Your complete essay marking toolkit
Upload one class PDF and get individual AI-graded reports for every student. Override scores, build custom rubrics, track class progress, and export everything. Free to use. Built by a teacher.
Free to use. Sign in with Google to access batch marking.
The Full Teacher Toolkit
Everything you need to mark, review, and track a class of essays — from upload to export.
Batch Marking
Upload once, get individual reports for every student.
One PDF, individual reports
Upload a single class PDF. EssayHero splits it into individual essays automatically and analyses each one against your chosen criteria.
7-step guided wizard
Configure, upload, review pages, review OCR, review groupings, analyse, and view results. Each step lets you check and correct before moving on.
Per-page OCR with streaming text
Handwritten essays are read page by page. Text appears as each page is processed — no waiting for the whole batch to finish.
AI-detected essay boundaries
The AI identifies where one essay ends and the next begins. You can adjust groupings before analysis starts.
Teacher Grading Suite
You stay in control of final marks.
Score override with justification
Click any criterion score to override it with your own. Overrides carry through to CSV export and share links.
Review workflow
Track each essay as pending, reviewed, or approved. Filter by status and use bulk actions to mark all as reviewed or approved.
Feedback verbosity
Choose brief (scores only, fewer tokens), standard (paragraph-by-paragraph), or detailed (full analysis with exemplar rewrites).
Custom grading instructions
Add free-text marking instructions that the AI follows — e.g. "Focus on thesis statements" or "Ignore proper noun spelling".
Custom rubrics
Fork a built-in exam rubric or create your own from scratch. Define criteria, score ranges, and format. Saved to your account for reuse.
Class Analytics
See how the whole class performed at a glance.
Score distribution histogram
Visualise how scores are spread across the class to identify clusters and outliers.
Per-criterion averages
See the class mean for each marking criterion — quickly spot which areas need the most teaching attention.
Student-criteria heatmap
A colour-coded grid showing every student against every criterion. Patterns jump out immediately.
Per-question score comparison
When questions are assigned, compare average scores across different questions to see which prompts students found most challenging.
Question Bank
Store exam questions and link them to marking sessions.
Manage exam questions
Save questions to your library for reuse across multiple batch sessions. Organised by exam type and text type.
Question paper OCR
Upload an exam paper PDF and let the AI extract each question automatically. Review and edit before saving.
Question-aware AI feedback
Link questions to a batch session so the AI grades each essay against the specific prompt the student answered.
Session History
Track class progress across multiple marking sessions.
Past session archive
View all previous batch sessions with date, student count, exam type, and average scores.
Cross-batch progress tracking
Compare class averages across sessions to see whether teaching interventions are making a difference.
Format Heuristics
Instant text type convention checks — no AI needed.
Text type convention badges
Each essay gets an instant format check for salutations, sign-offs, headings, and other conventions expected for its text type.
Common format issues report
Class analytics surfaces the most frequent formatting mistakes across the batch, so you can address them in class.
Export and Sharing
Get results out of EssayHero and into your workflow.
CSV export
Download scores, overrides, teacher notes, and review status as a CSV file. Ready for your gradebook or spreadsheet.
Print all reports
Print every student report with automatic page breaks. Suitable for filing or handing back in class.
Individual share links
Generate a unique link for each student so they can view their own feedback online.
Bulk share
Create share links for the entire class in one click. Copy them all or export them alongside scores.
How It Works
Students can start in under a minute. No accounts, no setup, no troubleshooting.
Student pastes essay
They paste their essay exactly as they would submit it for marking.
AI analyses against criteria
The AI examines every paragraph against official HKDSE or IELTS marking criteria.
Detailed feedback in ~60 seconds
Students see scores, paragraph-by-paragraph analysis, and specific suggestions for improvement.
What Your Students Get
The kind of detailed feedback that usually takes hours to write — delivered instantly.
Scores against official criteria
HKDSE: Content, Language, Organisation scored 1-7 each. IELTS: Four criteria scored on the 0-9 band scale.
Paragraph-by-paragraph analysis
Every paragraph is assessed individually with specific comments on what works and what needs improvement.
Text-type-specific feedback
Tailored guidance for letters, speeches, reports, proposals, articles, and other text types.
Writing metrics
Vocabulary diversity (MTLD), readability (Flesch-Kincaid), and sentence length analysis with research-based target ranges.
Instant results
No waiting two weeks for feedback. Students can write, get feedback, revise, and resubmit in a single study session.
Why Teachers Trust It
Built by a teacher
Created by Joseph Lin, who has taught English in Hong Kong for 20 years — from Primary 1 through postgraduate level.
Open source and transparent
The entire codebase is publicly available on GitHub. Scoring methodology and calibration data are published openly.
View on GitHubCalibrated against real standards
Tested against 120 HKEAA-graded exemplar essays. Scoring accuracy and limitations are documented and published.
Privacy first
Individual essays are processed and immediately discarded by default. For batch marking, student names extracted from scans are teacher-controlled and auto-deleted after 30 days. No student accounts required. PDPO compliant.
No ads, no data selling
EssayHero is personally funded with no commercial aims. There is no premium tier, no upselling, and no tracking.
Data & Privacy
How student data is handled — for individual use and batch marking.
Individual essays
When a student pastes an essay and clicks Analyse, the text is processed and immediately discarded. Nothing is stored unless the student is signed in (saved to their dashboard) or creates a shareable link (stored for 30 days, then auto-deleted).
Batch Essay Marking
When you upload a class PDF, student names, class information, and candidate numbers are extracted from your scanned pages to identify which report belongs to which student. This data is stored for 30 days for report delivery (CSV export, share links, results view), then permanently auto-deleted.
As the uploading teacher, you are the data controller. We recommend informing your students that their work will be processed by AI, and obtaining consent from parents or guardians for students under 18. You can delete individual reports or an entire batch at any time.
What we never do
No advertising. No data sold to third parties. No student tracking beyond basic analytics. No premium tier or upselling. EssayHero is personally funded with no commercial aims.
About the Creator
Created by Joseph Lin — teacher in Hong Kong for 20 years, from Primary 1 to postgraduate level. Built the tool he wished existed for his students.
Learn more about EssayHero
Template Comment Bank
Build a reusable library of feedback comments.
Categorised comment library
Organise saved comments by grammar, structure, content, and vocabulary. Find the right comment fast.
Quick-insert into teacher notes
Click a saved comment to insert it directly into the teacher notes field. No retyping the same feedback for each student.