Ampersand vs
iA Writer
Two apps that agree completely about the file on disk and disagree about everything above it. iA Writer refuses to write for you. Ampersand ships the heavy tools.
iA Writer has spent fifteen years removing things. What is left is a window, your text in it, and a set of decisions about typography and focus that most editors are still catching up to. It writes plain .md files into a folder you picked, it has no database, no account and no library, and you buy it once. On the questions this site cares most about — who owns the file, what happens if the company disappears — iA Writer and Ampersand give exactly the same answer, and that makes this the friendliest comparison on the site.
They disagree about what belongs in the window. iA Writer does not do generative AI, deliberately: its signature feature is Authorship, which tracks and visually marks which text was typed by you, pasted, or produced by a model. That is the opposite of a gap. It is a considered position about what a writing tool is for, and for a certain kind of writer — a journalist, an academic, anyone who may one day have to say what they actually wrote — it is the whole reason to buy the app.
Ampersand is the heavier tool built on the same foundation. It generates text if you ask it to, with your own API key or a local model; it lays out a real vector PDF and a genuinely editable Word file; it encrypts individual notes with age; it keeps every save in a git repository outside the vault; it does tables with formulas, Mermaid diagrams and KaTeX maths inside the document. All of that is weight, and weight is exactly what iA Writer has spent fifteen years refusing. Which of those you want is not really a features question.
Ampersand and iA Writer, row by row
Every row states what both apps do. A dot marks whichever one leads — including the rows iA Writer takes.
| Feature | Ampersand | iA Writer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Advantage: Ampersand.Free, then a one-time $29 (regularly $49) covering three devices across macOS, Windows and Linux. 14-day money back, never a subscription. | One-time, but per platform: Mac $49.99, Windows $29.99, iPhone & iPad $49.99, with no cross-platform bundle. 7-day trial on Mac and Windows, 20% education discount on direct Mac and Windows purchases. |
| Where notes live | A folder you pick. Plain .md files with optional YAML frontmatter. | A folder you pick. Plain .md files, no proprietary database and no library — openable in any text editor, forever. |
| Works offline | Everything except cloud AI, and running a local model through Ollama removes even that. | Everything. Offline is the design, not a mode. |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Windows 10+ and Linux, on both Intel/AMD and ARM. There is no phone app yet. | Advantage: iA Writer.macOS, Windows, iOS and iPadOS, plus an Android app on the Play Store. No native Linux app and no web app. |
| Sync | None of our own. Point it at iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing or a git repo — a vault is just a folder. | Advantage: iA Writer.No first-party sync service either, but native iCloud Drive integration on Mac and iOS does most of the work for you, and Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive work as synced folders. |
| Encryption | Advantage: Ampersand.Per-note, using age (X25519 + ChaCha20-Poly1305) under one vault passphrase, with Touch ID on a Mac and a recovery kit. Unlocking your own notes is never gated behind a licence. | Nothing built in. Security is whatever your disk encryption or your chosen cloud provider gives you. |
| Export | Advantage: Ampersand.Vector PDF from a real layout engine with running headers and controlled page breaks, Word with native OMML equations and real styles, self-contained HTML, and Markdown. | PDF, Word .docx, HTML, Markdown and a .zip project archive. No ePub. iA’s own documentation notes DOCX carries basic formatting only and expects styling to be finished in Word, and that PDF locks in the template’s styling. |
| AI | Advantage: Ampersand.Bring-your-own-key throughout: Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Apple Intelligence, local models through Ollama, and CLI agents, routed per feature. Nothing is resold and a local model costs nothing. | None, on purpose. iA Writer does not generate text and does not intend to — it is not a gap they are working on. |
| Knowing who wrote what | Nothing. Text is text once it is in the document. | Advantage: iA Writer.Authorship: text is tracked and visually marked by origin — typed, pasted, or AI-generated. Nothing else in this category does it, and nothing in Ampersand comes close. |
| The writing surface | Focus, typewriter and Zen modes over a Notion-style block editor with slash commands. More app on the screen, by design. | Advantage: iA Writer.The benchmark for minimalist Markdown writing: typography and focus are the product, and there is very little else in the window. |
| Document tools | Advantage: Ampersand.Blocks, tables with spreadsheet-style formulas, callouts, Mermaid diagrams, Vega charts, KaTeX maths, live calculation blocks, wiki-links and backlinks. | Plain Markdown, with templates and themes controlling output. Minimal on purpose. |
| Structured content | Advantage: Ampersand.Notion-style blocks over plain Markdown: tables whose cells take spreadsheet formulas, Mermaid diagrams, Vega charts, KaTeX maths, live calculation blocks with units and currency, callouts and highlighted code — all round-tripping as ordinary .md. | Native LaTeX maths through KaTeX, inline and block, and fenced code with a language tag and highlighting. Tables arrive as Content Blocks — you reference a .csv or .tsv file and it renders as a table in preview and on export, with no formulas, because it is a plain data file. No diagrams, no charts and no callouts. |
| Search | Advantage: Ampersand.Full text across the whole vault, with case-sensitive, whole-word and regex toggles, and #tags, wiki-links and backlinks indexed alongside it. It covers encrypted notes too while the vault is unlocked. It does not read text inside images or PDFs. | Library-wide, separating filename matches from matches inside the text, and Smart Folders turn a chain of search, path and date conditions into a grouping that keeps itself current — the closest thing here to a saved query. No regex, and nothing read out of images or attachments. |
| Version history | Advantage: Ampersand.Every save, snapshotted into a git repository kept outside the vault, with a timeline and a line-by-line diff. Browsing and diffing are free; one-click restore is Pro. You set how long it keeps. | Nothing beyond whatever your sync provider or Time Machine keeps for you. |
| Meeting recording | Advantage: Ampersand.Records a meeting in person or on a call and transcribes it on your own Mac with a local Whisper model, then writes the note. macOS only, and part of Pro. | Nothing built in. |
| Open source | No. The encryption is the standard age format, so the files outlive the app either way. | No. The files are plain Markdown, so the same is true. |
Across these 16 rows, Ampersand leads 9, iA Writer leads 4, and 3 are a draw. The dot marks the leader. Where iA Writer leads, the dot is on its side of the table.
