Format Magic

Format Magic can be tried without an account, but guest downloads open read-only with a small watermark. A free account, with no credit card, allows about 35 pages a month, measured as 75,000 characters, and about 15 pages, or 30,000 characters, in a single document. All plans include cover pages, a table of contents, page numbers, the output editor and PDF export.

The free limit on Word files is less clear. The homepage says signing up free makes downloads editable, but the pricing table marks “no watermark, fully unlocked Word documents” as a paid feature. Download one test file on the free plan and check it before promising an editable Word file to anyone.

Usage is metered in characters, and the page counts on the pricing page are estimates that change with headings, tables and images. The per-document cap matters as much as the monthly total: a 40-page report cannot be formatted in one pass on Free or Basic, whatever the remaining allowance.

Editorial assessment

Free covers an occasional short report or CV. Basic suits a few client documents a month up to about 25 pages each. Pro is the tier for longer reports up to about 50 pages or saved custom styles, and Premium is needed only for your own Word templates or very long documents. Unused allowance does not roll over.

• Free: 75,000 characters a month, 30,000 per document.
• Basic: 400,000 a month, 50,000 per document.
• Pro: 1,500,000 a month, 100,000 per document.
• Premium: 5,000,000 a month, 150,000 per document.

The pricing page shows a 30% welcome offer for new subscribers, labelled for the first month only and “while spots last”. Basic at $6.96 becomes $9.95 from the second month, so the offer saves one month’s difference, not 30% of a year. Budget with the standard monthly price.

The larger saving is the education offer: 50% off every paid plan for users with an academic email from a list of about 50,000 institutions, applied automatically at checkout. No annual billing option is listed, and the terms do not give pro-rata refunds for a partly used month, apart from rights under Australian Consumer Law.

Format Magic says it changes how a document looks, not what it says. The terms are more careful: because the output is produced by AI, it may occasionally contain errors, omissions or unintended changes to your text, and you must review every document before sending it. Compare headings, figures and names with the source before delivery.

Text is processed by third-party AI providers, named as Google Gemini and OpenAI, and PDF-to-Word conversion by Adobe PDF Services. The privacy policy says input and output for unsaved documents are deleted within 12 hours; saved documents stay until you delete them. Keep that in mind for confidential client material.

Branding depends on the tier. Pro adds the basic template customizer and lets you save customized templates. Premium adds the full customizer and uploading your own Word templates, which is the closest route to an existing house style. Free and Basic use the built-in designed and formal templates.

The terms let you use and sell the documents you make, including for business, but not the templates themselves. You may not copy, extract or resell template designs or prompts, recreate them from output, or use the output to train a competing product. Accounts are for one user and cannot be shared.

You can paste text or drop in a Word, PDF or text file for extraction. Images in the file are pulled into your image library and placed back into the formatted document; the free plan extracts the first 5 images and headers and footers are not extracted. Toggles keep your own bold, italic or heading structure if you want the template to follow it.

Recent updates added editable Word output for all users on August 20, 2026 and conversion of plain-text math and chemistry notation into Word equations on September 10, 2026. A connector lets Claude or ChatGPT send text to your account; the privacy policy says those requests follow the same retention rules as the website.

1. Record the plan, template name and the characters used shown in the usage dashboard.
2. Paste the text with both keep-source toggles off and create the Word document.
3. Open the file in Word and check whether it is editable or read-only and whether a watermark appears.
4. Compare every heading, table cell and number with the source text.
5. Update the table of contents in Word and confirm the page numbers match.

Accept an editable file with all six headings in the contents, an intact table and unchanged figures. Reject missing paragraphs, reworded sentences or a locked file that would require a paid plan. No result is reported until the test is run.

To draft the text before formatting it, compare ChatGPT and Claude, both of which can send text through the connector. For designed one-page layouts with heavy imagery rather than long reports, see Canva.