Ahti vs Bookhand
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Ahti
This writing application provides a peaceful, uncluttered interface for planning, drafting, and finishing long-form projects like novels or screenplays. It offers tools for structuring your work, writing without distraction, and exporting your finished manuscript in various formats.
- Binder for chapters and scenes
- Corkboard for scene flash cards
- Outliner for structure overview
- Distraction-free writing modes
- Word goal and daily pace tracking
- Export to ePub, Word, PDF
- Customizable themes and styles
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Ahti is somewhere quiet to finish writing your long-form book. It gives you what you need to plan, draft, and finish a novel, screenplay, or thesis. It's a peaceful, uncluttered interface that stays out of the way so you can focus on writing. PLAN THE SHAPE OF YOUR BOOK Keep your whole story in one place. The binder holds your chapters and scenes. The corkboard turns each scene into a rearrangeable flash card for structuring and quick reference. The outliner gives you a bird's-eye view of your structure and all the data that comes with it. WRITE WITHOUT DISTRACTION Write in a clean editor, or fold a chapters and scenes into one long manuscript so you can write straight through. Additionally, Composition Mode keeps it simple when all you want is the ink and the page. KEEP TRACK, AND FINISH Set a word goal and a daily pace to keep yourself moving. Take a snapshot before a big revision so you can always go back to an earlier draft. When the book is done, compile it to ePub, Word, PDF, and more, with a table of contents, chapter numbering, and your own title page. LOOK THE PART Choose between light and dark mode, or import your own custom themes so your workspace looks and feels like your story. The style editor gives you complete control over every color, font, and formatting of Ahti. YOUR WORK STAYS YOURS An Ahti project is an ordinary folder of plain text files on your own disk. You can open it in Finder or any other writing app, and nothing is trapped in a proprietary format. Turn on iCloud and your books follow you from Mac to iPad to iPhone. There are no sign ins or accounts to create, and unless you choose to sync to iCloud, everything is completely offline. There are robust features when you need them without disrupting your flow: • Wiki-style links between documents • Collections and saved searches • Places for characters and notes • Comments and footnotes • Light and dark themes • Writing targets and history Ahti is built to be calm and quiet, while being rich in functionality when you need it.
Bookhand
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Bookhand is a free app for writing little books: journals, notes, ideas, short stories, poetry, philosophical treatises or anything else you feel like writing. The idea is that your words live on something like actual paper. Your text is typeset onto real pages with proper margins and page numbers, the pages curl as you turn them, and every notebook gets its own paper size, typefaces, colors and a cover you design yourself. READING A notebook opens in Page Mode, laid out the way it would be set on printed paper, from pocket A6 up to A4. There's also a full-screen e-reader mode with the same page-turning, an outline for jumping to a chapter or section, in-book search, and a page grid for finding your place visually. WRITING Edit Mode is a full-screen, distraction-free editor for your award-winning novel, thrilling memoir or truly revolutionary shopping list, whichever the case may be. Paragraphs can be headings, body text or block quotes; add images and control how they sit on the page. A rearrange mode lets you move, copy and cut whole paragraphs at once. MAKE IT YOURS Choose from seventeen carefully picked typefaces, set your paper size and margins, pick paper and ink colors, style the page numbers, then design the cover: board color, patterns, foil stamping, frames, flourishes and your own lettering. YOUR WORDS ARE YOURS Notebooks are stored on your device. There are no accounts, no servers and no database, and your text goes nowhere unless you want it to. Export to PDF, EPUB, Markdown or plain text, or as a .bookhand file for handing a notebook to someone else (or storing a backup for yourself). Import works too: bring in Markdown, plain text or EPUB. Notebooks can also be locked or hidden behind a PIN. FREE, REALLY Bookhand is made by one person as a personal project, so it's free, with no ads, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions and no upsell pop-ups. I just wanted an app where it's fun to sit down and write little books. I imagine you do too, so here we are.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Bookhand at Free against Ahti's $5.99. Ahti's advantage is device support (4 vs 2) and iOS requirement (14.0 vs 26.5). On update cadence, 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
Bookhand is free to download; Ahti costs $5.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Ahti ships an update every 6 days, Bookhand weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Ahti | Bookhand |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $5.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 6 days — better | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 26.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 7 MB | 17 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Bret Merritt | Bruno Takahashi Carvalhas de Oliveira |
In-app purchases
Ahti
No in-app purchases
Bookhand
No in-app purchases









