Boords and CineLog get compared because both hold storyboard frames, both run a shot list off them, both write a two-column AV script, and both send a client a link to comment and approve without an account. So for a commercial, the overlap is real. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the job instead of the feature list, because an agency getting a thirty-second spot signed off by Thursday and a crew of 25 shooting a scripted feature for twelve days lose things in completely different places, and these two tools are built around those two jobs. Boords says so itself on its About page: it connects storyboards to client approval, and deliberately not to call sheets, breakdowns or schedules. So if you got here by searching for a Boords alternative, or for apps like Boords, 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 Boords side against their site, their docs, their changelog, which is busy, and their pricing page. Boords ships something most weeks, and the shot list tab I describe arrived four days before I checked, so read every number as correct on that date and check again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the boards belong to a shoot. When the frames hang off a shot list that runs in script order and per shooting day, with the cast numbers from the breakdown on every row. When the script is a screenplay with locked pages and colored revisions, not a column of voiceover. When the day on the board becomes a call sheet with a status next to each name. And when the crew is on phones and tablets on a location with no signal, because Boords is a browser page and CineLog is a native app with the project on the device.
Boords is the storyboard tool for teams that deliver boards to a client. You draw the frames with a pressure brush, upload them, or generate them, put them on a timeline with audio and export an animatic to Premiere, Resolve or After Effects, and send one stable review link where unlimited reviewers comment on a frame or a line of the script without an account, and the sign-off is recorded with a name and a time. Since August 2026 it writes a script too, a pageless one with fixed Audio and Visual columns, and since October the board has a shot list tab. It runs in a browser, priced per workspace with a cap on editors.
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 scripted shoot of two to twenty days, like Harbor | The boards hang off a shot list that runs through the stripboard into the call sheet. Boords stops at the approved board, on purpose. |
| A screenplay, not a spot | A full screenplay editor with locked pages, lettered scenes, OMITTED scenes and colored revisions. Boords’ script is pageless and won’t open a Fountain or .fdx file. |
| Shots in shooting order, per day | A shot list per production day with cast numbers on the rows. Boords’ shot list is one row per frame in board order. |
| A crew on location without signal | Native apps on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, offline for up to seven days. Boords runs in a browser and holds edits only until the connection returns. |
| Six people editing | Free collaborators with view or edit rights per tool. On Boords, editors are capped per plan, five on Pro and ten on Team, and only reviewers are free. |
Head to head
Prices are month to month in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026. Boords is a third cheaper billed yearly.
| Boords | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script editor | Yes, since August 2026: pageless, with a three-column AV block, no sluglines | Yes, a screenplay editor |
| Script import | None into the script editor, the storyboard importer takes PDF, text, Markdown, CSV and HTML, not .fdx or Fountain | .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text, with a diff on re-import |
| Revisions | Versions with statuses, Draft to Approved | Scene and page lock, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, standard colors, asterisks, revised-pages-only export |
| Breakdown and stripboard | No, deliberately | Yes, tagged from the script text, cast numbered, stripboard with day breaks and scene splits |
| Shot list | A tab on the board, one row per frame, exported to Excel and Sheets | In script order and per production day, seventeen columns plus your own, populated from the script |
| Storyboards | Frames with a pressure brush, uploads, generated images with monthly quotas, frame revisions with a lock | Several image frames per shot, no drawing |
| Animatic | Yes, MP4 up to 500 frames, Premiere, Resolve, After Effects and PowerPoint exports | No |
| Call sheets | No, a template download | Yes, from the schedule day, with per-person tracking |
| AV script | Yes, fixed Scene, Audio and Visual columns with timing from the word count | Yes, with a client review link |
| Client review | One stable link, unlimited reviewers without an account, comments anchored to text or frame, approval recorded with name and time, passphrase on paid plans | Client review link on the AV script |
| Works offline | No, edits are held until the connection returns | Yes, every tool, every device, up to seven days |
| Native apps | Browser only, script editing on desktop browsers | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | Free with 5 boards and 3 scripts, up to five members, watermark, Solo $39 for 1 editor, Pro $75 for 5, Team $125 for 10, Agency $250 for 30 | 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. With Boords, the third section is most of the comparison, and the first is where the two tools mean different things by the same word.
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 here Boords and CineLog mean two different documents.
