One of the most popular alternatives to Ulysses is Zettlr, which is free and open source. Other popular alternatives are Microsoft Word, CherryTree, Typora and HelixNotes. Note-taking Tools like Ulysses are a crowded field, with more than 100 alternatives for Mac, Windows, the web, Linux and iPhone.
Its primary goal is to make writing the first draft of your novel as easy as possible by improving the writing experience. It pulls you into your story with audio-visual themes, makes you feel comfortable in your writing space with its minimalist approach, and helps you hit...
AI-powered writing platform for fiction authors — Story Bible, conflict detection, AI Copilot, and book export in one place.
United States
Inkra is a native Markdown editor for macOS — not an Electron app, but real Mac performance with SwiftUI and AppKit. Write in Markdown with real-time syntax highlighting based on TextKit 2 and AST parsing.
Germany
EU
Plan, write, and structure long-form fiction with offline scene reordering, plot timeline, character mapping, AI writing assistant, notes for world-building, export options, and privacy-first local storage. No subscriptions, one-time payment, or web account required.
Skrivana is a writing workspace for storytellers. Write your story, plan your plot, track your lore, and build your world all in one place.
A macOS writing environment whose AI reads your whole manuscript to help you revise — it won't write it for you. Manuscript, notes, and built-in library research in one local-first window.
Japan
SceneWright Studio is a media-rich story planning and writing application. It takes the time proven index card method and digitizes it, adding almost every resource you could want on its own card.
United States
A fast, native markdown viewer built for the AI era. Browse folders, render LaTeX and Mermaid diagrams, and read AI-generated docs beautifully — all offline, under 15MB.
United States
Comprehensive desktop app for offline novel and book creation, planning, multi-strand timelines, and typesetting. Designed for high-quality interior design with book themes and workspace integration, producing upload-ready PDF, EPUB, and DOCX for self-publishing platforms on Windows and Mac.
United States
CipherWrite is a web-based book writing application designed for long, unfinished works such as novels or memoirs. It encrypts every word in your browser before storing it, ensuring your draft remains unreadable to the service, safe from breaches, and can't be used for AI...
India
Extypis is a writing studio built for the long haul — novels, theses, essays, poetry collections, screenplays, in-depth blog series. Anything that falls apart in Google Docs past chapter twelve.
FranceEU
Local writing app for novelists. The AI reads your scenes and fills your character sheets, timeline and relationships. It never writes for you.
FranceEU
