Arc Studio and CineLog get compared because both write screenplays in a browser and in native apps, both let several people edit at once, both lock pages and color revisions, and since this autumn Arc’s own pages say it tags, schedules and makes call sheets too. So the two are closer on paper than they were a year ago. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the job instead of the feature list, because a writers’ room outlining a season and a crew of 25 shooting one script in twelve days lose things in completely different places, and that’s still where these two tools come from. So if you got here by searching for a Arc Studio alternative, or for apps like Arc Studio, this is the long answer.
One thing before we start. Everything in here was checked on November 2, 2026. The CineLog side against the app itself, version 1.5.6. The Arc side against arcstudiopro.com, its help center and the App Store listing. Arc Studio is the current name, and the company says Arc Studio Pro was the same product. On that day, Arc’s feature pages described a set of production tools that had no help articles, no plan tier and no price anywhere I could find, which reads like a launch in progress, so for those I’ll tell you what their pages say and leave the depth to your trial. Both tools ship changes every month, so check again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the script’s next stop is a set and you need the production tools documented, priced and on every device today. When the breakdown numbers the cast and lands on a stripboard with day breaks and scene splits. When the call sheet is built from the schedule day and sent to each person with a status next to their name. When the crew is on Android as well as Apple, and on phones with no signal for days. And when the new draft has to land on the breakdown as a diff instead of a new script.
Arc Studio is a cloud screenwriter with the best story-planning tools in its class. The Plot Board puts beats on a whiteboard and links them to scenes, season outlines turn into episode scripts, writers co-write in real time with their own cursors, branches merge back with a review, and a Showrunner edition lets a room write privately while the showrunner approves. Snapshots become colored revisions with stars in the margin, pages lock, and the PDF can print the revised pages or a character’s sides. It’s $99 a year for Pro, with apps on Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad.
Those two paragraphs are the article. Everything below is the reason for it.
Let’s put a real production on the table
So we’re not talking in the abstract, let’s invent one. Let’s call it Harbor. It’s a scripted feature, about 90 pages, twelve shooting days, a crew of 25. Four locations, and two of them are out of town where phones drop to one bar. Six people need to change things in the plan. That’s the director, the first AD, the DP, the producer, the script supervisor and the production designer. The other nineteen need to get a call sheet every night and open it in the morning. We’ll come back to Harbor in every section, because the numbers only mean something on a real crew.
When CineLog is the pick
| Production shape | Why CineLog |
|---|---|
| A script going into production with the same crew, like Harbor | Breakdown, stripboard, shot list and call sheets are documented, on every plan including Free, and in the same project. Arc’s pages announce them with no help article or plan tier yet. |
| A draft that keeps changing after the lock | A scene-by-scene diff on every re-import. Arc’s import makes a new script, and its comparison is between its own snapshots. |
| A call sheet that has to be confirmed by morning | A personal PDF per person by email, with delivered, opened, confirmed and bounced. Arc’s page says distribution by email and nothing about per-person status. |
| A crew on Android and on location without signal | Native apps on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, offline for up to seven days, everything merged after. Arc has no Android app and offline only in its desktop and iOS apps. |
| Six people editing without a licence each | Free collaborators with view or edit rights per tool. On Arc, only Pro can invite, and collaborators who need Pro features need Pro. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026.
