Document Automation
Product features
By practice area
By company size
Contract Review
PRODUCT FEATURES
Resources
LearN
Case Studies
Pricing
Draftwise vs Definely: drafting from precedent or checking the draft
How Draftwise's precedent-driven drafting and Playbook Studio compare with Definely's deterministic proofreading, Vault clause library and Compare, with Gavel Exec as a third option at a published price.
Pick Draftwise if your firm wants to draft and negotiate from its own deal history, with playbooks built from past agreements and applied as automated redlines in Word. Pick Definely if your lawyers review long contracts written by others and want defined terms, cross-references, numbering and firm precedent checked deterministically before anything goes out.
Key takeaways
- Both tools treat your firm's own precedent as the clause library and reach it through iManage, NetDocuments or SharePoint. Draftwise indexes the deal history to draft and redline whole documents; Definely's Vault searches it to find, compare and insert one clause at a time, with its definitions.
- Draftwise has a named playbook product, Playbook Studio, with a free trial after registration. Definely's site names no playbook product; its Compare feature checks a draft against your standard form, precedent or term sheet and quotes every deviation from both documents.
- Definely runs hundreds of deterministic proofreading checks on defined terms, cross-references, numbering and placeholders, and extends the same checks into Claude and ChatGPT through its MCP. Draftwise presents no comparable proofreading module.
- Neither publishes a price on its website. Draftwise is about $300 to $600 per month as reported by Gavel customers; Definely's UK public-sector listing shows £500 to £1,500 per user per year with a 100-licence minimum. Gavel Exec, the third option, lists $160 per user per month with 25 free queries and no credit card.
Last checked November 12, 2026. Gavel, which makes Gavel Exec, publishes this comparison, and Gavel Exec competes with both tools. Facts about Draftwise and Definely come from their websites, help centers, press releases and public listings, and the Draftwise price is reported by Gavel customers. Vendors change plans often, so check current terms with Draftwise and Definely before you buy.
Draftwise and Definely
Gavel Exec
Gavel Exec is AI contract review, redlining, and drafting software for legal teams. It works in Microsoft Word and online, so attorneys can review contracts inside Word or use browser-based workflows for broader contract analysis.
Gavel Exec supports playbook-based review, redlining, drafting, benchmarking, batch analysis, and multi-document comparison. Playbooks can be generated with AI, built from uploaded files, created manually, or started from built-in playbooks created by practicing attorneys. Gavel Exec publishes pricing at $160 per user per month or $1,740 per user annually, and offers 25 free queries per user with no credit card required.
| Feature | Draftwise and Definely | Gavel Exec |
|---|---|---|
| Price | ||
| Billing | ||
| Free Trial | ||
| AI Features | ||
| Playbooks | ||
| Word Integration | ||
| Support |
Draftwise vs Definely at a glance
Both tools live inside Microsoft Word and reach a firm's own precedent through its document management system (DMS). Gavel Exec sits in the last column.
| Compared | Draftwise | Definely | Gavel Exec (third option) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Deal teams at large and midsize law firms, plus in-house departments, drafting from their own deal history | Lawyers at large firms and corporate legal teams reviewing long contracts in Word | In-house and transactional lawyers who want playbook redlining at a published price |
| Core job | Drafting, review and negotiation from firm precedent; playbook redlines; deal data across past contracts | Independent review of a draft: navigation, proofreading, comparison to a standard or term sheet, clause reuse | Playbook review, redlining and drafting; benchmarking in the web app |
| Where it runs | Word; Outlook add-in for searching the DMS from email | Word add-in (Windows; Mac set up through support); Definely MCP inside Claude, ChatGPT and firm AI tools | Word add-in (Windows, Mac, Word on the web) and web app |
| Precedent and clause library | Indexes the deal history automatically; Knowledge Console Collections decide what it sees | Vault searches firm precedent in natural language plus personal folders; admin portal controls ingestion and tagging | Drafts from templates and the precedent you attach; source checks draw on uploaded matter files and SEC EDGAR filings |
| Playbooks | Playbook Studio builds rules from deal history or uploaded examples and applies automated redlines | No playbook product named; Compare checks a draft against your standard form, precedent or term sheet | Built-in playbooks developed with attorneys in corporate and real estate law, or rules generated from your own checklist, spreadsheet or signed agreements |
| Proofreading and defined terms | Not presented as a separate product on draftwise.com | Hundreds of deterministic checks on defined terms, cross-references, numbering and spelling; definitions report | Lists missing terms, adds margin comments and gives the reasoning for each tracked change |
| DMS connections | iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint; Deal Table also reads Google Drive | NetDocuments, iManage and SharePoint | No native iManage or NetDocuments integration today; .doc and PDF files can be attached as context |
| Price | Not published; about $300 to $600 per month reported by Gavel customers | Not on its site; G-Cloud 15 lists £500 to £1,500 per user per year, 100-licence minimum | $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year |
| Free trial | Playbook Studio only, after registration; demo for the full platform | Demo; G-Cloud listing describes a two-week trial "usually accompanied by a contract" | 25 free queries per user, no credit card, no sales call |
| Security | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, Cyber Essentials Plus; private cloud or on-premises | ISO 27001, ISO 42001, SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, Cyber Essentials; AES-256 encryption at rest | SOC 2 Type II; Zero Data Retention terms with its AI model providers; United States hosting with European Union, Canada and Australia options |
Draftwise: drafting and negotiating from your deal history
Draftwise calls itself "contract drafting, review, and negotiation AI powered by your legal knowledge," working "directly within Word." Founded in 2020 by two former Palantir engineers and a lawyer who practiced at Clifford Chance, it is headquartered in New York City and raised a $20 million Series A led by Index Ventures in March 2024.
