Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Toptal VS ForthWrite

Compare Toptal VS ForthWrite and see what are their differences

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Toptal logo Toptal

Hire the Top 3% of Freelance Talentยฎ. Toptal is an exclusive network of the top freelance software developers, designers, finance experts, product managers, and project managers in the world.

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
  • Toptal Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-11
  • 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.

Toptal

Website
toptal.com
Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
2010 November

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

Toptal features and specs

  • Headquarters
    San Francisco, CA

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 Toptal

Overall verdict

  • Toptal is recommended for businesses and individuals seeking highly skilled freelancers and who value quality and reliability over cost. The platform is especially advantageous for those who require experts for complex projects where specialized knowledge and experience are paramount.

Why this product is good

  • Toptal is considered good because it maintains a rigorous screening process to ensure that it only connects clients with top-tier freelancers. This ensures a high level of quality and expertise, whether you need developers, designers, or finance experts. The platform also offers a variety of freelance talent spanning multiple industries, which can be appealing for businesses looking for specific skills. Additionally, their customer service and flexible engagement models are appreciated by many users.

Recommended for

    Toptal is best suited for companies in need of software developers, designers, project managers, and finance experts who have been vetted to meet high standards. It's particularly beneficial for startups, SMEs, and larger enterprises looking for flexibility and top-tier talent without committing to long-term employment.

Toptal videos

Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr or TopTal? How to Pick a Freelancing Platform

More videos:

  • Review - Toptal Review by CNBC's Squawk Box
  • Review - Toptal Review - Remote Consulting Freelance Technology

ForthWrite videos

No ForthWrite videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Toptal and ForthWrite)
Freelance Marketplace
100 100%
0% 0
Writing Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Work Marketplace
100 100%
0% 0
Email
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Toptal and ForthWrite.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

ForthWrite's answer:

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

What makes your product unique?

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?

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?

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?

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.

User comments

Share your experience with using Toptal and ForthWrite. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

Toptal Reviews

Top 16 Remote Job Boards to Help You Hire Faster
Why Itโ€™s Great: Toptalโ€™s pre-vetted freelancers guarantee a faster and more reliable hiring process. You wonโ€™t waste time filtering out unqualified applicants, making it the ideal platform for businesses needing top-tier professionals on short notice.
Comparing Andela, Turing, Toptal, Micro1, Arc.dev, and Wajusoft
Renowned for its rigorous selection process, Toptal claims to accept less than 3% of applicants. This exclusivity is backed by a comprehensive screening that spans skill assessments, live coding challenges, and in-depth personality evaluations. The entire vetting process can take up to five weeks, a testament to Toptal's commitment to quality.
The 10 Best Alternatives to Upwork
Next up on our list of Upwork Alternatives is Toptal. This site is a large freelance platform that connects businesses with the top 3% of talent in various industries, including design, development, project management, and finance.
Source: www.twine.net
UPWORK ALTERNATIVES: THE 10 BEST PLATFORMS FOR FINDING FREELANCERS
Toptal focuses on providing experts in software development, design, finance, and project management. It rigorously screens its talent pool to ensure only the best professionals are available for hire.
Source: medium.com
Top Sites Like Fiverr โ€“ The Best Alternatives For Freelancers in 2022
Toptal is a network for independent product managers, finance specialists, etc. Jobs across a wide range of industries, including finance, healthcare, and e-commerce, are simple to discover. Before applying for a job, Toptal site visitors undergo testing and vetting. For their tasks, several well-known firms use Toptal to find freelancers.

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)

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Toptal seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 19 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Toptal mentions (19)

  • How to Make Money From Coding: A Beginner-Friendly Practical Guide
    Toptal: For experienced developers, higher-paying jobs. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Finding Cybersecurity / vCISO or Quality Assurance Jobs
    We noticed that the flexibility and diversity of work available to software developers is impressive. Platforms like https://a.team, https://moonlightwork.com, toptal.com and https://fraction.work are offering freelancing, part-time, and even fractional opportunities serving software enegineers with a plethora of new, innovative ways of working. Source: about 3 years ago
  • I dont want to learn "เคกเคพเคŸเคพ เคธเค‚เคฐเคšเคจเคพเคเค เค”เคฐ เคเคฒเฅเค—เฅ‹เคฐเคฟเคฆเคฎ" but want a good job.
    Even at the application level, most people get away with it because those DSA are implemented in the underlying libraries or framework which you just call from your code. But if you were ever asked to debug that library/framework some day, then you'll definitely need to know DSA. Leading institutions like Toptal indeed ask you to do score well in DSA. Source: about 3 years ago
  • The Definitive Guide to Building and Managing a Successful Remote Development Team
    In today's digital age, more and more businesses are turning to remote developers to help build their products. However, finding and managing remote talent can be a daunting task for many employers. Letsremotify offers a solution by connecting businesses with over 50 million remote professionals worldwide through their platform. They also provide a detailed guide to help employers write effective job descriptions,... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Anyone working as freelance Designer in Toptal?
    Is there anyone who is working as Freelance designer in Toptal? Need help. I would be grateful if anyone can help. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

ForthWrite mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of ForthWrite yet. Tracking of ForthWrite recommendations started around Jun 2026.

What are some alternatives?

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

Upwork - Forget the old rules. You can have the best people. Right now. Right here.

Superhuman - Superhuman is an email management tool.

Freelancer.com - Search for jobs related to Www freelancer com homepage or hire on the world's largest freelancing marketplace with 12m+ jobs. It's free to sign up and bid on jobs.

Gemini - Gemini, formerly known as Bard, is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Google. Based on the large language model (LLM) of the same name, it was launched in 2023 in response to the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Guru - Guru makes it easy for employers and freelancers to connect, collaborate and get work done flexibly and securely. Browse 1. 5 million freelancers for hire and thousands of projects.

Lavender - Realtime coaching for sales emails.