Definely alternatives: 7 contract drafting and review tools compared

Definely alternatives at a glance

Definely is the reference row. Each row below it is a tool a Definely buyer could shortlist for drafting, proofreading or review in Microsoft Word, with the price and trial its vendor publishes.

Why teams look for Definely alternatives

Definely is well regarded for what it was built to do. Its homepage leads with "The maker cannot be the checker" and presents the product as independent review for complex contracts: hundreds of deterministic proofreading checks, defined terms and cross-references turned into links, comparison of a draft against your standard form or term sheet, and precedent search through iManage or NetDocuments. Its customer wall shows A&O Shearman, Slaughter and May, Dentons and DLA Piper. The reasons teams compare other tools come from how Definely is sold and who it is sold to.

• No price on the website. Definely.com carries no pricing page, and its calls to action read "Book a demo." A buyer cannot estimate cost before a sales conversation.
• The one public rate card, for the United Kingdom public sector, starts at 100 licenses. Definely's G-Cloud 15 listing for United Kingdom public-sector buyers prices the suite per user per year at the 100-license minimum, excluding value added tax: £500 for Draft, £750 for Draft and Proof, £1,150 with Vault added and £1,500 for the full suite with Enhance and Cascade. Each figure is 10% lower per user above 100 licenses. The pricing document sets a minimum of 100 licenses on every order, so the smallest Draft-only order on that card is £50,000 a year and the smallest full-suite order is £150,000. A private firm could be quoted something else; Definely has released no commercial price list.
• A pilot that usually comes with a contract. The G-Cloud listing says a free trial is available and describes it as a two-week pilot "usually accompanied by a contract."
• An enterprise focus. Definely's own summary for AI assistants names its target as large law firms (Magic Circle, Am Law 100 and Am Law 200) and corporate legal departments at major enterprises, and it reports 150+ enterprise customers. A 12-lawyer firm or a three-person legal team sits outside that description.

1. Gavel Exec: best for a full playbook redline with a published price

Best for: lawyers negotiating long agreements in Word who want a substantive first-cut markup at a posted price before any sales conversation: transactional attorneys, in-house legal teams, and solo, small and mid-sized firms.

Gavel Exec is the AI contract review and drafting software from Gavel, which over 2,000 legal organizations in 28 countries use. Definely states that it "never edits your document directly" and turns a suggestion into a tracked change only when you accept it. Gavel Exec works the other way round: it marks up the entire agreement with tracked changes ranked by priority and gives its reasoning for every change, then adds margin comments and lists the missing terms, leaving the lawyer to accept or reject a complete first cut. A team can start the same day, since the Word add-in comes from Microsoft AppSource and covers Windows, Mac (2016 or later), Word on the web and Microsoft 365, and a web app sits at exec.gavel.io.

• Playbooks: the redline runs on built-in playbooks developed with attorneys in corporate and real estate law, or on your own positions. Hand Gavel Exec a checklist, a spreadsheet playbook or agreements you have signed (.docx, PDF or .csv) and it writes the rules; share the playbook read-only or with edit access.
• Benchmarking: the web app tags a provision on-market, off-market or missing and filters by jurisdiction, industry and company size. Definely's Compare measures a draft against documents you supply.
• Drafting: precedent-based drafting inside Word, starting from a blank page or a template, plus clause rewrites by Quick Action or prompt, with citations to the attachments and project files used.
• Price: the Gavel Exec pricing page posts the figure Definely leaves to a demo: $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year. Each paid user gets 1,000 queries a month, there is no long-term contract, and team pricing starts at 10 seats.
• Trial: every user starts with 25 free queries and needs no credit card or sales call, so a team can redline its own agreement on day one.
• Security: SOC 2 Type II certified. Gavel's AI model providers, OpenAI among them, have signed Zero Data Retention agreements, and no customer data, prompt or document content is used to train AI models. Every customer gets a separate subdomain, an isolated database and its own file storage, hosted on AWS in the United States unless you choose the EU, Canada or Australia (security details).
• A customer result: first-cut review used to take Martin Algie, of the Australian firm MIA Contract Lawyers, about 15 hours per contract, and now takes about 5.
• Who built it: Dorna Moini, CEO and Founder of Gavel, was a litigation associate at Sidley Austin and now teaches the Legal Innovations Lab at USC Gould School of Law.

Scope: Gavel Exec is built for transactional work: your precedent reaches it as project files and attachments that it cites, it has no native iManage or NetDocuments integration or case-law research database today, and Relativity, Gavel's parent company, covers litigation and e-discovery.