Its product menu lists Playbook Studio, Deal Table, Knowledge Console, Drafting & Precedent Research and Ontonomi, a legal ontology platform introduced in 2026 with Ropes & Gray. In Word, Draftwise says you can "Redline, rewrite, compare clauses, apply playbooks, and insert language without leaving your contract," and it reaches precedent stored in iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint. It sells to Big Law, Mid Law and in-house teams; Orrick, Gunderson Dettmer and Ropes & Gray are customers, Draftwise announced a firmwide rollout at Goodwin in April 2026, and Jones Day said in October 2026 it will deploy Ontonomi. Draftwise publishes no price, and only Playbook Studio offers a trial.
Definely: independent review of a draft someone else wrote
Definely's homepage opens with "The maker cannot be the checker" and the subhead "Independent review for complex contracts," and says the software "was built natively for Microsoft Word." Based in London and founded in 2017 by two former Freshfields lawyers, it raised a $30 million Series B led by Revaia in June 2025.
Definely's help center and llms.txt name five Word products: Draft, renamed Definely Read in June 2026, for navigation and review; Proof for proofreading; Vault, "your firm's intelligent precedent library"; Enhance, agentic AI review; and Cascade, change-impact analysis launched in August 2025. Its website now presents these as features (Maintain context, Proofread, Compare, Stay in control, Find and reuse, Report and share and MCP), and the Definely MCP runs the same checks inside Claude, ChatGPT and a firm's own AI tools. Definely reports 150+ enterprise customers and 40,000+ active users, names DLA Piper, Dentons, Slaughter and May, A&O Shearman and JP Morgan, targets Magic Circle and Am Law firms, and publishes no price.
Who owns the clause library, and how does it get built?
In both tools the clause library is your firm's own precedent, reached through your DMS; neither ships a clause bank. Draftwise indexes the deal history to draft and redline whole documents. Definely's Vault indexes the same library to search, compare and insert clauses one at a time.
Draftwise says it "analyzes and understands your contracts automatically," so lawyers do not tag precedent by hand, and that it "mirrors your DMS permissions." Knowledge Console lets a firm "Determine what precedent Draftwise can see and draw from" through Collections organized "by practice group, client, matter type, or however your firm works." Draftwise connects to that history "to draft like one of your own."
Definely's Vault "connects directly to your firm's DMS" (its help center names NetDocuments, iManage and SharePoint) and searches "clauses, definitions, and whole documents across your firm's precedent library and your own," matching meaning as well as wording, with filters for document name, author, date and DMS custom fields. When you insert a clause, Definely places it in the document structure, matches the formatting, and "finds the definitions it relies on and adds them to the definitions section in alphabetical order." Lawyers can also upload files to a personal Vault.
Setup is similar: a DMS connection and a decision about which documents count as precedent, made in Definely's admin portal, where "Knowledge and IT teams control what gets ingested, how it's tagged, and who can see it," or in Knowledge Console. The difference is what happens next. Draftwise applies the library to whole drafts and counters; Definely surfaces the best clause for the lawyer to pick, then checks that it is defined and placed correctly. Spellbook's October 2026 brief on Definely puts it the same way: Definely handles team standards through internal precedent in Vault and has no codified playbook.
Playbook-based review: Playbook Studio versus Compare
Draftwise has a named playbook product and Definely does not. Playbook Studio "automatically creates and maintains playbooks from your deal history" and applies "automated redlines based on your specific playbook rules." Definely's closest feature is Compare, which checks a draft against a document you choose.
With Playbook Studio you can "Build a custom playbook by uploading your example contracts and describing your specific representation needs," refine the generated rules, apply automated redlines and "export your fully marked-up document with a single click." Draftwise claims first-pass playbook creation drops "from 6+ hours to 5 minutes" and NDA review "from 60 minutes to 2 minutes." It is the one part of Draftwise you can try without a sales call; uploaded data is deleted when the trial ends.
