Free Novel Writing Software: An Honest Comparison (Reedsy Studio, Novlr, Scribbook, WriteControl, bibisco, yWriter, Sagoræ)

Published 25 September 2026 · 15 min read · Writing Software

Free novel writing software with no expiry date does exist, and there are at least seven options: Reedsy Studio, Novlr, Scribbook, WriteControl, bibisco, yWriter and Sagoræ's Discovery plan each offer a $0 tier that does not shut down after thirty days. None of them is free on everything, though. What changes from one tool to the next is the number of projects, version history, offline use, interface language, proofreading and export. This comparison takes each tool on what it actually gives away, according to its official pages as of 23 September 2026, and ends with a grid by need. Sagoræ's free plan is judged by the same rule as everyone else.

Why most "free writing software" lists are slightly dishonest

Most rankings mix three things that have nothing in common.

There is permanent free with limits: you can write an entire novel without paying, but you do not get everything (Reedsy Studio, Novlr, Scribbook, WriteControl, Sagoræ).

There is software that is free by design: no subscription, no mandatory account, sometimes a paid edition on the side (bibisco, yWriter).

And there is the free trial, which is not a free plan: Scrivener (30 days of actual use), Dabble (14 days), Sudowrite (trial without a card) and Novelcrafter (21 days) give you everything, then nothing. They have no place in a comparison of free tools, and they are not in this one. If you want the full picture, paid tools included, read the best novel writing software in 2026.

The common test

To compare free plans you have to ask them all for the same thing. I took an invented novel, "The Blue Hours": Noor, 41, a stained-glass restorer, comes back to the mining town where her father vanished in 1998; Basile, a municipal archivist, helps her without saying he read the file before she did. In every tool I created the project, a profile for Noor, a 2,300-word chapter 1, a second project (to hit the limit), then looked for export and proofreading.

Here is Noor's profile as it had to fit everywhere:

Noor Vasseur, 41. Stained-glass restorer, based in Lyon for fifteen years. Returns to Saint-Éloi-des-Mines to clear her mother's house. What she wants: to know whether her father left or died. What she fears: finding out he left because of her. The tell: she counts the panes of a window when she lies.

And the opening of chapter 1, the text every tool had to hold, count and export without mangling the accents:

The house smelled of cold ash and lemon polish, which meant her mother had cleaned right up to the end. Noor put the keys on the radiator, the way her father used to, and stood in the hallway until the habit passed. Twelve panes in the door window. She had not counted them since she was nine.

Four steps, then: project, profile, chapter, export. A fifth, proofreading, when the tool offered one. The same 2,300 words everywhere, so that the limits could be compared on equal terms rather than on marketing pages.

The results, tool by tool.

Reedsy Studio: free on the editor, paid on the planning

Reedsy Studio (United Kingdom) is a web app, with no mobile app and no offline mode. As of 23 September 2026, the free core includes the editor, one writing goal, thirty days of history, public previews, import, PDF and ePub export, unlimited books and one Board in card view. No AI at all, and the page says so: your text is never used to train one.

What the test gave: the project and chapter 1 take two minutes; so does the second project, since books are unlimited. Noor's profile fits in the single Board, in card view. For unlimited character and place Boards with attributes, writing templates and the timeline, you need the Outlining add-on at $7.99 a month; for advanced stats, custom goals and daily check-ins, the Craft add-on at $4.99 a month ($59.88 a year, or $52.99 with the annual discount). Both add-ons come with a thirty-day trial, no card. The pricing page says nothing about a proofreader.

The real strength of the free tier is export: a print-ready PDF and an ePub, no watermark. Real-time collaboration (co-author, editor, comments, track changes) is included too. Interface in English. The full picture is in Reedsy Studio review: what's free, the add-ons and the alternatives.

Free verdict: excellent for writing, exporting and sharing; planning and profiles sit behind a payment.

