30 Best Writing Apps And Software

This regularly updated list features the best writing apps and software for authors, bloggers, and freelancers.

I use many of these writing apps regularly. Others, come recommended by writers and authors. Every single one of the writing apps included in this list will help you become a better, smarter, and more productive writer — provided you put writing first.

Remember, while the writing software around today is useful and powerful, don’t let a shiny app distract you. That means spending time in the chair and writing your articles, books or stories! When you’re done, you can tinker with the best writing apps as a reward.

I use this application to check my blog posts and book chapters for typos and spelling mistakes. The premium version of Grammarly has powerful features that also help you to improve your writing skills.

It provides several editing recommendations such as avoiding passive voice, using shorter sentences, alternative word suggestions for using a broader vocabulary, and so on. Many of these features are invaluable when you need to trim your word count. You can find out why I like this premium grammar checker in our Grammarly review.

LivingWriter is a new story writing app for writing stories or a book. Rather than using a word processor, Living Writer is accessible via your web browser. It helps writers arrange their plots and stories using boards much like Scrivener. Living Writer contains a series of outline templates for popular story structures like the Hero’s Journey.

It’s a great choice for short stories and novels. LivingWriter now includes apps for Android and iOS and a new offline desktop mode. You can take out a 14-day free trial without using a credit card. To learn more, read our Living Writer review.

ProWritingAid is another proofreading and grammar checker writing app that will help you improve your writing and refine the art of self-editing.

The way ProWritingAid works is similar to Grammarly, but it’s more affordable. If you’re unsure about this writing software and how it compares to the apps above, I recently published a detailed review and video comparison.

Read our ProWritingAid review.

I can’t recommend Scrivener enough as a writing app for longer-form works. I use this book writing software to write feature articles for newspapers, long-form content, reports, books and more. In the past, I used Scrivener for blogging. These days, I use it mostly for long-form writing. Scrivener goes far beyond a regular word processor such as Microsoft Word.

Scrivener makes it easier for writers and even students to organise their ideas and manage more complicated writing projects, using both the desktop and mobile writing app. It’s also available on iPad. Scrivener also has plenty of keyboard shortcuts to speed up the writing process. Read our Scrivener review.

I use dictation writing software to write 1,000s of words per hour when up against a deadline. This is something I just couldn’t pull off with a word processor. Dictation is not like typing, but it’s a skill worth learning.

Check out my guide to how I use the writing app Dragon Naturally Speaking to learn more about how to use this app to write faster and to convert speech to text. If you’re on a budget, you can try dictation by using the inbuilt software in Windows or Mac for your work. Dragon Naturally Speaking costs approximately $300, or you can pay a $14.99 monthly subscription for Dragon Anywhere.

Read our Dragon Anywhere review.

Write! Pro bills itself as a digital workspace for writing and note-taking. It works on Mac, Windows or Linux as an app on your computer. Write! Pro backups up your work to the cloud for safety and anywhere access. It’s a distraction-free writing app much like Byword or IA Writer and comes with a focus mode and white and dark themes. However, Write! Pro includes more fonts and editing features than those apps.

For example, the app enables writers to set daily goals around a word-count. You can also arrange both short and long-form writing using a file and folder structure as well as tabs, kind of like Scrivener. Writers can also share their work with readers and editors from inside of the app. It also supports Markdown.

Rev is another useful dictation app for writers. Using the iPhone or Android app, you can dictate a draft into your phone and then upload it to Rev for transcription by a human at $1 a minute. Alternatively, if you interview someone, you can save time by transcribing these interviews for writing better non-fiction articles. It’s more accurate than using a dictaphone, but at a cost. If you’re on a budget, use an AI transcription service. Read our Rev review.

Vellum is a writing app that authors can use for preparing a book for self-publishing. One of the trickiest parts of self-publishing is creating a book that looks good. Or at least, it was. With Vellum, you can create beautiful-looking e-books and print books in minutes. I prepare all my books for self-publishing with Vellum, and it’s a delight to use. Read our Vellum review.

