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DIRECTORY

Best Journal Writing Apps in 2025

Showing 49 writing apps that match your search.

From boardroom to lecture hall, project plan to daily diary, Nebo makes note-taking smarter, more efficient and more enjoyable.

Platforms: Android, iPhone, iPad

Best for: Note-taking, Journal, Poetry, and Blog

Website: https://www.nebo.app/

Base price:

$9.99 one-time payment

Premium price:

Write-to-text

Copy-paste to Notes

Mix handwriting with text

★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.3 on the App Store

Enjoy a distraction-free writing experience, including a full screen mode and a clean interface. With Markdown, you can write now, and format later.

Platforms: Windows, Mac, PC

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

Website: https://ghostwriter.kde.org/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Light and dark themes

Focus mode

Document and session statistics

Autosave

★★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★★ Accessibility

★★★★★ Value

Writemonkey is a Windows zenware writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free.

Platforms: Windows, PC, Mac

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

Website: https://writemonkey.com/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Customizable with a clean text format

Visual progress bar

Timed writing

★★★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.5 on TechRadar

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LibreOffice is a free and powerful office suite, and a successor to OpenOffice.org (commonly known as OpenOffice). Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity.

Platforms: Mac, Windows, PC

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

Website: https://www.libreoffice.org/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Full-feature word processor

Customizable fonts and other styles

★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.5 on TechRadar

Make mind map documents that flow like your ideas.

Platforms: Online

Best for: Note-taking, Journal, Essay, Blog, and Free

Website: https://coggle.it/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

$5.00 monthly

Powerful online flowcharts

Realtime collaboration

Add floating text and images

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.5 on Capterra

Capture your thoughts, discoveries, and ideas and simplify overwhelming planning moments in your life with your very own digital notepad. With OneNote, you can plan that big event, seize that moment of inspiration to create something new, and track that list of errands that are too important to forget.

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

Best for: Note-taking, Journal, Blog, Essay, and Free

Website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/onenote/dig...

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Sync across devices

Share and collaborate

Secure notes with password

Pin important pages and notes

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.5 on TechRadar

Writer is a writing application without the fuss and distraction of a traditional word processor. It's perfect for everything from taking notes to writing a novel on your phone or tablet.

Platforms: Android

Best for: Note-taking, Book, Story, Journal, Essay, Blog, Poetry, and Free

Website: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jamesmc...

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Markdown

Estimated reading time

Character and word count

★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★ Accessibility

★★★ Value

Also rated 3.8 on Google Play

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

Diarly is built for the best journaling experience. With every feature you will need and a beautiful interface, starting a journal has never been so simple.

Platforms: Mac, iPhone, iPad

Best for: Note-taking and Journal

Website: https://diarly.app/

Base price:

$2.00 monthly

Premium price:

Built-in gallery and maps

Timeline

Notes

Custom fonts and templates

★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.8 on the App Store

The human brain is non-linear: we jump from idea to idea, all the time. Your second brain should work the same. In Obsidian, making and following connections is frictionless. Tend to your notes like a gardener; at the end of the day, sit back and marvel at your own knowledge graph.

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

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

Website: https://obsidian.md/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

$25.00 one-time payment

Link pages

Graph view

Customizable with backlinked notes

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.5 on TechRadar

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

The simplest way to keep notes. All your notes, synced on all your devices.

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

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

Website: https://simplenote.com/

Base price:

Free

Premium price:

Automatic syncing

Tags for organization

Share documents and notes

★★★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★★★★ Accessibility

★★★★★ Value

Also rated 4.5 on TechRadar

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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