Novlr: two projects and never any AI

Novlr (United Kingdom, partly writer-owned since 2023) is a web app that syncs across devices. As of 23 September 2026, the Free plan gives two projects. Starter costs $8 a month billed annually (ten projects, thirty-day history), Studio $16 a month billed annually (unlimited projects, proofreader, Novlr Sites included), and Lifetime Studio is $499 once, with co-owner status. Month-to-month prices are not displayed on the page.

The test: "The Blue Hours" plus a second project is exactly the free limit; a third does not go through. Notes and worldbuilding (character sketches, lore) are on every plan, so Noor's profile fits. So does the planning grid fed by those notes. Goals, streaks, sprints and analytics are free, and this is where Novlr is strongest. The proofreader and style checker are Studio only. Offline is a "protection" for unstable connections, not a real disconnected mode. Export is possible, but the pricing page does not list formats.

On AI, the About page is categorical: no writing, generating or co-writing feature, ever. English interface only.

Free verdict: ideal for a writer who wants daily motivation and one or two projects; limited as soon as you want a proofreader or a third novel.

Scribbook: the widest free tier in French

Scribbook (Jokamax, France) is a French-language web studio with an announced offline mode. As of 23 September 2026, the free tier includes scene and chapter drag-and-drop, writing canvases (Snowflake method, Hero's Journey), a card-based plan, a very complete character profile module (form builder, shared templates, profiles linked to scenes, avatars, generator), a challenge mode, goals and a dashboard of words per day, month and year. The Premium page mentions more than 7,000 accounts.

Premium costs €5.99 a month with no commitment or €59.99 a year. It adds a public showcase, 25 MB of storage instead of 5, Dropbox and Google Drive backup, premium character profiles and a spelling, grammar and style checker in beta. The outline and timeline tools are "in development", as are the mobile companion and the beta-reading area.

The test: Noor's profile took the most shape here, because you build the fields yourself ("The tell" became a real field, not a note). The second project goes through. Import and export formats are not detailed on the pages I checked, so I cannot state anything: verify before committing a long manuscript. No proofreader on the free tier. Full review in Scribbook review 2026.

Free verdict: the best free tier in French for profiles and motivation; no proofreader and no structural analysis. English speakers will hit the language wall.

WriteControl: five projects and offline, proofreader paid

WriteControl (SpinalSoft, in the Vosges, France; acquired by BoD in 2022 according to Vita Nuova citing ActuaLitté) runs on the web, Android and iOS, with offline use ticked on both Free and Premium in the official table. As of 23 September 2026, the free tier allows five book projects, chapter structuring with summary view, character profiles, writing goals and statistics, synonym search, Word and LibreOffice import, and Word, LibreOffice and HTML export.

Premium costs €12.90 a month including tax with no commitment, with "almost three months free" on annual payment (the page does not show the exact annual amount). It unlocks a hundred projects, the spelling, grammar and typography checker, the repetition detector, the mind map, automatic layout, ePub, a "printer PDF", and every AI feature (image generation, automatic titles and summaries, alternative suggestions, writing assistant, character detection). No AI line is ticked on the free tier.

The test: the project, Noor's profile and Word export all worked without paying. So did the second project, up to five. The catch is the proofreader: free means you proofread alone. The interface is French only, which settles the question for most English-speaking writers. Details in WriteControl review 2026.

Free verdict: the most complete French free tier for writing offline and on mobile; style work is paid, and the language is French.

bibisco: free on desktop, with a tight Community Edition

bibisco (Andrea Feccomandi, Italy, GNU GPL licence) is desktop software for Linux, macOS and Windows, translated into fifteen languages. It works offline, with local data. As of 23 September 2026, the Community Edition is free, with a thirty-day trial of the Supporters Edition features. The Supporters Edition costs $69 as a one-time payment, with two years of updates and then half price on the upgrade. bibisco Everywhere (mobile apps and sync) is a separate product at $3.49 a month or $29.99 a year.

