Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Spanlens VS ForthWrite

Compare Spanlens VS ForthWrite and see what are their differences

Spanlens logo Spanlens

Open source LLM observability and monitoring for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini. Request logging, cost tracking, agent tracing. Self-hostable, MIT licensed.

ForthWrite logo ForthWrite

Email that sounds like you, and gets measurably more like you every week. Drafts in Gmail, Outlook, and the browser. Free to start.
Visit Website
  • Spanlens main
    main //
    2026-07-11
  • Spanlens request page
    request page //
    2026-07-11
  • Spanlens trace page detail
    trace page detail //
    2026-07-11

Spanlens is an open source observability tool for LLM apps. You point your OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini client at the Spanlens proxy by changing the baseURL, and it records every request with the full body, token counts, cost, and latency.

The dashboard shows per-model costs, latency percentiles, and error rates. Agent workflows appear as traces with a timeline view and a graph view that marks the critical path. There is also prompt versioning with A/B experiments, an LLM-as-judge eval runner, anomaly alerts, and a scanner that flags PII and prompt injection in request bodies.

The whole codebase is MIT licensed. You can use the hosted version or run it yourself with Docker Compose. SDKs exist for JavaScript and Python, and OpenTelemetry traces can be ingested over OTLP.

  • ForthWrite Landing Page
    Landing Page //
    2026-06-19
  • ForthWrite Dashboard
    Dashboard //
    2026-06-19
  • ForthWrite In Gmail
    In Gmail //
    2026-06-19
  • ForthWrite Pricing
    Pricing //
    2026-06-19

ForthWrite is an AI email writing assistant for Gmail and Outlook that learns your writing style from your real sent mail. The more you use it, the more it sounds like you. Get smart drafts in seconds, auto-draft replies before you open your inbox, and maintain your personal voice at scale. Free to start, no credit card required. Works inside Gmail and Outlook on the web.

How it works

ForthWrite captures your tone, sentence rhythm, and sign-offs from your actual sent emails, then uses that profile to generate drafts that match how you write, not a generic AI voice. Every draft you edit or send improves the model over time.

Key features

  • Auto-draft: replies waiting in Gmail before you open your inbox
  • Voice matching from your real sent mail, not templates
  • Recipient-aware drafts that adapt to who you are emailing
  • Prompt Lab for version-controlling and A/B testing your persona prompt
  • BYOK support: bring your own API key for Claude, OpenAI, Grok, Mistral, and more
  • Works in Gmail and Outlook on the web, plus a standalone browser widget
  • Training data export and full data portability

Who uses it

Professionals who send high volumes of relationship-critical email: lawyers, financial advisors, recruiters, account executives, founders, and anyone who wants their inbox handled without sounding like a chatbot wrote it.

Pricing

Free tier includes 10 drafts per week with no credit card required. Paid plans start at $12/month and include unlimited drafts, custom persona prompts, and auto-draft.

Spanlens

$ Details
freemium $29.0 / Monthly (Pro)
Platforms
-
Release Date
2026 June

ForthWrite

$ Details
freemium $12.0 / Monthly (Standard plan)
Platforms
Web
Release Date
2026 June
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
City
San Diego
Founder(s)
Curtis Boortz
Employees
1 - 9

Spanlens features and specs

  • Real-time translation
    Spanlens offers real-time translation capabilities, allowing users to quickly convert speech or text between Spanish and other languages, which is useful for immediate communication needs.
  • Language learning support
    The platform appears designed to assist users in learning Spanish, providing tools that combine translation with educational features to help build vocabulary and comprehension.
  • Accessibility
    As a web-based tool, Spanlens is accessible from any device with an internet connection, eliminating the need for software installation and making it convenient for on-the-go use.
  • User-friendly interface
    The platform is designed with simplicity in mind, making it easy for users of varying technical skill levels to navigate and utilize its translation and learning features.
  • Focused niche
    By specializing in Spanish language tools, Spanlens can potentially offer more refined and accurate features compared to general-purpose translation apps that cover many languages.

