As a group of writers with quite a bit of experience, one of the most common questions we encounter on a daily basis is “do you guys think a writing app can help someone improve their craft?” Our answer is always “Are you kidding? Of course.”
A writing app is like a tool; without the right tool you cannot be able to accomplish the task at hand; and even if you do, it’s usually after much groveling, toiling and cursing more than a few times. We’d hate to see you in such a position. This is why we have researched, compiled and written this article about the Best Writing Apps in 2021 that can help you turn your interest in writing into a very productive and profitable endeavor.
Our top pick for the best writing apps in 2021 is Grammarly. This is one of the easiest apps to use. It comes with a powerful support for online grammar checking and it can be used from anywhere, at any time. Plus, it offers amazing insights for successful writing. You can find out more below on the main part of our article.
Table of Contents
Best Writing Apps Reviews in 2021
Grammarly – Best for in-depth scrutiny of short pieces e.g. emails and articles
Grammarly is our overall best writing app in 2021. This app is popular as a platform that enables writers to write effectively and without any mistakes. Not only does this app guarantee mistake-free writing but it does so on any app you might be using e.g. Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn, SMS apps etc. Grammarly goes through your text and helps you fix both common and complex grammatical errors that are usually so easy to miss e.g. misplaced commas. And, if a mistake is found, this app explains it in detail and shows you ways to avoid making the same in future.
Grammarly will also help you improve on clarity, boost the engagement you have with your readers and get better overall delivery. Plus, the app has support for the detection of plagiarism.
At the moment, Grammarly has more than 30million users and 400+ team members. They support macOS, native Windows apps and have keyboards for iOS and Android.
Pricing
This app has the following plans:
- Free- this only gives you writing suggestions that are basic such as grammar, punctuation and spelling.
- Premium- Offer you everything in Free plus such additional features as fluency, focus on clarity and suggestions on choice of words.
- Business- This is optimized for teams of 3-149 individuals who need communication that is clear and professional.
Grammarly doesn’t indicate the precise prices of these plans. You can check them out on their Grammarly plans page for more.
Living Writer – Best for writers that want their stories well-structured
Living Writer, our 2nd best writing app is exclusively tailored for stories and book writing and it is accessible through your web browser. One of the most lovable things about Living Writer is you get to start, plot, organize and export your book from this app.
To help you organize and plot with ease, Living Writer includes drag-and-drop for ordering and reordering your chapters, on screen sidebar for jotting quick notes on the sidebar and the board for getting a bigger picture of your writing.
Plus, you also get autosuggest, light/ dark themes, writing goals and auto-save. If you have any trouble with this app, their team is always available 24/7.
You can try out Living writer for free for 30 days then upgrade to any of their plans that suits your needs.
Pricing
Living Writer is priced either on a Yearly or Monthly basis. Their Pay Yearly option starts at $8.00 per month, Pay Monthly starts at $9.99 per month. They also have a Try it Free option that is their 30 days free trial period and goes for $0.00 per month.
Check out Living Writer’s pricing here.
ProWritingAid – Best for long time honing of personal writing style
ProWritingAid finalizes the top 3 best writing apps on our reviews; all courtesy to its error recognition and correction that aims at helping their users hone their personal writing style in the long term. To put it simply, this app rolls a grammar checker, writing mentor and style editor into one very convenient package.
ProWritingAid runs seamlessly on Windows, Mac and Web.
Pricing
This app has the following plans:
- Free- starts at $0 per year. It comes with limited online use only, 19 writing reports and support for editing 500 words at a time.
- Premium- starts at $79 per year. It has everything in Free plus no word limit.
- Premium+- starts at $89 per year. It supports a yearly 50 plagiarism checks on top of every feature in Premium.
Scrivener-Best for long term writers e.g. novelists
If you are hell-bent on paying attention to crucial details that most other apps may miss, then Scrivener by Literature and Latte is just the right app for you. Scrivener is well-known by authors for its sophistication and streamlined performance.
By letting you grow your manuscript organically, this app provides the best platform for you as a long term writer.
This app is available for iOS, macOS and Windows.
Pricing
Scrivener has the following options for purchasing their license:
- Standard License for macOS- This a download product that goes for $49. Making this payment means you have purchased the full version.
- Educational License for macOS- this offer is only available to academics and students and it goes for $41.65.
This same options are available for Windows users with the same prices.
For iOS Scrivener has the Scrivener for iOS that goes for $19.99 and is available from the Apple App Store.
Google Docs-Best for collaborating with other writers and editors
I have personally been using Google Docs for writing, editing and collaborating with my team for quite some time and I can honestly say its performance is astounding. This app not only allows you to do this, you can do it in style, access your documents from anywhere at any time without necessarily requiring the internet and their auto-save feature ensures you don’t have to constantly hit save every time. Plus, you are getting all these FOR FREE!!
