Scriptorium - 2026 Pricing, Features, Reviews & Alternatives

Scriptorium is a word processor built on Markdown, the plain-text format that ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and most other AI tools write in. Paste an AI answer, or open the .md file it produced, and Scriptorium lays it out as a proper document, with headings, lists, tables, code and equations. People write with a familiar ribbon, without learning any Markdown, and Scriptorium saves clean Markdown files that any program can open.

It is made for documents that have to be right: reports, proposals, invoices and quotations, exam papers with their memos, manuals, newsletters and books.

Tables that calculate. A table cell that starts with = works like an Excel cell, with Excel's addresses, its error values and 462 of its functions under their Excel names, plus a formula bar, number formats and names. As in Excel 365, SORT, FILTER or GROUPBY fill the cells around them with their answers, and LAMBDA makes functions of your own. Tables go to Excel and back, formulas and all. Eighteen of the 29 templates calculate, including an invoice with VAT and a quotation.

Maths beyond Excel. Exact fractions and whole numbers of any size, complex numbers, solving equations, calculus, and algebra with letters, with the answers set as mathematics.

Pages as they will print. The Pages view shows the document on A0 to A5, Letter, Legal, Tabloid or custom paper, and what you see is what prints, colours included. Tables can keep only the lines you want, and can have rounded or chamfered corners.

An optional AI assistant that edits the document itself, reads Scriptorium's help and does sums with formulas. It works with your Claude subscription through Claude Code, an API key for Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, Groq or OpenRouter, or locally with Ollama.

Projects keep a book's chapters, or an exam paper and its memo, in one file. Read aloud gives each character in a story a voice of their own. Newspapers in columns, song sheets with chords and wall charts on A0 are built in.

Scriptorium exports to PDF, Word, Excel, OpenDocument, RTF, HTML, EPUB, LaTeX and plain text, and opens Word, PDF, HTML, RTF, CSV and Excel files. Every menu, message and help page is in 60 languages, including the eleven written official languages of South Africa, and right-to-left languages turn the whole window round.

Scriptorium runs on your own computer (Windows, Linux and Android tablets, with macOS to come) and needs no account. Documents stay on the computer unless you ask the assistant, which sends them to the AI service you chose.

Pricing is simple: a 14-day trial with everything switched on, no account and no card, then a one-time licence of USD 100 (R1,799) per computer, with every future version included. Without a licence, Scriptorium stays a free Markdown reader.

Scriptorium is made by Momo Designs cc in Gqeberha, South Africa, which also makes Cali, calibration management software for ISO/IEC 17025 laboratories.