ForthWrite features and specs

  • Voice Matching
    Learns from your real sent mail, not templates
  • Auto-draft replies
    Replies waiting in Gmail before you open your inbox
  • Batch-drafting
    Draft replies for your entire inbox with one click
  • Works in browser
    Gmail, Outlook, and web browsers
  • BYOK support
    Claude, OpenAI, Grok, Mistral, and more
  • Prompt Lab
    Version control and A/B test your persona prompt
  • Free tier
    10 drafts per week, no credit card required

Analysis of Spanlens

Overall verdict

  • I don't have verified, reliable information about Spanlens (spanlens.io) to make a confident assessment of its quality, legitimacy, or performance. Before using or purchasing from this service, I'd recommend conducting independent research.

Why this product is good

  • No verified data available on this specific product/service to confirm its features or quality
  • Unable to confirm the legitimacy, reputation, or track record of this website
  • Cannot verify user reviews, ratings, or customer satisfaction levels
  • No information on pricing, terms of service, or company background to evaluate

Recommended for

  • Research this independently before making any decisions
  • Check for reviews on trusted third-party platforms (Trustpilot, Reddit, BBB)
  • Verify company registration, contact information, and business legitimacy
  • Look for user testimonials or case studies from verified customers
  • Consider reaching out to the company directly with questions before committing

Analysis of ForthWrite

Overall verdict

  • I don't have verified information about a product called ForthWrite (forthwrite.ai). I cannot confirm its features, quality, or reputation, so I'm unable to provide an accurate assessment of whether it's good.

Why this product is good

  • No reliable data available on this specific product in my knowledge base
  • This may be a newer product, a niche tool, or possibly a fictional/hypothetical name
  • Providing details without verified information could result in inaccurate or fabricated claims

Recommended for

  • Unable to determine without verified product information
  • Consider checking the official website, user reviews on platforms like G2 or Trustpilot, and independent tech review sites for accurate details

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Spanlens and ForthWrite)
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Email
0 0%
100% 100
AI Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Email Productivity
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Spanlens and ForthWrite.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Spanlens's answer

TypeScript across the stack. The dashboard is Next.js, the API and proxy run on Hono, and data is split between Supabase Postgres for accounts and relational data and ClickHouse for request logs, which grow fast. The repo is a pnpm monorepo that also holds the JavaScript and Python SDKs, a CLI, and an MCP server. Self-hosting runs on Docker Compose, and OpenTelemetry traces can be ingested over OTLP.

ForthWrite's answer:

Next.js, React, Supabase, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Stripe, Vercel, Chrome Extensions API

What makes your product unique?

Spanlens's answer

The entire product is MIT licensed, including the dashboard, evals, and prompt A/B testing. There is no separate enterprise edition. Everything ships in one repo you can run with a single Docker Compose file. Integration is one line: you change the baseURL on your OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini client, and every call gets logged with its full body, token counts, cost, and latency. A few things that are usually paid add-ons come built in, like agent traces with a critical path view, A/B tests that use Welch's t-test to tell you whether a difference is real, and a recommender that flags cheaper models based on the traffic you actually send.

ForthWrite's answer:

ForthWrite learns your writing style from your actual sent mail, not a generic prompt. Every draft sounds like you wrote it because it was trained on how you actually write. It also auto-drafts replies before you open your inbox, so your email is partially handled before your day starts.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Spanlens's answer

Mostly because of where the market went. Helicone was acquired, LangSmith is closed source, and self-hosting Langfuse takes real setup work. Spanlens fills the gap those tools left: setup in about five minutes, one Docker Compose file if you want the data on your own servers, and no feature gating between free and paid tiers. To be fair, if you need SOC 2 reports and enterprise support today, the bigger platforms are ahead. If you want request logs, costs, and traces without adopting a heavy platform, that is what Spanlens was built for.

ForthWrite's answer:

Most AI email tools give you a blank box and a "write for me" button. ForthWrite builds a voice profile from your sent history and gets more accurate with every draft you edit or send. Unlike ChatGPT or Gemini, it works natively inside Gmail and Outlook with no copy-paste. Unlike Lavender, it writes the draft, not just scores it.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Spanlens's answer

Developers who ship LLM features in production apps. The typical user is a solo developer or a small team that added OpenAI or Anthropic calls to their product and now has no clear picture of what those calls cost or why some are slow. Agent builders are the second group, since multi-step workflows are hard to debug without traces. It is a developer tool through and through: if you don't touch code, you won't get much out of it.

