Top 10 Best Writing Software of 2026

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free, open-source code editor developed by Microsoft that has evolved into a powerful writing tool through its extensive extension ecosystem. It supports Markdown, LaTeX, reStructuredText, and plain text with features like live previews, syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and outlining for structured writing. Ideal for technical documentation, blogging, and long-form content, it integrates seamlessly with version control and publishing workflows.

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor built on VS Code, designed to supercharge coding workflows with intelligent autocompletions, natural language code generation, and multi-file editing capabilities. It integrates advanced AI models like GPT-4 and Claude directly into the editor for contextual assistance, debugging, and refactoring. While optimized for programming, it supports technical writing tasks such as generating documentation, markdown, and prose with AI prompts.

IntelliJ IDEA is a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) from JetBrains, optimized for writing, editing, and debugging software code across dozens of programming languages, with a focus on Java, Kotlin, and JVM ecosystems. It offers intelligent code assistance, automated refactoring, version control integration, and a rich plugin ecosystem to enhance productivity in software development workflows. While primarily for coders, its extensible nature supports technical writing tasks like Markdown editing and documentation generation via plugins.

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered code completion tool that integrates into popular IDEs like VS Code and JetBrains, providing real-time suggestions for code snippets, functions, and entire blocks based on context and natural language comments. Primarily designed for software developers, it accelerates coding by autocompleting boilerplate, algorithms, and tests across dozens of programming languages. While not a traditional writing tool for prose, it excels at technical writing in the form of code and documentation. Its capabilities stem from models trained on vast public repositories, making it a boon for efficient software authorship.

Visual Studio is a full-featured integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft designed for professional software development across multiple languages like C#, C++, Python, and JavaScript. It provides advanced code editing, intelligent code completion via IntelliSense, robust debugging, testing frameworks, and deployment tools tailored for building Windows, web, mobile, and cloud applications. While not exclusively a 'writing' tool, its editor excels at code authoring with syntax highlighting, refactoring, and documentation generation support.

Vim is a powerful, highly configurable, modal text editor designed for efficient text editing and manipulation, available primarily as a command-line tool with a GUI variant (gVim). It excels in handling plain text, code, Markdown, and structured writing formats through extensive plugins and scripting. Widely used by developers and technical writers, it prioritizes keyboard-driven workflows over mouse interaction for speed and precision.

Neovim is a hyperextensible, terminal-based text editor forked from Vim, optimized for performance and modern plugin development using Lua scripting. It supports efficient text manipulation through modal editing, making it suitable for writing code, Markdown, LaTeX, and other structured documents. With built-in Language Server Protocol (LSP) and Treesitter integration, it offers advanced syntax highlighting, autocompletion, and refactoring tools tailored for technical writing workflows.

Sublime Text is a lightweight, cross-platform text editor optimized for speed and extensibility, supporting syntax highlighting for numerous languages and formats ideal for coding and prose writing. It excels in handling large files quickly with features like multiple cursors, Goto Anything for rapid navigation, and a plugin ecosystem for enhancements such as spell-checking and Markdown preview. While powerful for technical writing, it lacks specialized tools for long-form narrative organization found in dedicated writing apps.

PyCharm is a comprehensive Integrated Development Environment (IDE) from JetBrains, primarily designed for Python programming with advanced code editing, debugging, and version control integration. For writing software, it offers niche capabilities like Markdown editing with live preview, reStructuredText support for Sphinx documentation, and Jupyter notebook integration for interactive technical writing. While not a general-purpose writing tool, it shines in code-adjacent documentation workflows.

Emacs is a highly extensible, open-source text editor that functions as a powerful platform for writing, editing, and organizing text-based content. It supports specialized modes for Markdown, LaTeX, HTML, and more, with Org-mode enabling structured outlining, note-taking, task management, and multi-format exporting. Writers can customize it extensively via Emacs Lisp to create a tailored writing environment, from distraction-free modes to advanced grammar checking and version control integration.