What the Community Edition gives: premise, fabula, setting, storylines, chapters and scenes, novel outline, character interviews, locations, and PDF, DOCX, TXT and archive export. What it keeps for Supporters: the timeline, analysis, objects, custom interview questions, profile photos, mind maps, writing goals and ePub. Kindlepreneur also notes that the Community Edition has no dark mode, no find and replace and no distraction-free mode.

The test: Noor's profile takes the form of an interview, which is bibisco's best idea, but the questions are fixed on the free edition. No project limit found. No AI. No proofreader listed.

Free verdict: a real free structuring tool, offline, in English and fourteen other languages; the ergonomics and the Community Edition restrictions take patience.

yWriter: free with no strings, on Windows

yWriter7 (Simon Haynes, Spacejock Software, Australia) is free on Windows, ad-free, with optional registration. The Mac, Android and iOS versions are developed by another developer and paid (the amount is not given on the page); the macOS version is listed as "in progress". Everything is local, no connection required.

As of 23 September 2026, you get chapters and scenes with drag-and-drop, a visual storyboard, point of view, goal, conflict and outcome fields per scene, "unused" scenes, character, item and location profiles, a per-file word counter, a daily log and automatic backups. Export to RTF (round trip), ePub, Mobi and LaTeX. No proofreader: you export to RTF and proofread elsewhere. The site is blunt about AI: it will not write your novel, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind.

The test: everything passes, including the second project and export. Noor's profile is basic. The interface is twenty years old and looks it.

Free verdict: the only free tool here with no catch whatsoever, if you are on Windows and do not care about looks.

Sagoræ: the Discovery plan, judged by the same rule

Sagoræ is a web app, available in French and English. The Discovery plan is free, no card, no expiry, and it holds a single novel. Inside that novel you get the editor, the full hub (character profiles, place profiles, mind map, outline, statistics), the built-in non-AI proofreader, free and unlimited, and export at any time. The AI coaches (Théo, the Archivist, Dédale, the AI Proofreader) depend on the plan you choose; they never write in your place, and what you give up on the free plan is not the coaches themselves but the number of readings.

The test, with the same severity: the project, Noor's profile (with a free field for her tell), chapter 1 and export all pass. The second project does not: one novel per account on Discovery is the strictest limit in this comparison on that point, stricter than Novlr (two) and WriteControl (five). The non-AI proofreader read chapter 1 with no word cap, which Scribbook, WriteControl and Novlr do not do for free. Everything happens in the browser: it is neither offline desktop software like bibisco or yWriter, nor a native app like WriteControl.

Free verdict: the most complete free plan on one novel at a time (profiles, places, mind map, outline, unlimited proofreader); the most limited if you run two projects at once or write without a connection.

The grid by need

Everything below is as of 23 September 2026 and covers only the free tier of each tool.

Two notes on this grid. The "no AI" row is not a judgment: some writers want a tool with no language model anywhere, and Novlr, yWriter, bibisco and Reedsy Studio promise exactly that. The "structural analysis" row is the only one where every free tier draws a blank: what you get for free everywhere is room to write and organise, not someone to read you.

What the free tier does not tell you

Version history. Reedsy Studio gives thirty days for free. Novlr shows thirty days on Starter without specifying Free. The others announce nothing. If you rewrite a lot, test restoring a version before relying on it.

Storage. Scribbook caps at 5 MB on the free tier (25 on Premium). A novel in plain text weighs little; profile images weigh a lot more.

Export. This is your exit door. Reedsy Studio, WriteControl, bibisco, yWriter and Sagoræ document it on the free tier. Scribbook and Novlr do not detail formats on their pages: ask first.

Language. Scribbook and WriteControl are French only. If you write in English, the choice narrows to Reedsy Studio, Novlr, bibisco, yWriter and Sagoræ; the guide to novel writing software for beginners helps you pick among them for a first project.

