This is the detail page behind the free cover letter builder. It lists everything on the $0 plan for cover letters, walks through the builder, shows how to match the letter to your resume, and covers structure and AI drafting.
Free account for downloads. No credit card. No watermark.
Cover letter tools tend to be free right up to the download button. So here is the precise list of what the $0 plan includes for cover letters, with no expiry date and no card on file.
The one thing that costs money
Unlimited AI: $2.95 for a 14-day trial, then $19.95 a month, auto-renewing until you cancel from account settings, with access to the end of the billing period. It changes nothing about templates, styles or downloads. A cover letter you write yourself never touches it.
The letter borrows its look from the resume, so start there. Open a saved resume, pick one of the 93 templates, or import an existing file as PDF, DOCX or a photo. If your only copy lives on LinkedIn or Indeed, those guides cover getting the file out first.
Go to /resume-builder/?mode=cover-letter and sign in free. Choose a one column or a sidebar style and give it the same template as your resume. Fonts and colors are the same set you used on the resume, so matching is a matter of picking the same options, not retyping them.
Type straight onto the page, the same inline editing as the resume. If you would rather start from something than from nothing, use a free AI credit to draft the body, then edit each paragraph in place until it reads like you and names the specific things this employer asked for.
Download a PDF for uploads and email attachments, or a DOCX when an employer asks for Word. Both are free with no watermark. The letter stays saved in your account with your others, so the next application starts from a finished letter rather than a blank page.
A resume and a cover letter almost always arrive together: two attachments on one email, or two uploads in one application form. When they are set in different typefaces with different heading colors, the reader notices before reading a word, and the pair looks like it came from two different tools. Fixing that by hand means copying font names and hex codes between programs, and the two files drift apart again the next time you change one of them.
In SmoothApply the letter and the resume live in the same builder and draw on the same templates, fonts and colors. Give the letter the template you used for the resume and the header treatment, typeface and accent color come out matched. If you later change the accent color on the resume, the same option is right there on the letter; there is no second theme to maintain and no export and re-import step.
Two layout families are available for letters. One column is the conventional business letter: header, greeting, paragraphs, sign-off. It reads well on any screen and is the safe choice for an upload whose destination you cannot see. Sidebar styles put your contact details in a column beside the body, which mirrors the two column resume templates. A simple rule: if your resume is one column, keep the letter one column; if the resume has a sidebar, the sidebar letter completes the set.
The letter uses the same template library as the resume, so the two can share one design instead of two approximations of it.
One font list and one color set across both documents. Pick the same options and the headers line up.
One column or sidebar for the letter, matched to the one, two or mixed column layout you chose for the resume.
Every free account comes with 25 AI credits. On a cover letter, a credit can draft the body for you. The same pool also covers the resume features: enhance, proofread, condense, tailor to a job and job match analysis. Twenty-five is enough to draft a handful of letters and polish a resume. It is not unlimited, and this page will not pretend otherwise. When the credits run out you can keep writing letters by hand for free, or take the $2.95 trial if you want unlimited AI for a heavy application week.
Two honest notes. First, an AI draft is a starting point, not a finished letter. It produces a clean, correct, generic letter. The sentence about why this company, the number from your last project, the name of the tool they mentioned in the posting: those have to come from you, and they are the parts a hiring manager actually reads for.
Second, you do not need this builder to get an AI draft. In Reddit threads asking for free cover letter generators, such as this r/CoverLetters thread and this one on r/cscareerquestions, the recurring reply as of September 2026 is to paste your resume and the job description into ChatGPT. That works. What you get here in addition is that the draft lands inside a template that already matches your resume, you edit it in place, and it exports as PDF or DOCX without a trip through a word processor to fix the formatting.
The template handles how the letter looks. What goes inside is on you, and it is less mysterious than the advice industry makes it. A structure that works for most jobs:
| Part | What goes there | Leave out |
|---|---|---|
| Header | Your name and contact details in the same style as the resume header, the date, and the employer or hiring manager's name. | Your full street address. City and country are enough for an online application. |
| Greeting | The hiring manager's name if the posting or the company page gives it. Otherwise "Dear Hiring Manager" or "Dear [Team name] team". | "To whom it may concern." |
| Opening, 2 to 3 sentences | The role you are applying for, and one concrete reason you fit it or one reason you want this company in particular. | A paraphrase of your resume summary. They have the resume. |
| Middle, 1 or 2 paragraphs | Two or three specific things you did that map to what the posting asks for, with numbers, tools or names where you have them. | A list of adjectives (motivated, detail-oriented, passionate) with no evidence behind them. |
| Closing | What you want next (a conversation, an interview), a short thank you, and a plain sign-off with your name. | A paragraph apologizing for a gap or a missing requirement. Address it in one sentence in the middle if you must, or not at all. |
Keep it to one page. Three to five short paragraphs is the normal shape, and a letter that runs longer usually has a resume paragraph hiding in it. Read the finished draft once as the hiring manager and ask of each paragraph whether it tells them something the resume does not. If not, cut it.
A reusable skeleton is fine. One r/ResumeCoverLetterTips thread, as of September 2026, is titled "I use this simple cover letter template every time", and that is how most people who write many letters work. The header, greeting format and closing can stay the same from one application to the next. The opening and the middle are the parts that must change, because they are the parts that mention the job. Since the builder keeps multiple letters, save one per employer and log the application in the job tracker so you remember which letter went where.