This page answers five questions per tool: how long the free trial runs, how you actually cancel, how long you have to ask for a refund, whether unused credits or quota come back when you leave, and where the policy is published. Every row links to the vendor's own page. We did not paraphrase third-party review sites, and we did not fill gaps with plausible-sounding guesses.
Three deliberate omissions. App-store billing: if you subscribed through Apple or Google, the vendor cannot refund you at all. Legal advice: statutory rights differ by country, so we flag them only where the vendor publishes them. And scoring: a refund policy is not good or bad in itself — that is a purchasing decision, not a policy one.
| Tool | Free trial | How to cancel | Refund window | Unused quota refunded? | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jasper | 7-day trial, credit card required | In-app: Workspace Settings → Plans → Cancel. Owner/admin only. | 7 days from charge per the help centre — email [email protected]. Caveat: the signed Terms say "No Refunds," so treat this as discretionary, not guaranteed. | No — annual commitment cannot be cancelled mid-year | Jasper Annual Plans |
| Rytr | Permanent free tier — 10,000 characters/month, no card | In-app: Settings → Plan → "cancel subscription", or email [email protected] | None published — "Subscriptions cannot be refunded as per our Refund Policy"; case-by-case at sole discretion | No — "You will not receive a refund for the fees You already paid for Your current Subscription period" | Rytr Terms of Use, Rytr Help |
| Copy.ai | No permanent free tier (paid plans only) | In-app billing settings; workspace owner or admin only | 5 days on the initial purchase only — "AFTER THAT, YOUR PURCHASE IS FINAL"; no refunds for partial billing periods | No — you keep access and may use remaining credits only until the cycle ends | Copy.ai Terms of Service |
| Grammarly | 7-day trial that auto-converts; card required | account.grammarly.com → Account → Subscription → Cancel Subscription | None published — payments non-refundable "to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law"; billing errors reviewed | No — no refunds or credits for partially used periods | Grammarly refund FAQ |
| Hypotenuse | 7-day trial; no permanent free tier | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified | — |
| QuillBot | Free tier — 125 words per pass, 2 modes | Account details → Your Plan tab → Cancel subscription; support can end it immediately | 14 days in the EEA/UK only, as a right of withdrawal; otherwise refunds only where required by law | No — access continues to the end of the paid period | QuillBot refund FAQ |
| ChatGPT (OpenAI) |
Free tier available | Same platform you subscribed on; cancel at least 24 hours before renewal | 7 days discretionary, on an unused individual purchase; statutory rights (EEA/UK) apply separately | No — no prorated refund after the 7-day window; unused ChatGPT Business seats are non-refundable | OpenAI refund article |
| Claude (Anthropic) |
Free tier available | Settings → Billing on claude.ai; cancel at least 24 hours before renewal | 14 days in EEA/UK, prorated by use. Upgrading Pro/Max to Team triggers an automatic prorated refund. | No on plain cancellation; prepaid usage credits are refunded in the Team-upgrade path | Anthropic refund article |
Policies verified September 2026 — always confirm on the vendor's own billing page before purchasing.
Start with the refund column, not the price column. Price is visible before you buy; the refund window is only visible if you look for it, and it decides what a mistaken purchase costs. A 7-day window and no window can carry the same monthly price and completely different downside.
Read "free trial" as a billing event. A credit-card trial is a subscription with a delayed first charge — which is why Jasper's and Grammarly's 7-day trials sit in the same column as Rytr's permanent free tier. They are not equivalent, and treating them as equivalent is how people get charged.
Treat the last column as the tie-breaker. When a vendor will not refund, the question becomes whether your unused balance survives cancellation. For every tool we verified except one edge case, it does not.
Monthly and annual plans share the same cancellation flow with very different consequences, because the refund window is measured from the charge, not from the month. Jasper is the clearest example: you have 7 days from the charge to ask, and on an annual plan the remaining eleven months are not refundable after that. On a monthly plan, missing the window costs you one month; on an annual plan, it costs you the year.
The practical rule: if the refund window is shorter than the billing period, buy monthly until you have decided — the annual discount is compensation for exactly the risk the refund column describes. Our monthly cost breakdown converts annual and monthly plans into comparable per-month figures.