Lock-in. A free tier is also a way of keeping you. The tools that make leaving easiest are the ones that export to a format another tool imports: DOCX from bibisco, RTF from yWriter, Word from WriteControl, ePub from Reedsy Studio. Before you write chapter 2, export chapter 1 and open it somewhere else. If the export is a mess, the free tier is a cage with a nice view.

The upgrade. Look at what it costs the day you need it: $4.99 to $7.99 per add-on at Reedsy Studio, $8 a month billed annually at Novlr, €5.99 at Scribbook, €12.90 at WriteControl, $69 once at bibisco. yWriter has no paid tier on Windows. At Sagoræ, what the paid plan funds is the coaches' readings, not the editor or the profiles.

Three writers, three different answers

Lena is writing a three-book fantasy series on her laptop, in the evenings. She needs several projects open at once, place profiles and a timeline, and she does not want to depend on wifi. For free, bibisco gives her the three books and the places, but the timeline sits in the paid edition at $69 once, which is still the cheapest upgrade in this group for her need. Novlr holds only two of her three books. Sagoræ only suits her from a paid plan up, because of the single novel.

Marc is picking up an abandoned manuscript, just one, and mostly wants to be read. He does not need two projects; he needs someone to tell him where chapter 7 collapses. No free tool reads him. Sagoræ's Discovery plan gives him the unlimited proofreader and the hub to put his profiles back in order; the reading by Dédale or Théo comes with the plan. Novlr would give him motivation but not a reading.

Sofia is writing her first novel on her phone, on the train. Her criteria are mobile and simplicity. WriteControl is the only free tool here with a native Android and iOS app that works offline, but it is in French. In English, the web tools run in the phone's browser, with varying comfort, and Reedsy Studio says so explicitly about itself.

These three cases show the one thing the listicles forget: the best free writing software does not exist in general, only for one writer, one project and one moment.

How to choose in five minutes

If you want to write with no connection, on a PC, and looks do not matter: yWriter or bibisco.

If you want the most personalisable profiles and a French-speaking community, and you read French: Scribbook.

If you want a clean ePub for free and collaboration: Reedsy Studio.

If you want daily motivation and two projects: Novlr.

If you want one novel with profiles, places, mind map, outline and an unlimited proofreader, and to be read later by coaches who never write for you: Sagoræ's Discovery plan.

Whatever you pick, run the Blue Hours test yourself: one project, one profile, one chapter, one export. A free tool that fails one of those four steps will cost you more than a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free novel writing software? As of 23 September 2026, Reedsy Studio is the strongest free tier for export and collaboration, Novlr for motivation, bibisco and yWriter for offline structuring, and Sagoræ for a single novel with profiles, mind map and an unlimited proofreader. There is no single winner.

Is Reedsy Studio really free? Yes for the editor, import, PDF and ePub export, one goal and one Board. Templates, unlimited profiles and advanced stats come through two add-ons at $4.99 and $7.99 a month, with a thirty-day trial and no card.

Does Scrivener have a free version? No. Scrivener offers a thirty-day trial of actual use, then a licence at €69.99 per platform seen from France. It is not free software.

Can you write a whole novel with free software? Yes. None of the seven tools here caps word count on the free tier. What is missing, depending on the tool, is a proofreader, offline use, your language or a second project, never room to write.

Does Sagoræ's free plan expire? No. The Discovery plan is free with no card and no time limit; it holds one novel, with the full hub and the unlimited built-in proofreader. The AI coaches depend on the plan.

If you want to try the free tier of a workshop where the AI reads without ever writing in your place, Sagoræ offers the Discovery plan, no card required.

✒️ Read next: Sudowrite Alternative for Writers Who Want to Write Their Own Words · WriteControl Review 2026: Features, Pricing and Who It's For · Scribbook Review 2026: The French Free Writing Studio, Explained

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