Two Typora Alternatives: Markpad and Markra

Good open-source replacements have been scarce since Typora went paid. Two projects I came across recently are still under active development.

Markpad

sftwrdotdev/Markpad (974 stars as of September 2026) bills itself as “The Notepad equivalent for Markdown”. It runs on Monaco, the editor from VS Code: writing on the left, a line-synced preview on the right, plus a Vim mode. Rendering is GitHub-styled, with KaTeX math and Mermaid diagrams; it exports HTML and prints to PDF. Legacy encodings are handled with care, and GBK files open fine.

Strictly speaking it is an editor-plus-preview tool, without Typora’s hidden syntax markers. Its strength is speed: it opens like a plain notepad. Packages exist for all three platforms; on Windows, winget install alecdotdev.Markpad, and on Linux there are AppImage, deb, rpm, and snap.

The repository used to live under alecotdev and has moved to the sftwrdotdev org, so links in older posts around the web now 404.

Markra

markrahq/markra (824 stars as of September 2026) is the true Typora-style WYSIWYG of the two: headings and tables render in place, syntax markers stay hidden, and a source mode or split view is one switch away. It ships native AI with bring-your-own API keys, and every AI edit is previewed before it lands in the file.

Local-first: documents are plain .md files, with WebDAV sync if you want it. Built with Tauri and packaged for all three platforms; on Linux there are AppImage, deb, rpm, and Arch packages. AGPL-3.0. It went open source in May 2026 and releases are frequent, fourteen versions in August alone. If you would rather not install anything, the web editor is a good way to try it.

The split is clear: pick Markra for the Typora writing feel, Markpad for a fast Markdown notepad.