Grasmere vs Ulysses
Ulysses is the polished writing app for Mac, iPad and iPhone, on a subscription. Grasmere is a Mac writing app for long work in plain Markdown files, bought once. We make Grasmere, so here’s the comparison as fairly as we can put it.
In a sentence each
Ulysses keeps your texts as sheets in a library that syncs across Apple devices, with goals, deadlines and export to ePub, PDF, Word and blogs. Grasmere keeps a book as a folder of Markdown files on a Mac, and adds sources, citations, a Word review round trip and publishing.
Side by side
| Ulysses | Grasmere | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Mac, iPad, iPhone | Mac, macOS 26 or later |
| Price | $39.99 a year or $5.99 a month; students $10.99 per six months | $14.99 once |
| Your writing is kept as | Sheets in Ulysses’s library, in iCloud or On My Mac. External folders of Markdown files, with limits | Markdown files in any folder |
| Markup | Markdown XL, its own markup inspired by Markdown | CommonMark, GitHub’s flavour |
| Structure | Groups and filters, goals, deadlines | Chapter cards with synopsis and status, word targets |
| Research and citations | Attachments and notes on a sheet. Citations aren’t mentioned in its documentation | Sources by DOI, ISBN or web address; citations in four styles |
| Collaboration | None built in, by its own account | Word round trip: tracked changes and comments back onto your text |
| Output | Text, Markdown, HTML, ePub, PDF, Word, WordPress, Ghost, Medium | PDF in manuscript or book form, Word, website. LaTeX in 1.6. No ePub, no blog publishing |
| Sync | iCloud, across devices | Whatever syncs your folder: iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Git |
Ulysses’s facts are from its own site and help pages, read on 9 November 2026. Prices in US dollars.
Where Ulysses is better
- The iPad and iPhone. Ulysses on an iPad is a complete writing app, and the sync is the best there is. Grasmere has no iPad version.
- Publishing to the web. Posting straight to WordPress, Ghost or Medium, and exporting ePub, are things Grasmere doesn’t do.
- Polish. Ulysses has been refined for over a decade. Grasmere was first released in October 2026.
Where Grasmere is better
- Price. $14.99 once is less than five months of Ulysses, and there’s nothing to cancel.
- Your files. Grasmere works on ordinary Markdown files in ordinary folders, with nothing held back. Ulysses can work on external folders, but its help pages list what’s lost that way: embedded local images, notes and goals, Markdown XL tags, automatic backups.
- Standard Markdown. Markdown XL is Ulysses’s own. A file written in Grasmere opens unchanged in Obsidian, VS Code or on GitHub.
- Sources, citations and review. Ulysses’s documentation doesn’t mention citations and says it has no built-in collaboration. For academic writing, or any writing that goes to an editor in Word, Grasmere has both.
Moving across
Ulysses exports a group as Markdown files. Export each project to a folder, open the folder in Grasmere, and drag the chapters into order. Markdown XL’s own tags, such as its comments and annotations, come across as the text Ulysses writes for them, so look those over.
Which to choose
Stay with Ulysses if you write on an iPad as much as a Mac, post to a blog, or make ebooks. Choose Grasmere if you write on a Mac, want to buy once, keep standard Markdown files, and cite sources or send drafts to people in Word.
Related
- A Ulysses alternative you buy once
- Grasmere vs Scrivener
- A Markdown editor for Mac
- What Grasmere does with your Markdown
- More on writing in Markdown
Last updated .