens at the limit: a hard stop, a top-up, or a price per extra?
- Does one scan of the whole class split into students, and who checks the split?
- Is the LMS import on my plan, or only on the school plan?
Graidable is the tool we make. This part is about it.
Where Graidable fits
Graidable is one of the nine, and it is ours. It counts students graded: 60 a month on Professional, and past that you decide whether to keep going at $0.35 a student or pause. One scan of a whole class is sorted to your students, and you confirm the sorting before anything is graded. Every grade then waits for you to approve that student.
The same tools are compared by price in Free AI grading tools for teachers and on grading with your own rubric.
Sources
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Brisk Teaching, Plans, Give feedback, What’s new and its help center. Checked 6 November 2026. ↑
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Class Companion, Plans and its help center. Checked 6 November 2026. ↑
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Gradescope, Pricing, Managing scans, Managing submissions and AI-assisted grading and answer groups. Checked 6 November 2026. ↑
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GradingPal, Pricing, FAQ and Home. Checked 6 November 2026. ↑
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Graidable, How it works and Pricing; the tool is ours. Checked 6 November 2026. ↑
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MagicSchool, Pricing, FAQ and Plan limits. Checked 6 November 2026. ↑
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TimelyGrader, Pricing and plans, Instructors and Uploading submissions. Checked 6 November 2026. ↑