Ginger software is an affordable alternative to Grammarly. I recommend Ginger Software to writers who don’t consider English their primary language. It enables you to translate documents written in Spanish, French, German, and more into English. It will also check for grammar errors. Read our comparison of Ginger Vs Grammarly.

IA Writer is a useful distraction-free writing app for short blog posts and articles. While Scrivener is great for managing large writing projects, this writing app is perfect for smaller ones.

This writing app for iPad, iPhone, and Mac helps writers overcome distractions through a feature called the Focus Mode. The writing app also has a full-screen mode that highlights the line you are currently typing. It will fade out everything else on the document. This is one of the most ingenious features I have come across for focusing your mind on the current point, which is rather useful especially in creative writing projects.

I use IA Writer on my laptop, desktop and mobile. It’s an elegant, easy-to-use word processor, and it syncs my writing across all of my devices. Other minimalist writing app alternatives include Byword and WriteRoom. Read our IA Writer review.

If you’re a writer on a budget, you don’t need to spend any money buying expensive writing software or apps. Instead, you can use the text editor that comes free with your operating system. Just open up Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac and get to work! I like plain text editors for writing something short quickly and easily, without thinking about it too much.

Writers can use Dynalist to create outlines for articles and book chapters. I use Dynalist to create bullet-point outlines before I dictate them. It’s the fastest outlining app I’ve tried apart from mind-mapping software. It also enables sharing and collaboration, which is useful if you want to commission an article and give it to another writer to create.

If you’re the type of writer who likes to outline their work in advance, this app is useful. It also supports Markdown and can be used as a to-do list tool. The free version is probably good enough for most writers unless you value a revision history. Read our Dynalist review.

Ulysses is a powerful yet intuitive distraction-free writing app for Mac OS and iOS. Windows and Android writers are out of luck. It also has features such as Markup-Based Text Editor, keyboard shortcuts so that writers can work quicker, a library to organise notes and documents, a space to set writing goals, publish directly to WordPress and Medium, and so on.

It includes mobile and tablet writing apps. Arguably, it’s not quite as distraction-free as IA Writer, but it helps you organize both small writing projects (like a blog post) and large ones (like a book). Read our Ulysses review.

Final Draft is the default app of choice for screenwriters. I’ve experimented with Final Draft and it strikes me as an example of powerful writing software, but with a bigger learning curve than your typical word processor. Although I don’t write screenplays, I was in a creative writing group a few years ago, and a few screenwriters in it used this app. Read our Final Draft review.

Day One is the best journal writing app you’ll find on the market today. It’s much more than an online diary. You can also add photos, audio, and video to your entries. You don’t even need to sit down and type anything up, as you can record directly into your Apple Watch. As journalling it quite a hard habit to stick to, the ease of use makes it much more accessible. This makes journaling more interactive and fun. It also automatically uses geotags that add location, date, time, and weather to your entires.

Day One is available the iOS app store for Apple users, Play Store for Android users, or Mac Store for Mac users. Read our Day One review.

Evernote is a good app for saving research and story ideas. I use Evernote to record ideas for blog posts and book chapters during the day. Jotting down notes immediately when ideas come to you is a fantastic way of capturing random moments of inspiration, as well as overcoming writer’s block. So this is certainly a note-taking app worth exploring.

I also save articles and writing prompts I like into Evernote as part of my personal swipe file using the mobile app. This writing app also has several other features worth exploring such as dictation mode which will easily allow you to transcribe your voice notes as text. It also has integrations, team collaboration, and more. You can read about how I take charge of Evernote in this guide. Bear is a popular alternative to Evernote. Read our guide: What is Evernote?

“If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”

Ernest Hemingway

That’s easier said than done. The good news is writers can use Hemingway Editor to improve their writing and self-editing skills. Paste your text into the application and it will provide suggestions for removing unnecessary words here and there, such as adverbs or tautology.

