StackEdit vs Zettlr

StackEdit is an in-browser Markdown editor for writing, formatting and publishing documents. It highlights Markdown syntax and offers formatting controls alongside a live preview whose scrolling follows the editor. The site says it remains accessible for offline writing, and it supports local files as well as cloud sync with Google Drive, Dropbox and GitHub. Writers can share collaborative workspaces; when two collaborators edit the same file simultaneously, StackEdit merges their changes. Files also support inline comments and embedded discussions. The editor handles Markdown Extra, GitHub Flavored Markdown and CommonMark, with features configurable. It can publish blog posts to Blogger, WordPress and Zendesk, using Markdown, HTML or Handlebars-template formatting. Other supported content includes LaTeX mathematical expressions, sequence diagrams, flow charts, musical scores in ABC notation and emoji markup. Export formats are Markdown, HTML and PDF. StackEdit is listed as free and open source under an Apache License. Supported platforms include the web, a Chrome extension and self-hosting; the maker’s site displays a 2013–2019 copyright range.

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.