MD Preview vs Read.md
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
MD Preview
This app provides a clean and elegant way to read markdown files from various cloud storage services. It offers beautiful formatting, syntax highlighting for numerous programming languages, and customizable themes. An optional one-time purchase unlocks additional features like PDF export and custom font sizes.
- Open .md files from cloud storage
- Beautifully formatted markdown rendering
- Syntax highlighting for 180+ languages
- Toggle between preview and raw markdown
- Collapsible table of contents
- 6 free reading themes
- Export to PDF (premium)
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MD Preview is a fast, elegant Markdown reader for the .md files AI assistants write, your notes, and technical docs. Open a file from Files, iCloud Drive, or anywhere else, and it formats beautifully in an instant. READING • Open any .md or HTML file • Headings, tables, code blocks, task lists, and images, rendered cleanly • Syntax highlighting for 30+ common programming languages • Math (LaTeX) and Mermaid flowcharts, sequence diagrams and pie charts • Collapsible table of contents: tap a heading to jump to it • Switch between the preview and the markdown source in one tap • Right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew read right to left automatically • Distraction-free reading: tap the page to hide everything but the text READING FOLDER • Pick a folder once, and it's on the home screen every time • Works with local folders and iCloud Drive • Pin recent files so the ones you use most stay on top 6 FREE THEMES Paper, Midnight, Forest, Rosé, Ocean, and Lavender, in light and dark. Chinese, Japanese and Korean text uses the system's native fonts, crisp and easy on the eyes. PREMIUM: ONE-TIME PURCHASE • Read Aloud: natural voices read your docs to you, on a walk or when your eyes need a rest • PDF export: share formatted docs by AirDrop, email, or print • Reading fonts & text size: four fonts made for long reading, sized from compact to large • 4 extra themes: Solarized, Dracula, Nord and Tokyo Night • No subscription. Buy once, keep it forever. PRIVACY FIRST No account, no ads, no tracking. MD Preview reads your files where they are. It never uploads, copies, or stores them. Built by a solo developer.
Read.md
This app allows you to beautifully view markdown files on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. It offers perfect rendering of complex elements like tables, code blocks, and diagrams, with offline support and privacy in mind.
- Perfect markdown rendering
- Syntax highlighting for 180+ languages
- Mermaid diagram rendering
- GitHub repository browsing
- Export to PDF & HTML (Pro)
- Smart diagram fixing
- Auto-generated table of contents
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Open any .md file and read it beautifully — on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Read.md is a markdown reader. Not an editor, not a note-taking app, not a vault system. A reader. Tap a .md file, it opens, it looks great, you read it. PERFECT RENDERING Tables, code blocks, nested lists, task lists, blockquotes, images, links — everything renders correctly. Syntax highlighting for 180+ programming languages. GitHub Flavored Markdown fully supported. MERMAID DIAGRAMS Flowcharts, sequence diagrams, Gantt charts, class diagrams, and more render natively. Tap to zoom into any diagram for a detailed view. EXPORT TO WORD, PDF & HTML Turn any document into a real Word (.docx) file with proper headings, tables, lists and code blocks, a clean, paginated, print-quality PDF, or a self-contained HTML file — diagrams and images intact. Share it, print it, archive it. Or export the original Markdown source. (Word, PDF and HTML export are Read.md Pro; Markdown export is free.) OPEN FROM GITHUB Read documentation straight from the source. Browse any GitHub repository — public or private — navigate its file tree, and open any .md file with the same beautiful rendering. Sign in with a personal access token; your token stays on your device. (Read.md Pro) SMART DIAGRAM FIXER ASCII art and box-drawing diagrams that look broken in other apps? Read.md detects and corrects misaligned characters automatically so your diagrams look the way they were intended. NAVIGATE LONG DOCUMENTS Auto-generated table of contents from your headings. Search within any document with match highlighting and next/prev navigation. Your scroll position is remembered when you come back to a file. ZERO FRICTION No account needed to read. No workspace. No vault. No setup. Works as your default .md file handler — open markdown and plain-text files from Files, Finder, email attachments, AirDrop, the share sheet, or drag and drop. ADAPTS TO YOUR DEVICE iPhone: stacked navigation with a frosted-glass nav bar and bottom sheets. iPad: landscape split-view, portrait slide-over panels, trackpad and keyboard support. Mac: split-view with sidebar, reader, and table-of-contents panel, keyboard shortcuts, and translucent panels. Everything adapts automatically when you resize windows or rotate your device. DARK AND LIGHT MODES Switch between dark and light themes, or follow your system setting. Adjust font size to your preference. Everything updates live. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Opens instantly, even large files. Your markdown is rendered entirely on your device — file contents are never uploaded, and reading works fully offline. No ads. No account required to read. The only feature that touches the network is GitHub browsing, and only when you choose to use it. We use anonymous, aggregate analytics to improve the app. READ.MD PRO A one-time purchase — or a yearly subscription with a free trial — unlocks Word/PDF/HTML export and GitHub browsing. Everything else stays free, forever. WHAT PEOPLE USE IT FOR Reading AI-generated markdown exports. Turning markdown into Word documents for colleagues. Reading GitHub README files on mobile. Viewing documentation and project specs on the go. Reviewing technical docs from colleagues. Browsing personal notes written in markdown. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: MD Preview at every 3 days against Read.md's fortnightly. MD Preview also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 88%). Read.md's advantage is device support (4 vs 2) and ratings volume (110 vs 33). On price, rating, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. MD Preview sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Read.md sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for MD Preview against 5.0 for Read.md. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 33 and 110 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 100% of MD Preview's written reviews are positive against 88% of Read.md's.
MD Preview ships an update every 3 days, Read.md fortnightly. Both last shipped on October 31, 2026.
| Parameter | MD Preview | Read.md |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (33 ratings) — better | 5.0 (110 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 88.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 33 | 110 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.6 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 5 MB | 33 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Gejun Zhu | Pavel Abin |
Customer experience
MD Preview
Read.md
In-app purchases
MD Preview
- MD Preview Premium$3.99
Read.md
- Read.md Pro Yearly3 Days trial$9.991 Year
- Read.md Pro (Lifetime)$24.99