Definely's Compare will "Check a draft against your standard form, precedent, or term sheet." It flags missing clauses and suggests wording, flags departures from a term sheet, and quotes every deviation from both documents even when they are worded or ordered differently. Enhance can "Identify missing clauses that would typically be expected in a specific agreement type" from firm precedent in Vault. Throughout, "Definely suggests; you decide," and anything you accept lands as a tracked change.
For a team that wants positions and fallbacks encoded as rules and applied automatically, Draftwise fits. For a team whose standard is a document (a house form or the term sheet), Definely's Compare quotes deviations side by side without a playbook build.
Proofreading, defined terms and cross-references
Definely is stronger here, and this is the work it was founded to do. Its Proofread feature runs "hundreds of deterministic checks in one pass," and because "The checks follow rules," the same contract gets the same results every time. We found no comparable module on draftwise.com.
Definely's checks find terms that are "undefined, unused, duplicated, or inconsistently capitalized," sort the definitions section alphabetically, check numbering, spacing and punctuation, flag cross-references that are "missing, mismatched, or clauses that were deleted or never existed," check spelling against a legal dictionary, and pull square brackets, drafting notes, comments and highlights into one gaps list. Definely Read shows a defined term's definition in place and generates a definitions report of every defined, undefined and unused term; Cascade shows the knock-on effects of a change across related contracts.
Draftwise's product page describes interpreting redlines and comments and editing entire documents, which is review of substance; a mechanical pre-signing check would still need Definely or a tool like it.
Where each runs: Word, Outlook, your DMS and AI assistants
Both are Word add-ins first. Draftwise adds an Outlook add-in, released in April 2024, for plain-language searches of the firm's DMS from email. Definely adds the Definely MCP for Claude, ChatGPT and firm AI tools; its llm-info page says it needs an active Definely Cloud suite licence.
Definely's help center lists Windows 10 or 11 with Office 2019 or later and says "Definely is available for Mac, but the setup process is different." Draftwise's site states neither. On deployment, Draftwise offers hosted SaaS, a private cloud in AWS, Azure or GCP, deployment into the firm's own cloud, or on-premises installation. Definely runs on AWS and Azure in regions such as the UK and EU.
Pricing, trials and contract terms
Neither publishes a price on its website. Draftwise quotes after a demo, and about $300 to $600 per month is reported by Gavel customers. Definely's site also leads to a demo, but its G-Cloud 15 listing on the UK Government Digital Marketplace, whose pricing document is dated January 2026, shows public-sector pricing.
That listing prices Definely per user per year with "a minimum requirement of 100 licenses per contract": at 100 users, £500 for Draft, £750 for Draft and Proof, £1,150 for Draft, Proof and Vault, and £1,500 for the Full Suite of Draft, Proof, Vault, Enhance and Cascade, excluding VAT, with lower rates from 101 users. It describes a free trial "for a two-week trial, usually accompanied by a contract." Commercial quotes to law firms may differ. Gavel Exec lists $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year, month to month with no long-term contract, and 25 free queries per user with no credit card.
Security, certifications and deployment
Both hold SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Draftwise is "SOC 2 Type II & ISO 27001 certified, GDPR compliant," its FAQ adds Cyber Security Essentials Plus, and it says "Your data never trains public models." Definely lists ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO/IEC 42001:2023 (the AI management standard), SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR and UK GDPR, and Cyber Essentials, per its Trust Centre, uses AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2 or later in transit, and its homepage reads: "Customer data is never used to train AI models."
Draftwise's edge is deployment choice, including on-premises. Definely's edge is ISO 42001, per its Trust Centre, and a parsing layer it says runs with no AI involved. Gavel Exec is certified to SOC 2 Type II and has Zero Data Retention terms with the AI model providers it uses, OpenAI included; see the Gavel security page.
Which should you choose?
- Choose Draftwise if your firm wants first drafts and counters generated from years of agreements in iManage, NetDocuments or SharePoint, wants playbooks built from that history and applied as automated redlines, or needs on-premises deployment.
- Choose Definely if your lawyers review long agreements they did not write, you want defined terms, cross-references, numbering and placeholders checked deterministically before signing, or you want to find and insert firm clauses with their definitions, in Word or inside Claude and ChatGPT.
- Consider Gavel Exec if you want rules applied as redlines in Word for $160 per user per month, can work from templates and the precedent you attach instead of a DMS index, and want each lawyer to begin with 25 free queries instead of a demo.
A third option: Gavel Exec
Some buyers want what Playbook Studio does (rules applied as redlines in Word) for a smaller team, priced openly, with no DMS integration project. Gavel Exec, AI contract review and drafting software, runs as a Word add-in and as a web app. It redlines the whole agreement as priority-ordered tracked changes, explains each one, and adds margin comments plus a missing-terms list.
