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DIRECTORY

Best Writing Apps in 2025

Showing 128 writing apps that match your search.

Chapters lets you manage multiple notebooks, each fully searchable and with its own settings. Keep a personal journal, a photo diary, notes about that project at work, and a travel journal in a single app.

Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Mac

Best for: Note-taking and Journal

Website: http://slidetorock.com/apps/Chapters-iPad-notebooks.html

Base price:

$1.99 one-time payment

Premium price:

Password protected

Color code

Fast search

Create backup files

★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★ Accessibility

★★★ Value

Also rated 4.0 on the App Store

Polish & improve your novel. Identify word and phrase over-use. Monitor adverbs and clichés, crutch words and phrases. Improve sentence structure and punctuation.

Platforms: Windows, PC

Best for: Editing, Proofreading, Book, and Story

Website: https://smart-edit.com/

Base price:

$77.00 one-time payment

Premium price:

$139.00 one-time payment

Find repeated words and phrases

Identify overused adverbs and clichés

Edit long and winding sentences

★★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★ Accessibility

★★ Value

The Internet's best write-reward system! Write one hundred words, get an image of a kitten!

Platforms: Online

Best for: Drafting, Book, Story, Essay, Journal, Poetry, Blog, and Free

Website: https://writtenkitten.co/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Kittens!

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★★ Features

★★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★★ Value

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Apple’s App of the Year with over 15 million downloads and 200,000 5-star ratings globally, Day One has reinvented journaling, letting you record your life as you live it. Securely save audio, video, photos, notes, and more wherever you are, whenever you want.

Platforms: iPad, Mac, iPhone, Android

Best for: Note-taking, Journal, and Free

Website: https://dayoneapp.com/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

$2.92 monthly

An award-winning interface

Syncs across devices

Automatic backups

Password secured

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.8 on the App Store

Mellel is a word processor designed from the ground up to be the ultimate writing tool for academics, technical writers, scholars and students. Mellel is strong, stable and reliable, and is the ideal companion for working on documents that are long and complex, short and simple, or anything in between.

Platforms: Mac, iPhone, iPad

Best for: Outlining, Drafting, and Essay

Website: https://mellel.com/

Base price:

$49.00 one-time payment

Premium price:

Outline

Bibliography

Footnotes and endnotes

Multilingual support

★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★ Accessibility

★★ Value

Also rated 3.2 on the App Store

Don't let your word processor drag your process down. Ironically enough, traditional word processors weren’t designed for writers. Dabble’s book-writing software was developed for writers, by a writer.

Platforms: Mac, Windows, Chrome, PC

Best for: Drafting, Book, and Story

Website: https://www.dabblewriter.com/

Base price:

$96.00 yearly

Premium price:

$192.00 yearly

Cloud storage

Word counts & goals

Co-authoring

★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★ Accessibility

Value

Zoho Writer is a fully-featured word processor on the cloud, designed for collaborative work that gives you everything you need to create powerful documents. With a clean UI, intuitive interface and document modes, it introduces you to a new way of writing.

Platforms: Android, Windows, PC, iPad, iPhone

Best for: Drafting, Book, Essay, Journal, Poetry, Story, Blog, and Free

Website: https://www.zoho.com/writer/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Focus mode & Night mode

Auto save

An AI-powered writing assistant

Hundreds of templates

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 3.4 on Google Play

Open to write and follow the prompt suggestions, it's that easy. Good for poetry writing, journal writing, storytelling, narration, cinema, and more. All using a patented artificial intelligence technology.

Platforms: iPhone, iPad

Best for: Brainstorming, Story, Book, and Poetry

Website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/creative-writing-prompts/id...

Base price:

$1.99 one-time payment

Premium price:

Thousands of prompts

Set a daily writing goal

View custom writing stats

★★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★ Accessibility

★★★ Value

Also rated 4.6 on the App Store

Build your best ideas together, in Google Docs. Create, edit, and collaborate with others on documents from your Android phone or tablet with the Google Docs app.

Platforms: Online, Chrome, iPhone, iPad, Android

Best for: Drafting, Book, Essay, Journal, Poetry, Story, Blog, and Free

Website: https://www.google.com/docs/about/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Create and share new documents

Work online and offline

Export in multiple formats

Collaborate in real time

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.0 on TechRadar

Story Planner is an easy-to-use and yet powerful tool for plotting novels, screenplays, and any fiction story. It works great for writers, screenwriters, producers, directors, RPG masters … All kinds of storytellers!

