A Markor alternative for long documents
Markor is free, open source, offline, and one of the best small text editors on Android. If it does what you need, keep it — that is a sincere recommendation, not a formality. Inkiostro is for the other case: a long document on a big screen, with the rendered page beside the text instead of behind a button.
Markor deserves its reputation. It is free and open source, it has no ads and no tracking, it works entirely offline, it handles Markdown and todo.txt and plain text, it highlights syntax, and it converts and shares as HTML and PDF. It is also small and quick, which on Android is worth more than a feature list. Nothing on this page suggests otherwise.
One practical thing to know: Markor is not on Google Play. Its developer distributes it through F-Droid and GitHub, deliberately. That is a perfectly good way to ship software and F-Droid updates it fine — but if you install APKs by hand rather than through F-Droid, updates are something you have to remember, and some managed or work devices will not let you install it at all.
The difference in purpose is bigger than the difference in features. Markor is built around notes and lists: open a file, edit it, close it. Inkiostro is built around a document you are going to work on for hours and then hand to somebody — which is why on a tablet it opens with the file list, the editor and the rendered preview at the same time, keeps up to forty automatic versions of what you wrote, and exports a PDF, an EPUB or a self-contained HTML page that looks like it was typeset rather than dumped.
Inkiostro vs Markor, feature by feature
A ✓ means it ships today. Notes mark the differences worth knowing about.
| Feature | Inkiostro | Markor |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free · Pro $34.99 once (US) · 7-day trial | Free and open source, entirely |
| Open source | — | Yes — auditable, GPL |
| On Google Play | ✓ | No — F-Droid and GitHub only |
| Documents as plain files in your folder | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✓ | ✓ |
| No ads, no tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| todo.txt support | — | ✓ |
| Editor and live preview side by side | Yes, on a tablet, by default | Preview is a separate view |
| Three-pane layout with the file list | ✓ | — |
| Live preview styles | 11 | One |
| LaTeX math | Free | Basic support |
| Mermaid diagrams | Free | — |
| PDF export | Free · full page setup, small credit line without Pro | Yes, via print |
| EPUB export | Pro | — |
| Self-contained HTML export | Pro · fonts and images embedded | HTML export |
| Version history | Pro · 40 versions, word-by-word diff | — |
| Focus & typewriter mode | Pro | — |
| Document outline, tabs, command palette | ✓ | — |
| Reading fonts included | 20, free | System fonts |
Markor — pricing and features checked on 1 September 2026 from Markor. own site. Both products change — verify before you buy.
Inkiostro Pro is $34.99 in the United States. Google Play converts that into each country's own price, with local taxes and rounding, so what you see on the store is the figure that counts.
Where Markor is the better app, and it may well be
- You want free and open source, permanently. Markor costs nothing, ever, and you can read every line of it. That is an argument no paid app can answer and it should not try.
- You keep todo.txt lists. Markor handles them natively and Inkiostro does not handle them at all.
- You want something small and instant for quick notes on a phone. Markor is lighter, and for opening a file, changing a line and closing it, lighter is better.
- You prefer F-Droid and want nothing from Google Play on your device.
- You need it on Android 5, 6 or 7. Inkiostro needs Android 10 or later.
Where Inkiostro is worth the purchase
- The rendered document beside the text, not behind a button. On a tablet the file list, the editor and the live preview are on screen together, with dividers you can drag — which is the difference between checking your formatting and reading your document.
- Version history. Up to forty automatic snapshots per document with a word-by-word diff, and restore of a single block rather than the whole file.
- Export that is typeset. PDF with margins, a header, a footer and page numbers; EPUB 3 for e-readers; a self-contained HTML page with fonts and images embedded in the file.
- LaTeX and Mermaid rendered live and exported as selectable text, in the free version.
- Twenty reading fonts in the app, a document outline, tabs, a command palette, statistics and a daily writing goal — the apparatus of writing something long.
Nothing to migrate
Markor writes ordinary .md, .txt and .todo.txt files into a folder you chose. Inkiostro reads that same folder: point it there on first run and everything is present, unconverted and uncopied. The two can coexist on the same device and the same folder — Markor for a quick note, Inkiostro for the piece you are drafting — because neither of them owns the files.