It also suggests reframing specific sentences from passive voice to active voice, and much more. Hemingway is useful when you wish to reduce your word count without leaving out any essential points from your article. Read our Hemingway app review.

The Novel Factory is a type of novel writing software for fiction writers. It works on the web and via a desktop app for Windows. You can try it for free for 30-days. If you decide to keep it, it only costs $7.50 per month.

It offers a step-by-step tutorial to writing your first novel taking you through scene, character, themes, and so on. I don’t write fiction much these days, so I haven’t tested The Novel Factory extensively. It reminded me a little of the Scrivener fiction template. Listen to our interview with Katja Kaine of the Novel Factor.

Dabble is a useful tool for authors to manage their work. You can try it for free, before opting for one of their monthly subscription packages, which range from $10, $15, and $20 per month. Dabble is a fiction writer’s dream. You can organize your projects into individual folders, to manage notes on plotlines, character creation, major events, and so on. It will also track the word count of your entire project, chapters, and events.

With a goal-setting feature, it will help you stay on track if you’re tackling NaNoWriMo. Say goodbye to post-it notes and piles and piles of notebooks, Dabble can store and organize everything you need on hand as you craft your novel. It’s also very user-friendly, so if you’re not the best at navigating technology, you should be fine. It’s web-based so you’re not confined to your desktop, if you made notes on your phone, everything will still be there on your computer. Read our Dabble review.

AutoCrit is a self-editing app built for novelists and storytellers. Beyond just checking for spelling and grammar errors, it includes tools to examine the pacing and momentum of your work, dialogue, and more. It points out instances of passive voice, showing vs. telling, use of cliche phrases, and even if you overuse certain words or phrases.

The interface is not too difficult to navigate. It’s best to copy or upload your text from something else like MS word into the app. When you’re finished, you can export the document, print it, or email it to your editor.

While Autocrit can begin at $30 per month, the pro version costs around $300 per year, but there is a basic free version too. Read our AutoCrit review.

If you write fiction or casual blog posts, Writer.Com is not for you. Instead, it’s intended for marketing teams, brand agencies, social media managers, sales and HR departments, PR, and more. It can act as a style guide-building platform, so members of a team can mandate and learn rules for style in terms of the language and tone to use when writing. It will also perform grammar checks too.

Given that businesses will have social media accounts, blogs, email, and more, Writer.Com manages to plug into them all. This includes sales platforms, content management systems, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Gmail, and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Read our Writer.Com review.

Linguix acts as a spelling and grammar checker. It’s more affordable than Grammarly’s premium plan. It’s ideal for anyone who writes for a living, or as a hobby. Students will also benefit from using it to prove their essays or assignments. While it does a good job at catching typos, it won’t catch sentences that run on or are difficult to understand.

While Linguix does have a plagiarism checker, this tool is not unlimited. So, if you’re a professional writer, you should purchase a separate plagiarism checker. However, it does have a useful style guide feature too. Read our Linguix review.

Byword is a Markdown text editor. It’s mostly aimed at Apple writers. Byword is not ideal for authors, but bloggers and web developers will find it useful. While it offers Markdown support, it can also support keyboard shortcuts to allow you to Preview your work ahead of publishing. It even boasts MultiMarkdown support cross-referencing and footnotes, and metadata.

If you’re not already familiar with Markdown, Byword even has a guide to get you started. It’s $5.99 to download for iOS and $11 to download on Mac. Read our Byword review.

Wordtune can help you to write better sentences. It’s helpful for employees or freelancers sending emails to editors, or for writers who are struggling to find the best way to phase something.

This AI rephrasing tool can help you perfect the tone of what you are trying to write. This includes making text sound more formal, or casual. It can also suggest ways to shorten your sentences or expand on your thoughts. It also has an online editor.

The onboarding process is fairly simple, and it’s easy to use so you don’t need to worry about being out of your depth. Read our Wordtune review.

