Verso vs iA Writer

So the first thing everyone asks me is how Verso compares to iA Writer. And honestly, that’s a fair question. Except the answer is kind of boring: they’re solving different problems. iA Writer is a Markdown editor. Verso is a word processor. That’s... kind of it. But I get why that doesn’t mean much yet.

Quick Comparison

What They Actually Are

iA Writer is a Markdown editor. It’s very good at what it does. You write in plain text, add formatting with Markdown syntax, then export to whatever you need. PDF, HTML, Word, whatever. The philosophy is clean: your words are always in plain text. No proprietary formats. No lock-in. It’s built on a decade of thinking about how writers work, and you can feel it.

They have Focus Mode, which highlights the sentence you’re typing and dims everything else. Honestly, it works. I’ve used it. Their Style Check watches for cliches and lazy phrases. It’s thoughtful. These are things I didn’t build into Verso because, well, Verso is solving a different problem.

Verso is a word processor. It opens .docx files and edits them as .docx files. Same with .doc, .odt, .rtf, plain text. Open Markdown files and edit them with full round-trip support, so your .md files stay as .md files. Import HTML as formatted text too. When you save, you get back the format you started with. If your coworkers send you Word documents, you open them directly. No conversion.

That difference matters more than you might think.

Pricing

iA Writer costs $49.99 on Mac, $29.99 on Windows, $19.99 on iPhone and iPad. Each platform is separate. So if you want it on Mac and iPad, that’s $69.98. They have a 2-week trial, which is honestly generous.

Verso is $14.99. One-time purchase. Mac only. Free during early access. No subscription. No account required. No cloud syncing. Just an 8 MB app on your machine. If you like owning things outright, that appeals to you. If you need to write on your phone or Windows, it doesn’t.

File Formats

iA Writer works with Markdown and plain text. You write in one format, export to another. It’s a clean separation of content and presentation. Your writing lives in a format that’ll be readable in fifty years.

Verso opens .docx, .doc, .odt, .rtf, .txt, and .md. It edits them all natively. Markdown files fully round-trip: open a .md file, edit it, save, and your headings, lists, code blocks, tables, and formatting are all preserved. Code fences keep their language tag through the round-trip, so a ```swift block stays tagged as Swift. HTML can be imported as formatted rich text too. If someone sends you a Word document, you open it and edit it directly. No conversion needed.

If you’re collaborating with people who use Word. If you work with grant applications or research papers that need to stay in .docx format. If your workplace uses templates that are built in Word. This matters.

Features

iA Writer has Focus Mode and Style Check. I mentioned them already because they’re actually good. Verso now has Focus Mode too (Cmd+Shift+F). When you activate it, every toolbar, sidebar, and status bar disappears. Only the page is visible. The sentence you’re typing stays fully visible while surrounding text dims. Your entire workspace saves and restores when you exit. Style Check on something that handles rich formatting differently than plain text is more complex. So Verso doesn’t have that yet.

Verso has tables. Footnotes. Headers and footers. Comments. Syntax-highlighted code blocks for 20+ languages when you open Markdown files, with proper table rendering and nested lists. Paste a table or code block from ChatGPT or Gemini and it lands as a proper grid with syntax colours intact. Paste LaTeX math notation and it renders automatically. iA Writer doesn’t need most of these because it’s not a word processor. But if you’re writing a research paper or technical documentation, having tables, footnotes, code highlighting, and rendered equations in the same editor that handles .docx files is genuinely useful.

The Real Question

Use iA Writer if you think about your writing as prose. If you want to write in Markdown, export cleanly, keep your files portable. If you need to work across Mac, iPad, iPhone, Windows. If you want Focus Mode. If you’ve been using it for years and it works.

Use Verso if you work with Word documents constantly. If you collaborate with people who use comments. If you need tables, footnotes, headers and footers. If you’re on Mac and want something light. If you like buying software instead of subscribing.

I built Verso because I was stuck in that gap between “distraction-free writing” and “I actually have to work with Word documents.” iA Writer solved that by escaping to Markdown. I solved it by trying to remember what word processors felt like before they became platforms. Simple. Open the file. Type. Save. Done.

Maybe that’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s just good design. Hopefully it’s both.

Different tools. Different philosophies. Neither is wrong.

Try iA Writer. Try Verso. Use the one that matches how you actually work. That’s the only thing that matters.

Learn more: Verso Help | iA Writer