An auto-converting trial becomes a paid subscription at a defined moment, and the vendor is not obliged to warn you. Rytr's terms are explicit: "On the last day of the Free Trial period, unless You cancelled Your Subscription, You will be automatically charged the applicable Subscription fees." Grammarly behaves the same way, and Jasper's trial requires a card up front — the same commitment with an extra step.
Two consequences. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period, not immediately — so cancelling on day 6 of a 7-day trial is on time; day 8 is a refund request, not a cancellation. And in-app cancellation is often restricted to the workspace owner or admin, so if someone else set the account up you may not be able to cancel it at all. We flag trial mechanics per tool in our free trials and free tiers roundup, and the Jasper case in our Jasper trial walkthrough.
Every vendor on this list lets you cancel at any time. Almost none of them let you refund at any time. Those two sentences get merged in marketing copy, and the merge is where disputes come from.
Concretely: Rytr states that subscriptions "cannot be refunded as per our Refund Policy," with exceptions only at the company's discretion. Copy.ai allows five days from the initial purchase, then states the purchase is final. Grammarly makes payments non-refundable to the fullest extent permitted by law. ChatGPT and Claude default to non-refundable with narrow exceptions — a 7-day discretionary window at OpenAI, and statutory EEA/UK withdrawal rights for both. If you need the ability to change your mind, buy monthly rather than hoping for a refund policy. See our budget tool roundup for what that costs.
This is the least-discussed column and, for high-volume buyers, the most expensive. Copy.ai states that after cancelling you "keep full access to your workspace, workflows, and remaining credits" until the cycle ends — but the refund question is answered separately, with no refund for the partial period. Rytr is equally direct that you will not receive a refund for fees already paid for the current period. Grammarly excludes unused AI capacity explicitly.
Anthropic is the one clear exception we found, and only in one direction: upgrading from Pro or Max to a Team plan cancels the individual subscription automatically and issues a prorated refund for the unused portion, including prepaid usage credits. That is a refund triggered by upgrading, not by cancelling — but it is worth knowing if you are moving to a team plan anyway.
We could not verify a published policy for Hypotenuse as of September 2026. Neither hypotenuse.ai nor its help centre was reachable during this review, and no official page we could locate states its cancellation procedure, its refund terms, or what happens to unused word credits on cancellation. The 7-day trial listed above comes from our verified September 2026 pricing check, not from a published policy page. If you are considering Hypotenuse, ask its support team directly and get the answer in writing before you pay — see our Hypotenuse pricing notes for the current plan structure.
Two related gaps. Copy.ai's five-day window comes from a Terms of Service last updated in October 2023 that still describes annual-only billing, so treat it as possibly stale — the live help documentation says only that partial periods are not refunded. And app-store purchases work differently: Apple and Google control those refunds, and the vendor cannot help.
If you want optionality, buy monthly. The annual discount is the price of giving up your refund window, and that matters most on the tools with the shortest windows.
If you are evaluating rather than buying, prefer a real free tier. Rytr keeps a permanent free tier at 10,000 characters per month, and Claude and ChatGPT both have free tiers with no refund question attached at all, because there is nothing to refund. A free tier you can leave at any time is a better trial than a card-backed one.
If you are committing anyway, ask for the policy in writing. For Jasper and Grammarly in particular, confirm the refund window and the seat count at purchase — both bill per seat, and a cancellation that leaves extra seats active is a charge you did not plan for.
For the purchasing decision itself, our buyer's checklist puts refund terms alongside price and editing time in the same framework, and our data-usage guide covers the other contract clause worth reading before you pay.
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Get the Pack →Usually only inside a short window, and only if you ask. Jasper gives 7 days from the charge; ChatGPT considers discretionary refunds within 7 days of an unused purchase; QuillBot and Claude offer 14-day rights of withdrawal in the EEA and UK only. Rytr and Grammarly publish no general refund window.
In almost every case they are not refunded. Copy.ai and Rytr both state you keep access and any remaining credits only until the billing cycle ends, with no refund for the partial period. The one exception we found is upgrading Claude Pro or Max to a Team plan, which triggers an automatic prorated refund.
Buy monthly if you might change your mind. Annual billing usually cuts 15-20% off, but when the refund window is 7 days and the commitment is 12 months, the discount is compensation for exactly the risk that the refund column describes.
No. Cancellation stops the next renewal; you keep paid access until the end of the period you already paid for. That is why cancelling before the renewal date matters more than cancelling quickly.