- Playbooks: start from built-in playbooks developed with attorneys in corporate and real estate law, or generate rules from your checklist, spreadsheet playbook or signed agreements in .docx, PDF or .csv.
- Drafting and precedent: precedent-based drafting in Word from scratch or from templates, with source checks that can draw on your precedent, uploaded matter files and SEC EDGAR filings.
- Benchmarking: the web app tags every provision as on-market, off-market or missing, filterable by jurisdiction, industry and company size.
- Price and trial: $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year, with no long-term contract; 25 free queries per user, no credit card, no sales call.
How Gavel Exec handles precedent: you attach .docx or PDF files and upload matter files instead of connecting a document management system, and source checks can also draw on SEC EDGAR filings and government sources. Draftwise and Definely Vault index a firm's whole document store, while Gavel Exec works from the files, Projects and playbooks your team shares. For one-on-one detail, see Draftwise vs Gavel Exec.
How to test Draftwise and Definely side by side
- Pick the agreement you negotiate most, and one long document someone else drafted. One tests redlining, the other proofreading.
- Start the Playbook Studio trial before the demos. Register on draftwise.com, upload three to five signed versions of your agreement, describe your positions, and keep the generated rules and the marked-up export.
- Ask Definely for a pilot on the long document. Run Proofread and the definitions report, then Compare against your house form or term sheet, and count how many flagged items your team would have caught by hand.
- Bring your DMS and knowledge team to both demos. Ask which workspaces get indexed and how each tool follows DMS permissions.
- Put the same questions in writing. Per-user price, seat minimums, contract term, DMS connector fees, trial length, Mac support and hosting region.
- Run the same files through Gavel Exec. Generate a playbook from your signed agreements, redline the agreement in Word, and compare the tracked changes with Draftwise's export.
More comparisons: Draftwise alternatives, our guide to contract playbook software, the best Word add-ins for lawyers and every Gavel comparison.
For a wider shortlist around Definely, see Definely alternatives: 7 contract drafting and review tools compared.
Run Gavel Exec next to Draftwise and Definely
Generate a playbook from your signed agreements and redline a live contract in Word without a DMS project or a demo. $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year, with 25 free queries per user and no credit card.
Frequently asked questions
Is Draftwise better than Definely?
For generating first drafts and counters from a firm's deal history and applying playbook rules as automated redlines, Draftwise is the stronger tool. For checking a long contract you did not write, including undefined and duplicated terms, broken cross-references, numbering and placeholders, Definely is stronger, and it is the only one of the two with a deterministic proofreading product.
Do Draftwise and Definely both search my firm's clause library?
Yes, and in both cases the library is your own precedent reached through your DMS. Draftwise connects to iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint and indexes the deal history automatically, with Knowledge Console deciding what it can see. Definely Vault connects to NetDocuments, iManage and SharePoint, searches clauses and definitions in natural language, and inserts a clause with its definitions added alphabetically.
How much do Draftwise and Definely cost?
Neither lists a price on its website. Gavel customers report Draftwise at about $300 to $600 per month. Definely's G-Cloud 15 listing on the UK Digital Marketplace prices it per user per year, from £500 for Draft to £1,500 for the full suite at 100 users, with a 100-licence minimum, and commercial quotes may differ. Gavel Exec is $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year.
Does Definely have playbooks like Draftwise Playbook Studio?
Definely's website names no playbook product. Its Compare feature checks a draft against your standard form, precedent or term sheet and quotes each deviation from both documents, and Enhance can flag clauses that are missing for a given agreement type based on firm precedent. Draftwise Playbook Studio builds rules from your deal history or uploaded examples and applies redlines from them.
Can Draftwise proofread defined terms and cross-references like Definely?
Draftwise's product pages describe interpreting redlines and comments and editing whole documents, and we found no dedicated proofreading module on its site. Definely's Proofread runs hundreds of rules-based checks on defined terms, cross-references, numbering, spacing, spelling and placeholders, and Definely Read generates a definitions report of every defined, undefined and unused term.
What is a good alternative to Draftwise and Definely for a smaller firm?
Gavel Exec fits in-house counsel and transactional lawyers who want playbook rules applied as redlines in Word for a listed $160 per user per month, starting with 25 free queries and no credit card. It has no native iManage or NetDocuments integration today, so it suits a team that works from templates and attached precedent, and its playbooks can be generated from that team's own checklist, spreadsheet playbook or signed agreements. The Draftwise alternatives roundup compares more tools.
Methodology
This comparison uses publicly available product, pricing, and review information. Features, pricing, and access terms may change, so buyers should verify current details directly with each vendor.
Give Gavel Exec the contract you tested in Playbook Studio
Upload the agreement from your Draftwise trial or Definely pilot and compare Gavel Exec's priority-ranked tracked changes with theirs. 25 free queries per user, no credit card.