| Arc Studio | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script editor | Yes, with Plot Board, season outlines, branch and merge | Yes |
| Script import | Final Draft, Word, PDF, text, Fountain | .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text, with a diff on re-import |
| New draft of the script | Import creates a new script, snapshots compare against each other | Scene-by-scene diff, breakdown and shot list survive |
| Revision mode | Page lock, scene numbers assigned or typed, snapshot colors White, Blue, Pink, stars in the margin, PDF of revised pages or character sides (Pro) | Scene and page lock, A-pages, lettered scenes, OMITTED scenes, standard colors, asterisks, revised-pages-only export |
| Breakdown and schedule | The site says tagging with customizable categories, AI assistance, and “an intuitive stripboard”, no help article, tier or price on November 2 | Yes, tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered, stripboard with day breaks and scene splits |
| Shot list, storyboards, call sheets, DOODs, sides | The site says all of these, with email distribution for call sheets, same caveat | Shot list per production day, several frames per shot, call sheets with per-person tracking, no DOOD or sides |
| AV script | No two-column format | Yes, with a client review link |
| Collaboration | Real-time co-writing, guests join without an account, inviting is Pro only | Real-time, free collaborators, roles per tool |
| Works offline | In the desktop and iOS apps, with advanced features off, not in the browser | Yes, every tool, every device, up to seven days |
| Native apps | macOS, Windows, iPhone, iPad on paid plans, browser, no Android app | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | Free with 2 scripts and a watermark, Essentials $69 a year, Pro $99 a year, 7-day Pro trial, students $70 off | Free plan, then $15, $40 or $90 a month, collaborators free |
Six things I compare, in order
There are six things I compare when I look at tools like these, and those are the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can actually use the thing, and who pays. I go in that order because that’s the order a scripted production moves in.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts, and this is Arc’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Arc Studio writes well and plans better. The Plot Board is a whiteboard of acts and beat cards, tagged with storylines, characters and locations, and a beat links to the scene it became. Season outlines and bibles turn into episode scripts. Writers co-write in real time, each with their own color and cursor, a writer can branch a private copy and merge it back with a review of the changes, and the Showrunner edition adds a room dashboard where the showrunner approves or rejects what the writers did. On the revision side, you lock the pages from the production settings, scene numbers are assigned or typed by hand, a snapshot given a color becomes a revision in the order White, Blue, Pink, changed text gets stars in the margin, and the PDF export can print the revised pages or a character’s sides. What I couldn’t find on Arc’s pages is a lettered scene number like 12A or an A-page after the lock, an OMITTED scene, or a comparison against a draft that came in from outside, because an import makes a new script.
CineLog has a full editor too, and it imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF and plain text. The part I lean on is what happens on the second import, because a scripted production gets new pages every week. CineLog shows the new draft as a diff against what you already have, scene by scene, and you accept what changed. It doesn’t wipe your breakdown and your shot list to make room for the new file. And once the script is locked, it does the real production thing. A new scene between 12 and 13 becomes 12A, a new page after 16 becomes 16A, and a cut scene prints as OMITTED and keeps its number for good. Every revision round gets its color, the changed lines get their asterisks in the margin, and you can export only the revised pages on that color, because that’s what goes out to the crew on a Tuesday night. What CineLog doesn’t have is a Plot Board, season outlines, branches or a showrunner’s approval queue.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, both lock the pages and color the changes. CineLog letters the inserted scene, prints the omitted one, and keeps the breakdown attached through every draft.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and here I have to be careful, because Arc’s pages and Arc’s help center say different things.
On November 2, Arc’s feature pages said you can tag the script with keyboard shortcuts and customizable categories, by hand or with AI assistance, and schedule the shoot on an integrated stripboard, with one-liners and DOODs pulled from the schedule. The classroom page’s FAQ lists the whole suite. What I couldn’t find was a help article for any of it, a plan that includes it, or a price, and the pages weren’t in the site’s menu. The app’s own code carries the labels, so something ships. I’d put a trial account on it before I counted on it for a shoot, and I’d ask which plan it lives on.
CineLog’s breakdown is documented, on every plan including the free one, and it works like this. You select text in the script and pick one of twelve categories, and CineLog marks the page with the underline, the circle, the asterisk and the box that people know from paper breakdowns. The thing I like most is what happens with cast. CineLog tags every character on every line they speak, gives each one a numbered talent slot, and that number sits on the strip, in the shot list’s cast column and in the cast grid on the call sheet. You tag once. It shows up everywhere. The stripboard has day breaks, a boneyard for the scenes you haven’t placed yet, the standard strip colors, and it lets you split a scene across two days. A finished day flows straight into that day’s call sheet, and the board exports as a PDF. What CineLog doesn’t print yet is the day out of days report.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD builds the board in CineLog today, with the cast numbers on the strips. On Arc, the AD reads the feature page and opens a trial.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and the same caveat applies.
Arc’s production page says directors can plan with integrated shot lists and storyboards. No help article describes them, and nothing says whether the shot list runs per shooting day or what a storyboard holds.
