Free Software Collection
Free Markdown Editors
The value of Markdown is in the file itself: a .md file is plain text that any editor opens, that versions in Git, and that stays readable after the software is gone. Typora was the default for many people until it left beta with version 1.0 in November 2021 and became paid, with a 15-day trial. Everything on this list is free, and most of it is open source. It falls into two groups: editors for writing one piece, and knowledge bases for managing many notes. Pandoc is included too, for when Markdown has to be delivered as Word or PDF.
8 curated recommendations
Selection Criteria
- Writing and export are free, with no trial period and no monthly subscription.
- Content is stored as Markdown and can be read directly or exported in full as .md files, not locked into one application.
- Local writing needs no account and works offline.
- Where sync costs money — SiYuan's official cloud, for example — it is noted along with a free alternative.
Recommended Tools
MarkText
A free, open-source Markdown editor with real-time preview and a clean interface
- Open Source
- Offline
- Cross-platform
- No Ads
SoloMD
A free, open-source Markdown editor — one file, one window, just write
- Open Source
- No Tracking
- Offline
- Cross-platform
Zettlr
A one-stop Markdown workbench for researchers and writers
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Obsidian
A local-first knowledge base — your notes stay yours
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
- No Sign-up
Joplin
Open-source, offline-first note-taking with end-to-end encrypted sync
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
SiYuan
Block-level bidirectional linking, stored as Markdown files on your disk
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Logseq
An open-source outliner with bidirectional links to grow your knowledge graph
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
Pandoc
The universal translator between document formats
- Open Source
- No Ads
- No Tracking
- Offline
FAQ
- A free WYSIWYG editor like Typora?
- MarkText. MIT-licensed with real-time preview, plus source, typewriter and focus modes; it handles KaTeX math, table editing and pasted images, and exports HTML and PDF. It was rumoured to be abandoned, but v0.19.1 shipped in June 2026. The drawback is size: it is built on Electron, and the Windows installer is 106 MB.
- Writing a paper or a book with a bibliography?
- Zettlr. It has built-in Zotero and JabRef citations, footnotes, and export to journal-ready PDF and Word. For daily notes none of that applies, and something lighter fits better. Where the submission format is strict, add Pandoc: supply a Word template to produce .docx directly, and use a BibTeX or CSL file to generate citations in APA and many other styles. Pandoc is a command-line tool, and PDF output needs a LaTeX installation.
- Obsidian, SiYuan, Logseq and Joplin are all note apps. Which one?
- Obsidian keeps notes as .md files in a folder and has the largest plugin ecosystem, but it is not open source. SiYuan is AGPL open source, references down to the block level, and handles Chinese typesetting carefully; its official cloud sync is paid, but S3, WebDAV or Syncthing sync for free. Logseq is an outliner where every line is a block — good for journals and task lists, awkward for long prose. Joplin offers end-to-end encrypted sync to your own Nextcloud or Dropbox, and notes export in full as Markdown.
- How is SoloMD different?
- SoloMD is the editor we make ourselves: one file, one window, aimed at writing. It is MIT-licensed, sends no telemetry by default, and runs on desktop and mobile. It adds local semantic search and AutoGit versioning, and ships with a CLI and an MCP server so AI tools such as Claude can read and write documents through it directly.