Google Docs comes as part of G Suite.
Pricing
Free.
ConvertKit-Best for writers who communicate with their readers via email services
ConvertKit is tailored to suit the needs of writers that use email services to communicate with their readers. As an email service provider, this platform has a lot to offer as we have illustrated on our ConvertKit review.
With ConvertKit, you get to create email courses and send timely sales and educational emails with an extra option for automation.
You can check out ConvertKit and it’s pricing by clicking on any of these links.
Dragon Naturally Speaking-Best for dictation writing
Dragon Natural Speaking is the best dictation software in the market today. This apps speech-to-text fast conversion is one of the most lovable things about it. Its fast conversion helps you get speeds that are 3X faster than typing and with 99% accuracy.
Dragon has a variety of products, all adapted for different purposes. To view more on these products, click on this link.
Pricing
You should note that this product for macOS has been discontinued.
However, you can try out Dragon Professional Individual v15 for Windows starting at $500 by clicking on this link. This plan also has Dragon Legal Individual starting at $150.00 and Dragon Legal Individual v15 starting at $500.
For mobile dictation, this platform has Dragon Anywhere, a mobile dictation solution that is professional grade at a starting price of $14.99 per month with a free trial period of 1 week. This mobile version is available on Android and iOS.
Write! Pro– Best for avoiding distraction without compromising on fonts and editing tools
If distraction is the main excuse for not getting your writing done, try Write! Pro. This app comes with a focus mode and you can set daily writing goals from word-count. It also incorporates dark and light themes and more editing tools and fonts than most other distraction-free writing apps.
Plus, as a writer, you get to share your work with editors and writers all from this app.
This app has support for Windows, Mac and Linux.
They also guarantee a 30 day money-back policy if your writing doesn’t improve with this app.
You can check Write! Pro and the products they have to offer by using this link.
Reedsy Book Editor– Best for a sleek interface that is also distraction free
Reedsy Book Editor is another great option for anyone looking for a distraction-free writing app. The most outstanding feature that sets Reedsy Book Editor apart from other writing apps that are designed to make you focus is its sleek interface. This interface is designed to help you get a book that is professional grade from any work you typeset on it. Plus, if you are a newbie, this app offers you free 10-day courses in writing and self-publishing and an extra 10-day course in marketing if you are already published.
This app requires web to run
Pricing
Free.
yWriter– Best for bite-sized writing i.e. scenes instead of chapters
yWriter is a perfect solution for anyone that is aiming for stories broken down into pieces that are bite-sized. The lovable feature that comes with this app is its beautiful interface lets you organize your story into scenes rather than dividing it into chapters so you can easily keep track of your progress.
This app currently runs on windows, has a beta release in Android and private beta in iOS. The macOS version is still in progress and pretty glitch-y.
Pricing
Free.
Rev – Best for dictation writing with human transcription for accuracy
Rev is a dictation app that provides unrivaled accuracy due to its unique human transcription incorporation. How this works is you get a draft dictated into either your Android or iPhone app and then you upload the draft for transcription by Rev at a cost of $1.25 per minute. The charges, as you can see, are exorbitant, but the accuracy is worth it.
This service is trusted by more than 170,000 customers.
Pricing
- Audio and Video Transcription- $1.25 per minute
- Rough Draft- $0.25 per minute
- Captions- $1.25 per minute
- Foreign Subtitles- $3-7 per minute
- Live Captions for Zoom- at $20 per host
Freedom – Best for combating internet addiction
If you are a writer with an internet addiction problem and it is getting in the way of your progress, Freedom is one of the best apps out there to help you combat this. This app goes beyond just providing a simple interface to help you fight procrastinating by also providing an app and website blocking solution.
This app is currently used by more than 1,000,000 people worldwide.
It runs on Windows, iOS, Mac and Android.
Pricing
- Free Trial- This is Freedom’s free trial offer. It comes with 7 distraction free sessions for all your devices.
- Freedom Premium- You can purchase Freedom app forever for $64.50 or opt for a yearly payment of $2.42 per month or a monthly fee of $6.99 per month.
Vellum– Best for self-publishing with finesse
Self-publishing isn’t easy especially if you are going for a book that is appealing. This is where Vellum swoops down to save your work with astonishing finesse. Vellum is an app that offers you with classic touches for print and ebook editions. These touches include ornamental flourishes and drop caps.
With Vellum, you get to assemble box sets of a series, enable the purchase of your next book by adding store links, use Facebook and Twitter by creating connecting links, get early feedback through the creation of advance copies, and MUCH MUCH MORE!