CineLog runs two shot lists off the same shots, a linear one in script order and one per production day, with seventeen default columns, your own columns on top, and your own dropdown values for shot type, angle, lens and movement. You can populate the first pass of the list from the script and then reorder by drag, whole scenes at a time. The Cast & Crew column shows the cast by the same numbers the schedule uses, so one look tells you who’s in the shot. Each shot holds several storyboard frames, and the shot list PDF prints the frames next to the rows. What CineLog doesn’t have is a drawing tool. You bring the frames in as images, from a sketch, a photo or a previs render.
For Harbor, the DP wants the shot list on an iPad at the location scout, in tomorrow’s order, with the cast numbers on it. That’s CineLog.
Call sheets
The next thing is the call sheet, and this is the document the whole crew judges the tool by, because it’s the only part nineteen of our 25 people will ever see.
Arc’s production page says you build customizable call sheets and distribute them to cast and crew by email, with sides. It doesn’t mention what the sheet pulls from the schedule, whether it fills the weather, or whether you see who opened it. There’s no two-column AV format in Arc, and nothing like a client review link.
CineLog’s call sheet pulls the day from the stripboard and the shot list, so the schedule block is a live copy of the day and not a re-typed one, and the cast grid carries the numbers the breakdown gave the cast. It fills the weather and the sunrise and sunset from the location and the date, it carries the nearest hospital and the parking you saved on each location, and it autocompletes the addresses. It sends a personal PDF to each person by email, and for every person you see delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced. And the night before day five, the sheet for day five starts from what day four already knew.
For Harbor, that’s nineteen people who need a sheet every night, and an AD who knows by seven which three haven’t opened it.
Where you can actually use it
Now that we’ve gone through the documents, the next thing is where you can open them, and this is the one people skip until day three.
Arc Studio runs in the browser on any plan, and on the paid plans as apps for Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad, with the iOS app’s own listing saying it needs an annual Pro subscription. There’s no Android app, and their FAQ says not at this point, so Android runs the browser, where long-term offline isn’t supported. Offline editing works in the apps, with the advanced features switched off, and syncs when you’re back. Collaborators can join as guests without an account, with admin, edit or read-only access, and only a Pro account can invite them.
CineLog is a native app on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, and it also runs in a browser at app.cinelog.com. Every device keeps a local copy of the project, so the shot list, the script and the call sheets open with no signal at all. You can work offline for up to seven days after you’ve signed in, and when the connection comes back, your changes and everyone else’s merge in the background. The people you invite get view or edit rights per tool, so the script supervisor can edit the script and only read the schedule.
For me, for example, this is the one that decides it, because I’ve never been on a crew where everyone had an iPhone. On Harbor, two of the six changers are on Android phones, and two of the four locations have no signal for days. CineLog puts all of them on the project, offline. Arc puts the Apple and Windows owners on the script, and the Android owners on a browser that needs a connection.
Pricing, and who pays for the crew
And the last thing is the money, and the key here isn’t the first number on the pricing page. It’s what the number buys and who it buys it for.
Arc Studio has a free plan with two scripts, a watermark on the PDF, no apps and no inviting. Essentials is $69 a year and Pro is $99 a year, with the apps, and Pro adds the history, the revision management, the collaboration invites and the season outlines. There’s a seven-day Pro trial, students get $70 off Pro with a school address, classrooms get a quote, and the terms allow monthly billing though the page shows yearly. Anyone who needs the Pro features needs their own Pro. The production tools’ plan isn’t published. For a writer or a room, $99 a year with the apps is a fair price, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
CineLog has a free plan with one project, every tool, offline mode, and two collaborators. Filmmaker is $15 a month with three projects and twenty collaborators. Production Company is $40 with ten projects and fifty collaborators. Studio is $90 with thirty projects and a hundred collaborators. There are no seats. The people you invite make a free account and get view or edit rights on the project, based on what you give them, and one subscription unlocks the app on every platform.
So let’s put Harbor on it. Six editors, nineteen readers, one project.
| Tool | Plan for Harbor | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Arc Studio | Pro for the owner, and Pro for anyone who needs the Pro features, the production tools’ tier unpublished | About $8 per Pro account |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 |
That’s a comparison with a hole in it, because Arc hasn’t said what its production tools cost. What I can say is what the CineLog number buys: every tool, documented, on every device, for everyone on the production.
