Compare
Loomwork &
Loomwork &
the other writing apps.
An honest reckoning. Each of these apps is good at something. None of them is good at everything. Pick the one that suits the book you are trying to write.
| Loomwork | Scrivener | Ulysses | iA Writer | Word | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Novels & memoirs | Long-form authors used to it | Bloggers, journalists | Distraction-free drafting | Business documents |
| Plain text on disk | Markdown folder | Proprietary bundle | iCloud-only sandbox | Markdown | .docx binary |
| Binder / outliner | Yes — nested, drag, roll-up counts | Yes — the original | Flat groups | No | Heading outline only |
| Corkboard view | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Timeline / chronology | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Graph of connections | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Standard manuscript output | Shunn out of the box | Compile templates | Limited | Manual | Manual |
| EPUB & PDF export | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Fountain / FDX (screenwriting) | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Optional AI assistant | Off by default; stateless proxy | No | No | No | Copilot, in your document |
| Cloud lock-in | None | Optional Dropbox | iCloud required | Optional iCloud | OneDrive default |
| Price | Free editor · $12/mo Pro | $59 one-time, Mac | $5.99/mo | $49.99 one-time, Mac | $9.99/mo (M365) |
| App size | ~10 MB | ~150 MB | ~80 MB | ~30 MB | ~2 GB |
A word about Scrivener.
Scrivener has been the right answer for a great many writers for a great many years, and we are not here to tell you otherwise. If you have a Scrivener project that works, keep it. We built Loomwork because we wanted plain text on disk, an interface that felt like the year we are actually in, and an EPUB exporter you don’t have to wrestle with. If those things matter to you, try us. If they don’t, Scrivener is still excellent.