The short answer
Start with Reedsy Studio. It is free, and for a text novel it is enough. Buy Atticus when you hit something it will not do — a trim size it does not offer, a chapter opener you cannot design, or a second book that makes $147 look like $73.50 each.
That is an unfashionable answer for a page comparing a paid tool with a free one, but it is what the two products actually are.
| Reedsy Studio | Atticus | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $147 once (about £110) |
| Billed in | Pounds, for the optional add-ons | US dollars |
| Runs on | Browser only | Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook, browser |
| Works offline | No | Yes |
| Exports | EPUB, print PDF | EPUB, print PDF, DOCX |
| Custom trim size | No | Yes |
| Chapter-opener design | Limited presets | Full control, ornaments, drop caps |
| Picture books / cookbooks | No | No |
Prices from atticus.io and reedsy.com/studio/pricing, read 23 September 2026.
What “free” actually covers on Reedsy
More than people expect. The free tier writes the book, organises it by chapter and scene, handles front and back matter, and exports both an EPUB that KDP accepts and a print-ready PDF. No watermark, no export cap, no trial clock.
Reedsy is not being charitable. It runs a marketplace of freelance editors and designers and takes its commission from them, so the writing app is a way of meeting you early. That is a perfectly honest business model and it means the free tier is not crippled on purpose.
The paid add-ons are £4.99 a month for Craft and £7.99 for Outlining. Read what they are before you assume they unlock formatting:
- Craft — unlimited version history, advanced stats, custom goals, daily check-ins, dark mode.
- Outlining — unlimited planning boards, unlimited notes with templates for characters and locations, pinned notes.
Both are for writing the book. Neither changes a single thing about the file that comes out the other end. If you are paying Reedsy to get a better-looking export, you have bought the wrong thing.
What $147 buys on Atticus
Control, and the ability to work anywhere.
- Custom trim sizes. Atticus lets you type in the dimensions. Reedsy gives you its list. If you want a UK B-format at 129 × 198 mm, only one of these will do it.
- Chapter openers that look designed. Drop caps, ornamental breaks, images in the heading, control over the space above the chapter number. Reedsy has presets and you take what you are given.
- Offline. Atticus is an installable app. Reedsy Studio is a browser tab. If you write on trains, in cottages, or anywhere with hostile wifi, that is not a small difference.
- DOCX export, which matters when an editor or a competition wants Word.
- One payment, no subscription, all future updates included.
The arithmetic, honestly
At $147 — call it £110 — Atticus costs the royalty on roughly 35 copies of a £9.99 paperback, or 53 copies of a £2.99 ebook. Once.
Reedsy costs nothing, unless you take both add-ons, in which case it is £12.98 a month. That is £155.76 a year, which is more than Atticus costs outright and roughly what Vellum costs once. If you find yourself paying for both Reedsy add-ons indefinitely, you have quietly chosen the most expensive option on this page while believing you chose the free one.
Where both of them stop
Neither tool formats an illustrated book. Not “does it badly” — does not do it.
- A picture book needs fixed-layout EPUB or the image-text relationship falls apart on a phone, plus two-page-spread metadata so a spread is not served as two cropped halves.
- A cookbook needs two-column ingredient layouts, recipe-card pagination so no recipe breaks across a page, and photography pre-flighted at 300 DPI with bleed.
- Anything with tables, footnotes, heavy illustration or right-to-left text is outside what either was built for.
That is not a criticism of either product. They are text tools and they are honest about it.
Book that neither tool can handle?
Picture books are £219 and cookbooks £179 — fixed-layout EPUB, spread metadata and 300 DPI photo pre-flight, built to KDP's spec.
Format my book →Pick Reedsy Studio if
- You are writing a text novel, memoir or business book
- You want to start today without spending anything
- You always have an internet connection
- Reedsy’s trim sizes include the one you want
- You would rather put the £110 into the cover, where readers can see it
Pick Atticus if
- You need a trim size Reedsy does not offer
- You want the chapter openers to look deliberate
- You will publish more than one book
- You write offline, or on a plane
- You want the file on your own machine rather than in someone’s browser
Related
- Atticus review — the long version, with the output tested
- Reedsy Studio review — what the free editor produces
- Reedsy for UK authors — the marketplace, the fees, the pound pricing
- Atticus vs Vellum vs Kindle Create (or just the two: Atticus vs Vellum) — three-way
- Best book formatting software — all nine, priced