Ampersand is desktop-only today. An app for iPhone and iPad is in development and not yet released. The roadmap is where that gets announced.
iA Writer details checked against its own pricing and documentation pages on . If something here has gone out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
Where Ampersand pulls ahead
Export that produces a finished document
PDFs are laid out by a real vector engine with running headers, controlled page breaks, syntax-highlighted code and real maths. Word export is genuinely editable — native OMML equations, real styles — rather than a file you are expected to restyle in Word afterwards, which iA’s own documentation says of theirs.
One licence, three devices, three platforms
Ampersand Pro is $29 once and covers three devices across macOS, Windows and Linux. iA Writer is also bought once, but separately per platform — $49.99 on Mac, $29.99 on Windows, $49.99 on iPhone and iPad, with no bundle — so a Mac-and-Windows writer pays twice.
Encryption and a history of every save
Lock a note and its body is age-encrypted on disk under one vault passphrase, opened with Touch ID and recoverable with a recovery kit. Every save also lands in a git repository kept outside the vault, so you can read a diff of what changed last Tuesday. iA Writer has neither.
Things a document sometimes has to contain
Tables with spreadsheet-style formulas, Mermaid diagrams, Vega charts, KaTeX maths, callouts and live calculation blocks, all round-tripping through plain Markdown. If your writing is only prose you will never miss them; if it is a spec, a paper or a report, you will.
Where iA Writer is the better tool
Every page here names at least two, because iA Writer genuinely has them and a comparison that pretended otherwise would not be worth reading.
Authorship
iA Writer tracks and marks which sentences you typed, which you pasted and which a model produced, and keeps that distinction visible while you work. Ampersand has no equivalent and no plan for one. For anyone who may have to account for their own draft, that single feature is worth more than everything on our side of this table.
The window itself
Fifteen years of taking things out, and it shows: the typography, the focus behaviour and the restraint are the benchmark other minimalist editors are measured against. Ampersand puts more on the screen because it does more, and there are days when that is exactly the wrong trade.
It is on your phone
A mature, well-regarded iOS and iPadOS app, plus an Android app on the Play Store. Ampersand has no phone app at all, on any platform. Both apps write plain .md into a folder, so a synced folder plus iA Writer on the phone is a genuinely good setup — it just is not one Ampersand can offer on its own.
It will never write for you
If you want a tool that structurally cannot generate a paragraph, iA Writer is that tool by design rather than by configuration. Ampersand can be run with no API keys and no AI at all, but the features are still in the app, and that is not the same as knowing they were never built.
Which one should you use?
Choose iA Writer if
you want the quietest possible window and nothing else, you need Authorship to keep track of what you actually wrote, or you write on a phone as much as at a desk. iA Writer is one of the few apps in this category with a real position, and it holds it.
Choose Ampersand if
you want the same plain .md files with the heavy tools in the box — a real PDF, an editable Word file, encryption, version history, AI on your own key — and you would rather pay once for every desktop platform than once per platform.
Moving from iA Writer
Asked plainly
Is there an iA Writer alternative for Linux?
iA Writer has no native Linux app — it ships for macOS, Windows, iOS and iPadOS, with an Android app on the Play Store. Ampersand has native Linux builds for both Intel/AMD and ARM, alongside macOS 14 and later and Windows 10 and later, and stores notes as the same plain .md files in a folder you choose, so a library written in iA Writer opens in it directly with no conversion step.
Does Ampersand track which text was written by AI?
No. iA Writer’s Authorship feature marks which text was typed, pasted or AI-generated and keeps that visible as you write, and Ampersand has no equivalent — once text is in the document it is just text. If provenance matters to your work, that is a real reason to choose iA Writer, and it is not something a plugin or a setting in Ampersand can make up for.
Do I have to buy Ampersand separately for each platform?
No. Ampersand Pro is a single $29 payment at the launch price (regularly $49) that covers three devices across macOS, Windows and Linux, with a 14-day money-back guarantee. iA Writer is also a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, but it is priced per platform — $49.99 on Mac, $29.99 on Windows and $49.99 on iPhone and iPad — with no cross-platform bundle, so using it on two platforms means two purchases.
Can I use the same folder in both iA Writer and Ampersand?
Yes, and it is the easiest migration on this site because there is no migration. Both apps store ordinary .md files in an ordinary folder with no database and no library, so you can point Ampersand at the folder iA Writer already uses and keep both installed. The one exception is encryption: a note you lock in Ampersand becomes a .md.age file that iA Writer cannot open until you decrypt it.
Does iA Writer have AI writing features?
It does not generate text, and that is a deliberate product decision rather than a missing feature. What iA Writer does have is Authorship, which tracks and visually marks which parts of a document were typed, pasted or produced by a model. Ampersand takes the other position: it offers rewrite, expand, grammar, translation, summarising and autocomplete, always with your own API key — Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Apple Intelligence or a local model through Ollama — and nothing is resold.
Other alternatives
Stop reading tables.
Open the app.
Ampersand is free to start and there is no account to make. Point it at the folder your notes are already in — including the one iA Writer keeps them in — and see for yourself.
Free to start · Mac, Windows & Linux · No account required