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Wretify vs iA Writer
Wretify is a clean, minimalist writing app for nonfiction writers, built for focus — with an AI that has read everything you've written and refuses to write it for you.
What is the difference between Wretify and iA Writer?
iA Writer, by Information Architects, is a minimalist plain-text writing app that keeps your writing as Markdown files and separates writing from formatting.
Wretify is a clean, minimalist writing app for nonfiction writers, built for focus — with an AI that has read everything you've written and refuses to write it for you.
iA Writer and Wretify share a belief: your writing should be plain files you own. Where iA Writer keeps AI out of the room, Wretify brings one in that has read everything you have written and is built to refuse to write for you — it brings your own earlier passages and real, cited research instead. Wretify runs in the browser, including on Android.
What is iA Writer best at?
iA Writer is one of the purest distraction-free writing experiences there is: no buttons or popups, beautiful typography, and a Focus Mode that highlights only the sentence or paragraph you are on. Your files are ordinary Markdown in any folder you choose. Its Style Check flags clichés, fillers and clutter on your device, and its Authorship feature shows which text you typed yourself and which was pasted from an AI or quoted.
Essayists, journalists, bloggers and anyone who wants plain-text files they fully own, on Mac, Windows, iPhone or iPad.
Wretify and iA Writer, side by side
| Wretify | iA Writer | |
|---|---|---|
| Made for | Nonfiction books and articles. | Focused writing of any kind. |
| Devices | In the web browser, on a computer or a phone. Nothing to install. | Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad. |
| Price | One plan with every feature: $7 a month or $45 a year. The first 1,000 writers get 3 months free. Opens October 27, 2026. | One-time purchase per platform: $49.99 for Mac, $29.99 for Windows, $49.99 for iPhone and iPad. A 7-day trial on Mac and Windows. |
| Where your writing lives | Plain Markdown files in a Wretify folder in your own Google Drive. Wretify keeps no other copy. | Plain Markdown files in any folder you choose, including iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive. |
| AI | Bring your own key (Claude, Gemini or DeepSeek). The AI reads everything you have written, thinks with you and brings you real research and your own earlier passages. It does not draft your chapters; nothing reaches the page unless you press Replace or Insert, or drag it there. | Does not generate text or connect to AI services. Authorship marks text pasted from an AI. |
| Footnotes and citations | Footnotes inside the sentence they support. Each chapter builds its own References list (APA 7) from them. Sources come from 250 million real papers (OpenAlex), never invented. | Markdown footnotes (shown as endnotes); citation keys on Mac and iOS. |
| Export | A chapter as Markdown, Word or PDF; a whole book as Markdown, Word or EPUB, with a bibliography. | On Mac: PDF, Word (DOCX), HTML and Markdown. |
Should I choose Wretify or iA Writer?
Choose iA Writer if you want the quietest possible editor, a one-time price, and no AI in your writing app at all.
Choose Wretify if you want the same plain-file ownership plus an AI that knows your own body of work, and citations built from real papers for a nonfiction book.
Can I use Wretify and iA Writer together?
Both keep your writing as Markdown. iA Writer on Mac can open files from a Google Drive folder, which is where Wretify keeps yours.
How does Wretify compare to other writing apps?
Every major writing app is good at something different. The full guide answers what the best software for writing books is, app by app.
Sources
- iA Writer — ia.net/writer
- iA Writer pricing — ia.net/writer/pricing
- iA Writer cloud storage — ia.net/writer/support/library/cloud-storage
- iA Writer Authorship — ia.net/writer/support/editor/authorship
- iA Writer Markdown guide (footnotes, citations) — ia.net/writer/support/basics/markdown-guide
- iA Writer export — ia.net/writer/support/preview/export-share-print
Updated . Prices and features of other apps are taken from their own websites on that date and can change. Wretify is our product, so we have tried hard to be fair to the others. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.