The two products are compared feature by feature in Definely vs. Gavel Exec.

2. Litera Check: best for firms that already license Litera

Best for: law firms that want deterministic proofreading in Word from a vendor whose other document tools (DocXtools, Litera Clean and pdfDocs) many firms already run.

Litera Check is the closest like-for-like substitute for Definely Proof. Litera's product sheet presents it as a proofreading and repair add-in for Microsoft Word that brings together the older Contract Companion, Litigation Companion, DocXtools Companion and Best Authority products in one task pane. Litera's site sums it up as "Surface issues across defined terms, cross-references, names, dates, amounts, spelling, and more," running on a deterministic "proofing engine refined over 30 years."

• Defined terms and cross-references: the product sheet lists managing defined-terms lists, finding terms used without a definition, and resolving duplicated or broken cross-references.
• AI agent: Litera Platform, the new name for Litera One, puts its Lito agent in Word to draft, review, negotiate "and protect document quality." Litera says Lito "is included in your Litera subscription, with unlimited usage."
• Precedent: an August 18, 2026 Litera release says precedent search within Litera Create Content covers the firm's content library and document management system (DMS).
• Price and trial: neither is published; the site offers "Request a Demo."
• Security: Litera's trust center lists ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 42001:2023.

Limits: no public price or self-serve trial, so the buying process resembles Definely's. Litera reports that 98% of the Am Law 200 trust it, so its home market is the same large firms Definely serves.

3. Draftwise: best for drafting and redlining from your deal history

Best for: deal teams with years of agreements in a DMS who want first drafts and counters generated from that history.

Draftwise sells precedent-based drafting, review and negotiation that runs inside Word and in the browser. Where Definely's Vault finds a clause for the lawyer to insert, Draftwise applies the library to the whole draft: its in-house page promises "AI-generated redlines based on your legal guidelines and negotiation history," and says Draftwise "automatically builds playbooks from your precedent and guidance."

• Error checks: the same page says Draftwise will automatically "detect and fix incorrectly defined terms, inconsistent cross-references, and formatting issues."
• Playbook Studio: turns past deals or uploaded sample contracts into rules, then marks up a draft against them. Registering on draftwise.com opens a free trial, and uploads are deleted when it ends.
• Precedent: connects to iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint and mirrors your DMS permissions.
• Price: unpublished. Gavel customers tell us they were quoted roughly $300 to $600 per month.
• Security: certified to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, and "Your data never trains public models."

Limits: no published price, and the trial covers Playbook Studio only; everything else starts with "Book a demo." The error checks we found are a single sentence on its in-house page, while Definely gives proofreading a product page of its own.

See Draftwise vs Gavel Exec and Draftwise vs Definely.

4. Spellbook: best for one contract suite in Word with a 7-day trial

Best for: deal lawyers, at firms or in-house, looking for a single Word add-in covering review, drafting and playbooks that they can test ahead of any demo.

Spellbook's homepage headline is "The complete contract AI suite," and it counts 5,000+ legal teams as users. Its products are Review, Draft, Compare, Ask, Playbooks and Associate, and its integrations include iManage and SharePoint. Spellbook publishes its own brief comparing itself with Definely, last updated October 2, 2026, which says "Definely is demo-led; Spellbook allows self-serve access first."

• Proofreading: that brief says defined terms and cross-references "are handled within Review," and lists Spellbook's proofreading as handled within Review as well.
• Price: unpublished and set by head count on the license. Gavel customers tell us they were quoted roughly $350 per user per month.
• Trial: a free week, which Spellbook says it may extend for bigger organizations.
• Security: a SOC 2 Type II report, with model providers barred from storing or training on your data.

Limits: no public price. Spellbook's own brief credits Definely with a dedicated proofreading pass, so a team leaving Definely for Spellbook trades a separate proofreading product for checks folded into review.

See Spellbook vs Gavel Exec.

5. Lexis Create+ (Lexis+ with Protégé): best for firms on LexisNexis

Best for: firms that already subscribe to LexisNexis and want drafting checks in Word backed by Lexis content.

LexisNexis describes Lexis Create+ as "an AI-powered legal drafting solution embedded within Microsoft 365," deployed centrally as an add-in for Word and Outlook. It includes the Protégé assistant from Lexis+ with Protégé, the platform that was called Lexis+ AI until February 2026, and builds on the Henchman technology LexisNexis bought in 2024.

