ghostwriter vs Zettlr

ghostwriter

• Linux and Windows users who want a free Markdown editor
• Writers who draft first and format later
• Bloggers who need clean HTML from Markdown

Zettlr

• Researchers and students writing papers or theses in Markdown
• Zotero users who want citations inside a plain-text editor
• People who keep a Zettelkasten of linked notes
• Writers who want their files kept on their own computer

ghostwriter

• macOS support is unofficial and community-provided: there is no installer, so the app has to be compiled from source.
• The Windows download is offered only as a portable 64-bit build for Windows 10.
• No mobile or web version is listed.
• Export to other formats relies on processors such as Pandoc or MultiMarkdown.

Zettlr

• Desktop only: downloads are listed for macOS 12 or newer, Windows 10 or newer and Linux, with no mobile or web app.
• It has no cloud service of its own: files stay on the computer, with no built-in cloud synchronization.
• Citations draw on a library kept in an external reference manager such as Zotero, JabRef or Juris-M.
• Grammar and style checking beyond the spellchecker relies on connecting LanguageTool.

ghostwriter

Live preview

Shows the Markdown document as HTML beside the editor, tuned to stay responsive on large documents. The HTML can be copied into a blog.

Focus Mode

Highlights the text around the cursor and fades the rest. It can be set to highlight the current line, sentence, paragraph or three lines.

Hemingway Mode

Disables the backspace and delete keys so that drafting cannot be interrupted by editing, in the manner of a typewriter.

Outline navigation

A sidebar outline jumps to any section of the document, in the editor and in the live preview, by mouse or with Ctrl+J and the arrow keys.

Document and session statistics

A live word count sits at the bottom of the window, and sidebar tabs show further statistics for the document and the current session.

Export through Markdown processors

Exports to other formats using Pandoc, MultiMarkdown or commonmark, and uses Pandoc to render equations with MathJax.

Zettlr

Citations from a reference manager

Loads a library from Zotero, JabRef or Juris-M, previews citations in the text and formats them in any of more than 9,000 citation styles.

Export profiles with Pandoc

A profile pairs an export format with a template, so a paper can be exported for a journal or conference in one click. Beamer, reveal.js and PowerPoint slides are supported too.

Zettelkasten tools

Supports note IDs, wiki-style links between notes, related files and a graph view for building a personal knowledge base.

Adjustable Markdown rendering

The editor can show anything from raw Markdown to rich text. LaTeX math and Mermaid charts render inline, and the look can be changed with custom CSS.

Spelling, grammar and style checks

Includes a spellchecker and a Markdown linter, and can connect to LanguageTool for grammar and style checking.

Projects, snippets and statistics

Project support groups the files of a longer work, snippets insert reusable text with variables and tab stops, and writing statistics track progress.

ghostwriter

• Free$0

  The complete editor at no cost: a portable 64-bit build for Windows 10 and packages for Linux distributions, with source code for other platforms.

Zettlr

• Free$0

  The full editor for Windows, macOS and Linux, free and open source, with optional donations to support development.