Platforms: iPhone, iPad

Best for: Outlining, Drafting, Story, and Book

Website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/story-planner-outline-your-...

Base price:

$5.99 one-time payment

Premium price:

Organize projects by tags

Link elements

Color code and organize plot lines

★★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★ Accessibility

★★★ Value

Also rated 4.7 on the App Store

Manuskript is a perfect tool for those writer who like to organize and plan everything before writing. The snowflake method can help you grow your idea into a book, by leading you step by step and asking you questions to go deeper.

Platforms: Mac, Windows, PC

Best for: Outlining, Story, Book, and Free

Website: https://www.theologeek.ch/manuskript/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Index cards

Outliner

Frequency analyzer

★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Get organized. Stay creative. Milanote is an easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards.

Platforms: iPhone, iPad, PC, Windows, Mac, Android, Chrome, Online

Best for: Note-taking, Outlining, Book, Story, Journal, and Free

Website: https://milanote.com/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

$9.99 monthly

Boards for notes and to-dos

Web clipper

Collaborative functionalities

Integration across platforms

★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 3.0 on PC Magazine

What makes a good writing app?

Put simply, what makes a writing app good for you will depend on the kind of writer that you are. 

  • If you’re an author, you might be interested in a writing app with outlining, planning, and formatting functionalities.
  • If you’re a student, you’re probably in the market for a writing app that blocks out distractions while you’re writing.
  • If you’re a screenwriter, you’ll want a writing app that’s specifically dedicated to writing screenplays.

Or, if you’re none of the above, worry not: that’s why we built this directory of writing apps. Whatever you need, we’ve gathered the outstanding writing apps of 2024 across multiple categories (drafting, editing, note-taking, etc) and platforms (Android, iOS, online browsers, etc) in one place. Feel free to use the filters to make your quest for the perfect writing app even easier!

So what are the best writing apps of 2024?

We can now put an end to the age-old debate of which writing app is best: Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs

The answer, of course, is neither! Hopefully, this directory will point you towards a much better match that actually fulfills your writing needs. We objectively evaluated each writing app based on four metrics.

  • Performance: How seamlessly does the writing app do what it’s purported to do? How good is the user experience, from top to bottom?
  • Features: How many bells and whistles are built into the app to augment its use?
  • Accessibility: Is it widely available on many different operating platforms (e.g. iOS, Windows, mobile, desktop, etc)?
  • Value: Is it worth the cost that it would take to download it?

Here are some general recommendations to give you a headstart.

The best writing app for authors

If you’ve been searching for an all-in-one outlining, writing, formatting, and typesetting tool, look no further than Reedsy Studio. Used by over 50,000 authors every month, it’s publishing’s most trusted companion to take them from a first draft to a professionally exported manuscript.

💰 Price:  Free

🚉 Runs on: Web

The best writing app for note-takers

Evernote is the king of written organization. In addition to its free organizational templates, Evernote also gives you impressive tagging capabilities, an omnipresent Web Clipper, and the ability to share notes with collaborators, so that you’ll never forget anything again.

💰 Price:  Free basic plan, $4.99/month for premium

🚉 Runs on: Mac, iOS, Windows, and Android

The best writing app for screenwriters

Along with standard scriptwriting features, Final Draft enables you to measure character traits using its inclusivity analysis feature, and tweak your “beat board” until you find your perfect arrangement. And when you’re ready to bring in editors, you can all work simultaneously in real time.

💰 Price: Free trial for 30 days, $249.99 license fee

🚉 Runs on: Mac, iOS, and Windows

I’ve found the perfect writing app. What next?

Congratulations! Now the fun part begins: actually writing the project that you’ve got in mind.

For authors, this means that you have a long and exciting road ahead. In addition to a writing app, we recommend that you arm yourself with some writing knowledge before you embark on it: whether it’s an understanding of story structure or careful thought put into your character creation, all of it can help you realize your goal of a novel.

If you don’t know where to start, check out the list of free resources below. Good luck, and happy writing!

Free online materials

RBE | Writing App For You Interface | 2024-09

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