Markra vs Zettlr

Markra is a local-first, open-source Markdown workspace with native AI review, offered as a desktop app and web editor. It supports WYSIWYG and source editing, with inline rendering for links, images, tables, tasks, callouts, code, math, and Mermaid diagrams. Users can open files or folders and keep local files, tabs, and rich editing together; documents remain ordinary Markdown files, and writing does not require an account. AI can answer questions, rewrite or summarize text, and propose edits, but users must approve changes before they are applied. AI features require at least one configured provider, including cloud providers, Ollama, or OpenAI-compatible endpoints. Provider API keys and custom headers are stored in local settings, and exported settings can include them. Notes can optionally sync through WebDAV, which preserves conflict copies. Desktop downloads are available for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Desktop exports include HTML, PDF, and Pandoc formats when configured; the web editor supports HTML download and browser print or PDF. Core features are free; AI use requires a configured provider.

Zettlr is a writing workbench for projects that can run from early notes through journal submissions and book manuscripts. It began as a Markdown editor for academic researchers and is also used by students, journalists, authors, and others writing substantial amounts. The app works offline on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and files stay on the user's computer. It supports standard Markdown and exports to formats supported by Pandoc. Citation manager support includes Zotero, JabRef, and Juris-M, with more than 9,000 citation styles. Note features include IDs, wiki-style internal links, related files, navigation, and graph view. Pandoc-powered profiles can apply templates to papers or prepare presentations for Beamer, reveal.js, or PowerPoint. Zettlr also renders LaTeX equations and Mermaid charts and supports extensive settings and custom CSS. It is free and open source, with no payment required to download. The maker says app data is not collected and update checks can be disabled. Older releases are unsupported; nightly releases may contain many bugs.