What neither of them does
A quick word on what both leave out, because it’s the reason every production I’ve been on still had a spreadsheet open.
The budget. Neither has one.
Drawing. Neither has a pencil in the storyboard, as far as Arc’s pages say.
Post. Both stop before the edit. Review, approval and delivery are a separate tool and a separate bill.
A quick exercise before you pick
So here’s a quick exercise before you move on to a trial.
First, figure out whether the job is the story or the shoot. If it’s a room outlining a season, Arc’s Plot Board and showrunner tools are the reason it exists. If it’s a crew shooting one script in twelve days, read on.
Second, open a trial of each and build day one. Tag a scene, put it on a day, make the call sheet, and look for the cast number on the strip and the status next to the first name on the sheet. On CineLog that takes an afternoon on the free plan. On Arc, find out which plan it’s on first.
Third, count the Android phones on the crew and check the signal at each location. Those two facts decide more shoots than any feature list.
The bottom line
Arc Studio is the best story-planning and co-writing screenwriter in its class, fairly priced, and it’s adding production pages. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew today, because the breakdown, the board, the shot list and the call sheet are documented, on every plan, in the same project, the whole crew is on it for one price, and it runs on every device with or without a signal. That’s Arc Studio vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Arc Studio?
For taking a script into production with your own crew, yes. CineLog imports Fountain and .fdx, locks scene numbers and pages, colors revisions and exports the revised pages, and the breakdown, the stripboard, the shot list and the call sheet are documented and on every plan. For outlining a season on a Plot Board with a writers’ room, that’s Arc’s own thing.
Does Arc Studio have production tools?
Its feature pages say so, as of November 2, 2026: tagging, a stripboard, shot lists, storyboards, call sheets with email distribution, one-liners, DOODs and sides. I couldn’t find a help article, a plan tier or a price for them on that day. Put a trial on it before you count on it.
Which one is cheaper?
For a writer, Arc, at $99 a year for Pro with the apps. For a production with a crew on it, CineLog, because $40 a month covers 25 people and every tool, and on Arc each person who needs Pro features pays for Pro.
Which one works offline on set?
CineLog, on every device, for every tool, up to seven days, with everyone’s changes merged after. Arc works offline in its desktop and iOS apps with advanced features off, and not in the browser.
Which one runs on Android?
Only CineLog as an app. Arc’s FAQ says there’s no Android app at this point, and Chrome on Android works without long-term offline.
Which one handles colored revision pages?
Both color revisions and lock pages. CineLog also letters inserted scenes, prints omitted ones as OMITTED and keeps the breakdown attached through a re-import diff. Arc’s lettered scenes and omitted scenes aren’t documented on its pages.
Can I bring my Arc script into CineLog?
Yes. Export it as .fdx or Fountain from Arc and import it. Re-imports show as a scene-by-scene diff.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no, and they get view or edit rights per tool. On Arc, guests can join without an account, only a Pro account can invite them, and collaborators who need Pro features need their own Pro.
Which one makes the call sheet with tracking?
CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule day, fills the weather, the sun times and the hospital, and shows delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced per person. Arc’s page says call sheets with email distribution and nothing about per-person status.
Can I switch from Arc Studio to CineLog?
Yes. Export the script from Arc Studio as .fdx or Fountain and import it. The breakdown is tagged on the page with the cast done for you, later drafts show as a scene-by-scene diff, and CineLog exports .fdx and Fountain if the script needs to go back.
To recap
To recap, in this article we talked about picking on the shape of the job instead of feature count, we walked six things in order, the script and its revisions, the breakdown and the schedule, the shot list and the storyboards, the call sheet, where you can use it, and who pays, and we put a twelve-day, 25-person feature on both. Arc Studio is the story-planning screenwriter with production pages on the way. CineLog is the production tool with the writing room inside it, documented, on every device, for one price.
If you want to see the CineLog chain for yourself, the Free plan is one project with every tool, and you make the account inside the app after you download it. So put your own Harbor on it, and then move on to the part that matters, which is the shoot.