Article Forge is ideal for businesses that need to create content. The app uses artificial intelligence to scan existing web pages for keywords or a topic. It will analyze the content, and then rewrite it in its own language. It sounds too good to be true, right? The article will be generated in minutes. It’s meant to be SEO optimized, and can automatically include links, videos, and photos.

You’re limited to 750 words per article. To be blunt, the content is not fantastic. However, it can be tidied up if you run it through Grammarly, and cut any fluff. On the bright side, the plagiarism scores are low, so you shouldn’t need to worry about running into any issues with competitors. Read our Article Forge review.

Rytr is a tool for businesses looking to create content or even bloggers who might be facing writer’s block. All you do is provide it with some context, and it will create a copy within seconds, this includes articles, blog posts, ads, social media posts, and outlines. You might be wondering if there’s a catch, but the content it creates should be free from plagiarism.

Honestly, having it create content from scratch doesn’t provide the best results. However, it does a solid job at rewriting and improving posts that already exist. It also does a decent job at mocking up product descriptions, as long as you provide the context. Plus, it can function as an editing tool. Read our Rytr review.

Jasper.ai is a godsend for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to create short-form content. This includes email subject lines, product descriptions, blog introduction, social media posts, and video titles. It’s one of the best apps if you’re looking to use AI to boost your content. It can even help bloggers tackle writer’s block too.

It won’t put copywriters or content writers out of business. Instead, it can make their content even better. The most useful tools include the AIDA template generator, which is key to copywriting. As well as a blog introduction generator and the Jasper Facebook group where there are more than 30,000 experts happy to help. Read our Jasper AI review.

All writers need somewhere to write. Zoho Writer is less known than Google Docs or Microsoft Word. So what does it have that they don’t? Zoho writer offers a writing assistant to help with readability, grammar, and more issues. It also allows live collaboration with team members and offline editing in your browser. Plus, there is a decent amount of templates or formatting options to choose from.

You can write in real-time or drag and drop in content from a Word Doc. Zoho can even help you publish your article on WordPress.com. It’s split up into three different workspaces: Compose, Review and Distribute, where you can write the content, work with collaborations and then publish or share it. Read our Zoho Writer review.

Google Docs is a useful and free writing app and a good alternative to Microsoft Word. It’s a reliable choice if you like collaborating with other writers or an editor online. It works almost anywhere, assuming you have a reliable internet connection. Its functionality for handling large documents, like a book, has also dramatically improved. Now, you can click on headers to navigate from one section to the next. Permissions can be a bit of a headache though.

Mindmapping and brainstorming tools can help writers plan their work more efficiently and creatively. Writers can pick from a plethora of brainstorming apps today. Mindmeister offers a nice balance between functionality and ease of use. It’s also relatively affordable. If you want something more powerful try Ayoa. To learn more about using these types of writing applications, Read check out our guide to the best mind mapping software.

A Final Word On The Best Writing Apps

There are thousands of writing apps out there, some of which are free, some of which are expensive. I’ve spent a lot of time testing and using these writing apps. I dumped the apps that added no value to this site, and I paid for ones that helped me grow an audience, and write better articles and stories.

As you can see, there are many blogging and writing apps. Each will solve specific problems for you, but your craft should always come first. Pick an app from this list if it solves a problem for you and then get back to what counts; filling the blank page and building lasting relationships with your readers.

Why You Can Trust Us

I’ve written and published dozens of articles for newspapers, magazines, and online publications including, Forbes and Lifehacker. I’m also a best-selling non-fiction author, a trained journalist, and a copywriter. I regularly use and test the latest writing apps for my work. I also asked other freelance writers to share their impressions of these apps. 

Our Testing Criteria

A team of writers collaborated to create this roundup. We reviewed many of these writing apps individually, writing articles and book chapters with them. We considered factors like pricing, ease of use, and features for many types of writing.

Writing Apps Resources

Best Grammar Checker Tools

Best Note-Taking Apps

Best Book Writing Software

Best Essay Checkers

Best Writing Apps for Android

Best Writing Apps for iPad

The Best Writing Tools