A browser workspace, or a focused native writing app?
iA Writer is the stronger choice for writing alone in a quiet native app, with Focus Mode, Authorship tracking, and a one-time price, and mdedit.ai is the stronger choice once a document has to be shared, reviewed, diagrammed, or opened in a browser.
By Vivek Maskara · Last updated
Choose mdedit.ai when
Your document moves through writers and reviewers, includes diagrams, or has to be reachable from a browser as well as a desktop app.
Try mdedit.ai without sign-upChoose iA Writer when
You write mostly alone, want an app that removes everything but the text, and prefer paying once for a native Mac, Windows, iPhone, or iPad app.
Visit iA WriterRuns in the browser
mdedit.ai
Yes, no sign-up needed
iA Writer
No browser editor documented
Native apps
mdedit.ai
Desktop app opens local folders
iA Writer
Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad
Co-editing and comments
mdedit.ai
Yes, with permissions
iA Writer
Not documented
Focus tools
mdedit.ai
Source and live preview together
iA Writer
Focus Mode and Style Check
AI and authorship
mdedit.ai
Inspectable AI suggestions
iA Writer
Marks typed versus pasted text
Diagrams
mdedit.ai
Mermaid, Graphviz, Markmap
iA Writer
Not documented
Export
mdedit.ai
Server-side Pandoc, from the browser
iA Writer
Copy as HTML, PDF, Word
Price
mdedit.ai
Free tier, paid from US$6.99 a month
iA Writer
US$49.99 Mac, US$39.99 Windows, one-time
Platforms
mdedit.ai
iA Writer
What each editor looks like with a document open. Every frame is cropped to the same shape, so the difference you see is the interface, not the picture.
Every price below is the one published on each product’s own pages. The full mdedit.ai tiers are on mdedit.ai pricing.
Primary model
Editing experience
Review and collaboration
AI and authorship
Export
Access and price
Neither tool wins everywhere. These are the parts worth knowing before you commit.
iA Writer works in plain-text Markdown, so moving between the two is a copy rather than a migration.
Open the files you already have
Nothing is rewritten. iA Writer documents are Markdown text, and the mdedit.ai desktop app opens local Markdown folders, so files you can reach on disk stay where you keep them. How the desktop app works.
Convert anything that is not Markdown yet
Source material that starts as PDF, Word, HTML, PowerPoint, Excel, or EPUB comes in through the Markdown converters first. Markdown converters.
Leaving again is symmetric
Pandoc-backed export writes PDF, DOCX, HTML, EPUB, LaTeX, ODT, RTF, and PowerPoint, so a document can go back to iA Writer, to a colleague, or to print without being locked in.
No, but it has a seven-day free trial for Mac and Windows with no credit card. After that it is a one-time payment per platform, US$49.99 for Mac and US$39.99 for Windows when bought from iA, with iPhone and iPad as a one-time App Store purchase. iA’s own FAQ notes that one-time is not lifetime, since major updates may cost extra. mdedit.ai has a free tier and a no-sign-up scratchpad, and the paid tiers are on mdedit.ai pricing.
iA Writer’s public pages document apps for Mac, Windows, iPhone, and iPad, and a subscription Android app, but not a browser editor, so this comparison treats it as undocumented rather than unsupported. mdedit.ai opens straight into a no-sign-up scratchpad in the browser, and the same work can continue in the desktop app.
iA Writer’s product and pricing pages do not describe live multi-user editing, so this comparison treats it as undocumented. mdedit.ai keeps that loop inside the document with live co-editing, comments, suggestions, assignments, and resolution.
iA Writer’s Authorship shows which text you typed and which you pasted, with AI-generated text in color. mdedit.ai takes a different route: AI changes arrive as suggestions you can inspect before accepting. Both aim at keeping the writer in charge of what goes into the document, but they are different mechanisms.
If mdedit.ai is the better fit for this document, the editor opens in your browser with no sign-up. If iA Writer is the better fit, the links on this page go straight to it.