ForthWrite's answer:

Professionals who send high volumes of relationship-critical email and cannot afford to sound generic: lawyers, financial advisors, recruiters, account executives, consultants, and founders managing their own inbox.

What's the story behind your product?

Spanlens's answer

I was building LLM apps on the side and kept pasting token counts into a spreadsheet to figure out what each feature cost me. The tools I tried were either acquired mid-migration, closed source, or heavier to self-host than the app I was trying to monitor. So in April 2026 I started building the tool I actually wanted: change one line, see every request. It launched in June 2026, and the whole codebase went up on GitHub under MIT from day one.

ForthWrite's answer:

Built out of frustration with AI writing tools that produce text that sounds nothing like the person sending it, and as a way to handle large amounts of daily email. The core insight was that your sent mail is the best training data you already have, and no tool was using it.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

Spanlens's answer

We don't publish customer names yet. Spanlens launched in June 2026, and most users so far are indie developers and small AI teams.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Spanlens and ForthWrite

Spanlens Reviews

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ForthWrite Reviews

  1. curtisboortz
    ยท Founder at ForthWrite ยท
    I built ForthWrite to fix generic AI email, and I still use it every day

    I built ForthWrite because I kept sending emails that sounded like they came from the same generic AI as everyone else. After launching it, I still use it for my own inbox every day, which is about the most honest endorsement I can give.

    The Chrome extension lives inside Gmail and Outlook on the web. Open a thread, hit Alt+Shift+D, and a draft comes back in your voice, not a template. The free tier is real: 10 drafts per week, no API key, no credit card. Voice matching is included on free, because that is the point.

    What keeps it useful compared to Gemini or a chat tab: it learns from what you actually send. Every edit you make before hitting send becomes a signal. Over time the drafts drift closer to how you really write, and the dashboard shows the improvement curve so you can see it happening.

    The web compose surface lets you draft from forthwrite.ai without installing anything, useful for people who want to try before committing to the extension.

    Standard adds recipient-aware and intent-aware drafting plus AI coaching. Pro adds auto-draft (replies waiting when you open Gmail), batch replies, and Prompt Lab for version-controlling your prompts. Teams adds a shared persona and seat-level analytics.

    ForthWrite is not for everyone. If you just need quick replies and tone does not matter, Gemini is free and already in your inbox. ForthWrite is for people where tone does matter: client communication, relationship-driven threads, external correspondence where sounding off costs something real.

    Disclosure: I am the founder and use it daily. Happy to answer questions in the comments.

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: Jace.ai, Fyxer, Mailmeteor
    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Drafts land inside gmail and outlook; no copy-pasting from a chat window|Voice matching is on the free tier, not paywalled behind paid plans|No api key, no credit card to start; free tier runs on a server-side proxy|Learns from every edit you make before sending; drafts improve over time|Full keyboard flow: alt+shift+d to draft in any thread, no mouse required|Byok on paid plans, 9 providers supported, keys encrypted at rest|Web compose at forthwrite.ai works without installing the extension at all
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    10 free drafts/week is enough to evaluate, not enough for a heavy inbox|Auto-draft, batch replies, and prompt lab all require the pro tier|Early-stage product; fewer third-party integrations than mature inbox tools|No mobile app: the extension and add-in are desktop-only (chrome on web, or the outlook desktop add-in)

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Spanlens and ForthWrite, you can also consider the following products

Langfuse - Langfuse is an open-source LLM engineering platform that helps teams collaboratively debug, analyze, and iterate on their LLM applications.

ReclaimAI - Helps users prioritize their work and personal calendars

Helicone AI - Open-source LLM Observability for Developers

Superhuman - Superhuman is an email management tool.

LangSmith - Build and deploy LLM applications with confidence

Shortwave - Email smarter & faster with a reinvented experience for your Gmail