• Checks: Create+ can identify "inconsistencies, missing citations, and definition issues before they become costly errors."
• Clause benchmarking: "Instantly benchmark a clause against trusted precedent within your database."
• Price and trial: no price on the Create+ page, which offers a live demo. Lexis+ with Protégé has a 2-day free trial.
• Security: LexisNexis states that customer data never trains its AI models.

Limits: LexisNexis says Create+ does not keep a live DMS connection and retrieves updates periodically, and it tells buyers to ask their account manager whether DMS integration is in their package. The page does not describe cross-reference checking.

6. Harvey: best for large firms standardizing on one legal AI platform

Best for: big firms and corporate departments that want a single vendor for drafting, review and research in every practice group.

Harvey's site counts 3,500+ legal organizations as customers, 80+ of them in the Am Law 100. Harvey for Word drafts new content from natural-language instructions, will generate "redlines and suggested edits" that save as tracked changes once accepted, and runs Playbook review to apply your organization's playbooks to a contract. Its 2025 drafting release added the ability to "pull in precedents and other institutional knowledge from Vault."

• Platform: Harvey's help center recommends Windows for Harvey for Word and points Mac users to Word Online.
• Price and trial: neither is published; access starts with "Request a Demo."
• Security: Harvey's SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 audits recur yearly, its model providers must accept zero data retention, and it says nothing you type or upload is ever used to train the underlying models.

Limits: the same demo-first buying process as Definely with a much wider platform to evaluate. Harvey's help article for Word covers drafting, redlines and playbook review and does not describe a rule-based proofreading pass.

See Harvey vs Gavel Exec.

7. Legora: best for a shared workspace with drafting and proofreading in Word

Best for: teams that want legal research, bulk tabular review and a Word add-in under one login.

Legora's Word add-in promises drafting, redlining and review "without leaving your document." Lawyers can ask the Agent "to draft a new clause, proofread your work, or highlight risks," and playbooks let a team define its rules and standards once and apply them in Word. The wider platform includes Tabular Review, Legal Research, Portal and an Outlook add-in.

• Price: not published. Legora's page for small and mid-sized firms says it works with each customer on a pricing package and that it has no seat minimum. Gavel customers tell us they were quoted roughly $3,000 per user per year and a $30,000 minimum.
• Trial: we saw none; the site's button is "Book a demo."
• Security: ISO 27001, ISO 42001 and a SOC 2 Type II report.

Limits: no public price or trial, and proofreading is a request you make of an AI agent, which is a different method from Definely's fixed rules that return the same result on every run. Ask Legora to put its minimum in writing.

See Legora vs Gavel Exec.

How to choose a Definely alternative

1. Name the job you bought Definely for. If it was the pre-signing check on defined terms, numbering and cross-references, Litera Check is the direct substitute, and Draftwise and Lexis Create+ cover part of it. If it was review and markup, ask which tool produces the redline you would send.
2. Decide between suggestions and a full redline. Definely quotes each deviation and waits for you to accept it. Gavel Exec, Draftwise and Spellbook return a marked-up agreement against a playbook. Run one counterparty draft through each style and time the review.
3. Count your seats before you call anyone. A 100-license minimum on Definely's United Kingdom public-sector rate card and a reported $30,000 minimum at Legora matter to a team of five. Gavel Exec is priced per user at $160 per month.
4. Start with the trials that need no meeting. Spellbook's week, Draftwise's Playbook Studio trial and the 25 queries Gavel Exec gives each user can all be running today.
5. Check where precedent lives. If the tool must search iManage or NetDocuments directly, get the connector, permissions and any added fee in writing.

Switching from Definely: what to bring with you

• The documents you used as Compare benchmarks. Your standard forms, gold-standard precedents and term sheets are the raw material for a playbook. Gavel Exec can turn signed agreements, a checklist or a spreadsheet playbook into rules.
• A handful of executed agreements for each contract type. They show a new tool where you landed in real negotiations, which a house form alone does not.
• Your Vault scope. List the DMS workspaces Vault indexes and who can see them, so each vendor can explain how it would reach the same precedent.
• Your license dates. Definely's United Kingdom public-sector rate card prices annual per-user licenses. A month-to-month tool can run alongside until the term ends.
• A decision on the proofreading step. A team can keep a deterministic proofreader for long agreements and add a redlining tool for negotiation. Decide which tool owns the final pre-signing check before you cancel anything.

More comparisons: Draftwise alternatives, Spellbook alternatives, Harvey alternatives, Legora alternatives, the best Microsoft Word add-ins for lawyers, our guide to AI contract redlining software and the full list of Gavel comparisons.