AI keyboard apps: how to choose one
Four barely-related products go by the name "AI keyboard", which is why star ratings are useless for comparing them. Work out which one you want first — the rest of the decision follows from that.
"AI keyboard" means four different things
The phrase covers products that barely overlap, which is why comparing them by star rating tells you nothing. Work out which of these four you actually want before you compare anything:
- Better prediction. Smarter autocorrect and next-word suggestions. This is AI in the sense that has been in keyboards for a decade, and the big two are very good at it.
- Writing assistance. Grammar, clarity and tone, applied to text you have already typed. Closest to a proofreader that follows you between apps.
- Generation. A key that writes something new — a reply, a continuation, an answer to a question — rather than correcting what is there.
- Prompting. Turning a rough line into a prompt built for a specific AI tool. Only useful if you spend real time in ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney and the like; useless otherwise.
Almost nobody wants all four equally. Most disappointment with AI keyboards comes from buying for one and being sold another.
Five questions that decide it
- Is the typing good? You will use the ordinary keyboard a thousand times for every time you tap the AI key. A keyboard with brilliant AI and mediocre autocorrect gets uninstalled inside a week, and this is the single most common reason.
- What does it cost per day of real use? Nearly every AI keyboard meters the AI somehow — a daily allowance, a credit balance, a subscription. "Free" almost always means free to install. Find the number before you rely on it.
- What leaves your phone, and when? A keyboard sees everything. The answer you want is that text is sent only when you deliberately ask for something, and that nothing is retained afterwards.
- Does it work in the apps you use? A system keyboard works everywhere by definition. An app you have to open, copy into and copy back out of is a different product with a different amount of friction.
- Which languages, really? Layouts, autocorrect, suggestions and AI are four separate answers. A keyboard can support forty languages for translation and one for autocorrect.
The well-known options, and what each is for
Positioning rather than a feature matrix — features change monthly and a table would be wrong within a quarter.
Gboard
Google's keyboard, and the benchmark for the boring parts: prediction, glide typing, voice input, and support for a very large number of languages, free. If what you want is "better prediction" from the list above and nothing else, the honest advice is that you already have an excellent option and probably do not need to install anything.
Microsoft SwiftKey
The other long-standing prediction-first keyboard, with heavy theming and Microsoft's assistant features attached. Good ordinary typing, and the natural pick if you are already inside the Microsoft ecosystem.
Grammarly Keyboard
The writing-assistance option. If your problem is that your English writing needs a proofreader — grammar, clarity, register — that is what this product has been built around for years, and it is strongest on longer English prose.
AI-first keyboards
A newer category, ours among them, where the AI key is the reason the keyboard exists rather than a feature bolted onto a prediction engine. They vary enormously in whether the ordinary typing underneath is any good, and that is the thing to test first in any of them.
Install a candidate and then do not use its AI for two days. If the typing annoys you, no amount of AI will save it — you will switch back to your old keyboard and never open the new one again.
Where Prompt AI Keyboard fits
It is built for the third and fourth cases — generation and prompting — on top of a keyboard we had to make good first, because of exactly the problem in the box above. One key, set to whichever job you need: enhance a prompt for a specific AI tool, fix grammar, shorten or lengthen, change the tone, translate, continue where you stopped, answer a question, or reply to a message you copied. Fourteen modes in eight groups, all of them free, sharing one daily allowance.
Underneath: autocorrect scored for thumb slips rather than spelling errors, a word list that learns what you actually write and never uploads it, an emoji panel, long-press accents, undo and redo per field, and voice typing on both iPhone and Android.
What it is not good for
Being specific about this is more useful than another list of features:
- Non-Latin scripts. The letter keys are a Latin QWERTY with accents on long-press. If you type in Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic or a CJK script, your system keyboard is the right tool and this is not.
- Autocorrect in other languages. The correction dictionary and the word suggestions are English. The AI works in whatever language you write in — translation covers 45+ — but the correction underneath does not.
- Unlimited AI. Both tiers are metered. Pro raises the cap a long way; it does not remove it, and we will not claim it does.
- Zero permissions on iPhone. The AI key and the microphone need network access, which on iOS means Allow Full Access. If that is a line you do not want to cross for any keyboard — a defensible position — this one cannot work for you.
You do not have to choose only one
Both platforms let you install several keyboards and switch between them with the globe key, and nothing is replaced. The realistic setup for a lot of people is a system keyboard for one language and an AI keyboard for the writing they want help with. Trying one costs an install and a tap, and removing it costs less.
Try the one on this page
Free to install, no account, and every rewrite mode works from the day you install it. If the typing underneath is not good enough, uninstalling takes ten seconds — that is the test we would want you to apply to any of them.
FAQ
What is the best AI keyboard app?
It depends which of four things you want: better prediction, writing assistance, generation, or prompting for AI tools. Gboard and SwiftKey are the benchmarks for prediction, Grammarly Keyboard for English writing assistance, and AI-first keyboards including this one for generation and prompting. Most disappointment comes from buying for one and getting another.
Are AI keyboards safe to use?
A keyboard can see everything you type, so the questions worth asking are what leaves the device and when. Look for a keyboard that sends text only when you deliberately ask for something, retains nothing afterwards, keeps learned words on the device, and does not require an account. On iPhone, network access requires Allow Full Access, which is a real decision to make.
Do AI keyboards work in every app?
A system keyboard does, by definition — it is there in your messages, your browser, your notes and in ChatGPT itself. That is the main advantage over an assistant app you have to open and copy in and out of. What varies is whether the AI features are metered, and by how much.