Picking the perfect writing app to settle into is hard. Take a look at table below to compare Atlas with other popular writing apps across the features that shape day-to-day writing, collection, and creating, so you can judge for yourself where each one lands.
| Feature | Atlas | Scrivener | Ulysses | Obsidian | Ellipsus | iA Writer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-time purchase option | Lifetime available |
Subscription only | Free / Sub add-ons | $99 Plus, or free |
||
| Native Apple apps | — | — | ||||
| Windows support | — | — | Browser only |
|||
| Editor theme customizer | Visual, per-element |
— | CSS only |
Theme builder (Plus) |
3 fonts |
|
| Wiki-style links & backlinks | — | — | ||||
| Infinite canvas with connections | Corkboard |
— | — | — | ||
| Apple Pencil sketching | — | — | Plugin |
— | — | |
| Built-In Web Clipper | — | — | — | — | ||
| Varied document types | Text, canvas, media, web & sketch |
Text, canvas, media, web |
— | Text + canvas |
Text + images |
Text + embeds |
| Cross-device sync | Seamless iCloud |
Manual via Dropbox |
Paid add-on |
Online only |
||
| Comparison conflict merging/Snapshotting | — | — | — | Draft merging |
— | |
| Document History | Detailed, Comparable, cross-device |
Simple list |
Simple list |
Paid add-on |
30 days; unlimited Plus |
Via System |
| ePub and PDF Exporting | Plugins |
PDF only |
||||
| Dynamic Export Styling | — | — | — | |||
| Shortcut & Intents Support | — | Plugins |
— |
An editor that doesn’t lock you into a specific style or font choice but still supports all the features needed to help you focus on your written prose like Focus Mode and Typewriter Scrolling. Markdown Syntax can be optionally hidden, images and tables render, custom fonts—it’s how you want to write.
Open a Project in multiple places without worry of losing a thing. Using iCloud, Atlas treats your documents carefully with a unified history from each device, and instead of dumping all of your content into duplicate recovery folders or duplicating entire projects, works with you to ensure nothing is ever lost.
More than just a writing app, Atlas is designed to house all of the content that helps power your projects: research, drafts, images, web-page references, and more.
The Web Clipper pulls webpages into Atlas as clean, readable Markdown with article text extracted, images pulled out, the navigation and ads left behind, and lets you choose where it lands and what to keep.
