Coffee vs Drafts: quick capture or a Markdown editor for your Mac?

Checked November 2026 against Drafts' site, Drafts Pro and the user guide. I make Coffee, so read this with that in mind. Coffee isn't affiliated with Drafts.

If you want to get a thought down the second you have it, on your iPhone, your wrist or your Mac, and then send it somewhere with one tap, choose Drafts. Choose Coffee if you work on a Mac and want a place for the documents themselves: Markdown files in a folder, edited by you and by AI tools, where you can check what changed.

They aren't really rivals. Drafts is built for the start of a piece of text, and it's free to use for that. Coffee is built for the files that text ends up in. Plenty of people could use both, and there's a section below on how.

At a glance

Where Drafts is better

Getting text in fast. Drafts opens to a new page with the keyboard ready, so you type before you've decided where anything goes. You can also capture through Siri, widgets, the share sheet, dictation and an Apple Watch app. On the Mac there's a capture window on a global shortcut and in the menu bar. Coffee has quick capture too, adding a line to Inbox.md from any app, but only on a Mac, and it's off until you turn it on.

Your phone and your watch. Drafts runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, and one Pro subscription covers them all. Coffee runs on a Mac and nothing else. If your ideas come to you away from your desk, Coffee can't catch them.

Free, sync included. The free version lets you create, edit and sync as many drafts as you like, and run actions you've installed. Coffee is free for 14 days, and after that you pay to keep editing.

Actions. This is what Drafts is known for. An action takes the text you've written and does something with it: saves a file, appends to a note in another app, makes a task, posts to a blog, sends an email. There's a directory of ready-made ones, and with Pro you can write your own, including scripts. Coffee has nothing like this. It edits and exports, and that's all.

Family Sharing. Both Pro plans support Family Sharing, and the page notes that only the features are shared, not your data. Coffee has no family plan.

AI tools: both can connect

Drafts can call AI models from inside actions. Its guide covers OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude and Perplexity, with your own API key and account, and Apple's on-device models. Pro adds an AI Chat Console for working with your drafts. Drafts' developer also publishes an MCP server for the Mac, released separately from the app, which lets Claude and other AI tools query, create and update drafts.

Coffee has an MCP server too, off until you turn it on. The bigger difference is that Coffee's notes are files, so a tool such as Claude Code or Cursor can edit them directly, with no connection set up, and Coffee then shows you each change it made. On macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence, Ask answers questions about your notes, with the model running on your Mac.

Where Coffee is different

I'm describing what Coffee has here, and not claiming Drafts lacks all of it.

Plain files from the start. Drafts keeps your text in its own library, and gives you actions to write it out as files. In Coffee, every note is already a Markdown file, so Git, Time Machine, Spotlight and any other editor work on it directly. There's more in the piece on plain local files.

Long documents. Coffee is built for writing a document, not a note on the way somewhere. You can work in the finished page, in the code, or side by side, typing in either. There's an outline in the margin, and you can move a whole section by dragging its heading.

Reviewing edits from outside. When Claude, Cursor or anything else edits a file, Coffee shows each change since you last read the note, to keep or undo one at a time. See how that works.

Folders, and replace across them. The sidebar shows your folders as they are on disk, with pinned notes and a sort order for each folder. Replace in All Notes finds text or a regular expression in every note, shows what each match becomes, and undoes the whole replace in one step.

Version history that says what changed. Every note keeps earlier versions, each labelled with what changed against the one before. You can name a version to keep it.

Sums in your notes. Write €40/hour * 7.5 hours or workdays until 24 Dec and the answer appears beside the line. Try it here.

Finished documents. PDF with three templates, title pages and page numbers, plus Word and EPUB. See the PDF guide.

Paying direct, or once. Coffee is sold through Stripe, with a €79 option that includes two years of updates and €29 for each further year if you want them. Drafts Pro is bought in the app through Apple, monthly or yearly.

Using both

The simplest setup is Drafts as the inbox and Coffee as the place things end up. Drafts' File action writes a draft to a file, with a name, a folder and Finder tags you choose, in Drafts' own iCloud Drive folder or in local storage. Since version 28, folder bookmarks let file actions reach folders outside the Drafts sandbox too. Give a File action your Coffee folder and an .md name, and a draft becomes a note Coffee can open. Try it on a test folder first.

If you'd rather move everything at once, Drafts' own export and backups are JSON, not Markdown files. An action that writes each draft as a file is the way to get a folder of .md notes.

Choose Drafts if

• You capture ideas on your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch
• You want text in the app the second you open it
• You send text on to other apps and services, and want actions to do it
• You want a free app with sync included
• You'd like to script your own text workflows

Choose Coffee if

• You work on a Mac running macOS 15 or later, and that's enough
• You want each note to be a Markdown file that other tools can open
• AI tools edit your files, and you want to check each change
• You write long documents and export them as PDF, Word or EPUB
• You'd like the option of paying once

Questions

Is Drafts free?

Yes. The free version lets you create, edit and sync drafts without limit and run installed actions. Drafts Pro, at $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year in the US, adds custom actions and scripting, themes, workspaces and more. The yearly plan has a 7-day trial.

Where does Drafts store my text?

On the devices you use it on, synced through Apple's CloudKit in your private iCloud database. Drafts' privacy page says none of it is stored on servers the developer controls. Backups go to iCloud Drive as JSON files.

Does Drafts save notes as Markdown files?

Not by default. Drafts keeps text in its own library, and you can write in Markdown there. To get .md files, you use an action, such as the File action, which saves a draft as a file in a folder.

Does Coffee have quick capture?

Yes, on the Mac. It adds a line to Inbox.md from any app, with the time, and it's off until you turn it on. There's no Coffee on iPhone or Apple Watch, which is where Drafts is strongest.

Which devices does Drafts run on?

Drafts' site lists iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, and one Pro subscription covers all of them on the same iCloud account. Coffee runs only on a Mac with macOS 15 or later.