One purchase, Mac and iPad
Pay once and Finis is yours on the Mac and the iPad, with the same projects. No subscription, no licence for each device.
Finis, Scrivener and Ulysses
Three ways to write a book on a Mac. Finis brings together the structure of a big project and the calm of a clean page, with your texts in files you own and one purchase for Mac and iPad. Here is how they compare, facts in hand.
Updated 21 October 2026.
At a glance
| Finis | Scrivener | Ulysses | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where | Mac and iPad | Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad | Mac, iPad and iPhone |
| Price | $34.90 once, Mac and iPad together (€39.90 in Europe) | $59.99 once for the Mac; $23.99 for iPhone and iPad and $59.99 for Windows, each sold separately | Subscription at $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year; lifetime licence at $199.99 in the app |
| Free trial | 14 days, the whole app | 30 days of use on Mac and Windows; none on iPhone and iPad | 7 days, with the subscription |
| Where your texts live | Markdown files in a folder you choose, readable in any app | RTF files inside the project package | In the Ulysses library; in external Markdown folders without notes, images, goals or comments |
| Between Mac and iPad | iCloud Drive, or another synced folder | Dropbox | iCloud |
| Structure of the book | Board (by tag too), outline, continuous text | Corkboard (by label too), Outliner, Scrivenings | Groups and sheets, with an outline of headings; no board is documented |
| Revision | Comments; suggestions to accept or reject one by one; Track Changes While Writing | Comments and annotations; coloured revision levels, which the manual distinguishes from track changes | Comments and annotations; grammar suggestions to accept; changes to accept or reject are not documented |
| Versions | Of every document, with a word-by-word comparison | Snapshots, with comparison | Sheet versions on the Mac; comparison is not documented |
| Find and replace | Across the whole project, regular expressions included | Across the whole project, regular expressions included | Replaces in the open sheet; searches the whole library |
| Export | Typeset book PDF, manuscript PDF following the book’s language, Word, ePub, HTML, Markdown, with a few ready-made choices | Compile, highly configurable: PDF, Word, ePub, RTF, HTML, Final Draft, Fountain, MultiMarkdown and more | PDF, Word, ePub, HTML, Markdown, TextBundle; custom styles written as text files, on the Mac |
| Coming from other apps | Import from Scrivener, Word and TextBundle (Ulysses, Bear, iA Writer) | Imports Word, Markdown, text and web pages, split into parts if you like | Imports Word and Markdown; from Scrivener by way of MultiMarkdown or Word |
| Goals and statistics | Deadline, writing days and a daily pace; history to copy into a spreadsheet; most used words | Deadline and writing days; history as CSV; word frequency | Deadline, writing days and every day; history as CSV |
| For rereading | Dialogue emphasis; Virgil, an optional AI assistant with the key of the service you choose | Linguistic Focus on the Mac: dialogue, adverbs, adjectives | Grammar and style check by LanguageTool, online |
Where Finis is different
Your texts stay your files
Every document is a Markdown file in a folder you choose, with images, notes, comments and suggestions inside the text. Any editor opens it, even without Finis.
The language of the book
Finis types the punctuation of the book’s language as you write, and prepares the manuscript the way that language asks for it: Italian cartelle, the German Normseite, the French feuillet, the standard format US agents ask for. Nothing to set up.
Revision like an editor’s
Suggest additions, deletions and replacements, then accept or reject them one at a time; with Track Changes While Writing every change becomes a suggestion. Word’s comments and tracked changes arrive as comments and suggestions.
The book ready in a few steps
A PDF typeset like a printed book, an ePub with its table of contents, a title page, numbered chapters, a dedication on a page of its own: ready-made choices, no style sheets to write.
Bring your work with you
A Scrivener project becomes a Finis project with its parts, chapters, synopses, statuses and notes; from Ulysses, Bear or iA Writer come TextBundles with their images; from Word, the chapters with comments and tracked changes.
What Finis leaves out, and why
Finis means to stay simple: some things it leaves out on purpose, even where Scrivener or Ulysses have them.
iPhone and Windows
Finis is on the Mac and the iPad, the same app with the same panels. Scrivener is on Windows and the iPhone too, Ulysses on the iPhone.
Free formatting and styles
The text is Markdown: headings, italics, quotes, footnotes. Export decides how the book looks, not fonts picked by hand.
A made-to-measure compile
Export has a few ready-made choices. Scrivener’s Compile and Ulysses’s styles do much more, for those who want to design every detail.
Scripts and blogs
Finis is for novels, non-fiction and theses: no Final Draft or Fountain, no publishing to WordPress or Ghost.
Themes and fonts of your choice
Light, Sepia or Dark paper and two typefaces, Literata and a sans-serif: choices made once, so you can think about the book.
Citations
Not yet: Scrivener brings Zotero or Bookends forward with ⌘Y. In Finis, citations are written as text.
Coming from Scrivener or Ulysses?
From Scrivener
File › Import from Scrivener… brings the .scriv project into Finis: the manuscript goes into the book with its parts, chapters and scenes, the rest into Notes, with synopses, statuses, labels, notes and comments. Your Scrivener project stays as it is.
From Ulysses
In Ulysses, export the group as a TextBundle; in Finis, File › Import from TextBundle… brings in the texts with their images. A book written in a single sheet splits into chapters with Split at Headings.
Sources, consulted on 21 October 2026
- Scrivener: Mac manual 3.5.2, prices, trial, Mac App Store, App Store for iPhone and iPad.
- Ulysses 41.3: prices, help centre, release notes, App Store.
- Prices in US dollars from the developers’ websites and the US App Store.
Scrivener and Ulysses are trademarks of their respective owners, Literature & Latte and Ulysses. Finis is not affiliated with either.