However, you should note that Vellum is only available for Mac.
Ginger Software – Best for translating documents from other languages and grammar checking
If you need a translation and grammar checking app that serves as an affordable and efficient alternative to Grammarly then Ginger Software is your guy, or app. This app is tailored especially for those writers to whom English isn’t a first language. It helps such writers translate their work easily from other languages to English while at the same time checking for errors in grammar.
Ginger also incorporates a keyboard with more than 100 emoji, adaptive word prediction, proofreading and ready-made themes designed to make your writing process fun and expressive.
Ginger is available for Windows, Android, iOS and Mac.
Ginger has a free version and a premium version.
Pricing
Ginger has premium plans that vary according to your choice of payment period. You can choose to pay a monthly $14.98 per month, or an annual $4.99 per month or a Two Years plan for $3.99 per month.
IA Writer – Best for distraction-free writing of small projects
IA is a minimalist app that has a simple designed tailored to help writers avoid distraction. This app is ideal for writers that deal with short blog posts and articles. This is what draws IA Writer apart from such other distraction free apps such as Scrivener that are optimized for managing large projects.
IA Writer’s Focus Mode is the most lovable feature in this app. This mode is very helpful in fighting distractions. Plus, it also includes a full-screen mode that fades out everything on your current document and only highlights the line you are typing at that moment.
This app is currently used by half a million writers worldwide. It is available for Mac, iOS, Windows and Android.
Pricing
This app is available on all platforms for $29.90 as shown by the screenshot below. The free trial period is limited to 2 weeks.
A Plain Text Editor – Best for writing anything, anywhere easily and fast
A Plain Text Editor is ideal for any writer that wants to write anything fast, without much flourish and is running on a limited budget that doesn’t allow them to buy expensive software for writing. This software comes absolutely free with your operating system.
To use this software, open Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on Mac.
Dynalist – Best for outlining e.g. bullet- point outlining
Dynalist is the best app you can find for the creation of bullet-point outlines of book chapters and articles. It is fast and completely effective for organizing.
With this app, you get tags, color label, note, markdown formatting and much more.
Plus, Dynalist also supports collaboration and sharing.
Pricing
Dynalist has two plans:
- Free- for $0. Below is a screenshot of what you can expect from the Free plan.
- Pro- for $7.99 per month. Below is a snapshot of what you can expect from the Pro plan.
Ulysses – Best for formatting with productivity-hack
Ulysses is a sort of distraction-free app on steroids. It stands apart from such productivity apps as IA Writer and Write! Pro by being richer in features. So, if you want a productivity app that has excellent formatting options, Ulysses may be your best chance.
Plus, with this app, your texts can be transformed into Word documents, PDFs and eBooks or you can opt to export them to HTML.
This writing app is available for Mac, iPad and iPhone.
Pricing
This app can be unlocked on all devices using a subscription. The subscription is either on a monthly or a yearly basis. Below is a screenshot of Ulysses pricing criteria. You should note that all the plans listed below come with full synchronization for iCloud and a free trial period.
Natural Reader – Best for text-to-speech reader for editing
Editing your own work sometimes proves to be problematic especially if you are so used to your own prose and wording that you can’t note the errors. Natural Reader is a perfect remedy for this type of problem. How this app works is you copy your text and paste it into the text box, select your preferred voice and reading speed and then you can follow along as the reading progresses and magnified text is displayed at the bottom. Natural Reader also includes options for pausing, rewinding and fast forwarding so you don’t get to miss anything.
This app is available on Mac, Web and Windows.
Pricing
Natural Reader has the following plans:
- Free- starts at $0. It comes with unlimited voices , mini-board to read text in other apps and Pronunciation Editor
- Personal- Has a one-time payment of $99.50. It includes everything in Free plus 2 natural voices and an option for converting to MP3.
- Professional – has a one-time payment of $129.50. Professional has everything in Personal plus 4 natural voices.
- Ultimate – has a one-time payment of $199.50. It has everything in Professional plus 6 natural voices and 5000 images per year.
Final Draft – Best for leveling up especially for screenwriters who are professional
Final Draft is the go-to app for most screenwriters. This app is a software that is power-packed with exciting features but its learning curve is steeper than that of your basic word processor. So, if you are a screenwriter who is advanced and needs such options as collaboration, comments and content analysis on top of anything offered by a typical word processor, we’d strongly recommend Final Draft.
One of the most lovable features about Final Draft is its analysis feature that lets you keep track of your story elements and character traits.
Final Draft is used by 95% of film and TV productions.
Pricing
Final Draft has the following options:
- Final Draft- for $199.99
- Upgrade to 11 for $79.99
- Teacher/Student for$99.99
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]