Boords’ script editor, launched in August 2026, is built for a commercial. It’s a single pageless document, no margins, no page breaks, and its AV block has three fixed columns, Scene, Audio or Voiceover, and Visual, with the runtime worked out from the words in the audio column at a speaking pace you set. It won’t open a Fountain or .fdx file, and Boords’ founder said so at launch: no sluglines, no Final Draft import, use a screenwriting tool for a feature. New scripts start blank or pasted in. Revisions are versions, each with a status from Draft to Approved, and the review link always shows the newest one. There are no locked pages, no revision colors and no asterisks, because nobody prints a commercial script on pink paper.
CineLog’s script is a screenplay. It has a full editor, 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. CineLog also has the two-column AV script, with a client review link, and that’s the document to put next to Boords’ script, not the screenplay.
So for Harbor, a 90-page feature, the script lives in CineLog. For a thirty-second spot with a voiceover column, both have a place to write it, and the next question is where the boards go.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and Boords tells you where it stands.
Boords has no breakdown and no stripboard, and its About page says that’s a decision, not a gap. For planning shoot days, its Excel page suggests adding Day, Location and Call time columns to the exported spreadsheet. A frame field can hold a shoot date. That’s a board that knows what day it’s for, and it isn’t a schedule.
CineLog does the breakdown by selecting text in the script and picking one of twelve categories, and it 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 and the shot list follows it into day order. Boords never enters this part of the job, by design.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list and the boards, and this is Boords’ home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Boords draws. The frame editor has a pressure-sensitive brush, shapes, text, an eraser and onion skin, and the frame takes an uploaded image or a generated one, with a monthly quota of generated images per plan. Every image change is a revision you can lock, so the frame the client signed off can’t be overwritten. The frames go on a timeline with audio and become an animatic, exported as MP4, or as a timeline for Premiere, Resolve and After Effects, or as PowerPoint. The shot list is a tab on the board, one row per frame, with the frame’s fields as columns, and it exports to Excel and Sheets as a copy. What Boords doesn’t do is hold several frames under one shot, because a frame is the shot, and it doesn’t order the rows by shooting day, because the board is in story order. And the script-to-board step is a snapshot: once the approved script becomes frames, the two don’t stay in sync.
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 pencil, an animatic, a generator or an approval status on a frame. You bring the frames in as images, and a Boords export is a fine image to bring.
So on this section the two are good at different halves, honestly. Boords makes and approves the frames. CineLog runs the shots across the shoot. For Harbor, the DP wants tomorrow’s shots on an iPad at the location scout with the cast numbers on them. 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.
Boords doesn’t make call sheets. The only call sheet on its site is a Google Docs template from 2024, and its About page says the connection to call sheets is one it deliberately doesn’t make.
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, from the same project the shot list lives in.
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.
Boords runs in a browser, on a Mac, a PC or a Chromebook, and that’s the whole list. There’s no app on any store. The script editor is for desktop browsers, and Boords says editing on a phone or a tablet isn’t supported, while reviewing on a phone works. Offline, there’s nothing: if the connection drops while you’re in the script, the edits are held until it returns, and if there’s no connection when you open the script, you get an unavailable screen. For an agency at a desk, none of that matters. On a location, all of it does.
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.
For me, for example, this is the one that decides it, because I’ve never been on a location where the signal was good in every room. On Harbor, two of the four locations are out of town. The DP scouts them with the shot list open on an iPad and the frames on the rows. With a browser tool, that’s a PDF you exported the night before, and PDFs don’t update.
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 becomes once you put the real crew on it. It’s all about who pays for the person.
Boords prices per workspace with a cap on editors. Free has five active boards, three scripts, up to five members and a watermark on the PDF. Solo is $39 a month, or $26 billed yearly, for one editor. Pro is $75, or $50, for up to five. Team is $125, or $85, for up to ten. Agency is $250, or $165, for up to thirty. There’s no way to buy one more seat, so when the sixth editor arrives, you’re on Team. Reviewers are unlimited and free on every plan, and they take no seat. Education and non-profits get half off, and there’s a 30-day guarantee.
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 | Month to month |
|---|---|---|
| Boords | Team, because six editors is more than Pro’s five | $125, or $85 billed yearly, for the boards and the AV script |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40, for the chain from script to call sheet |
That’s not a small difference, and it’s not because CineLog is cheap. It’s because Boords charges by the editor, in steps, and CineLog charges for the production. A crew changes every week. A production doesn’t.
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.
A screenplay in Boords, and an animatic in CineLog. Each one has the thing the other doesn’t, and I’ve said where.
Post. Both stop before the edit, and Boords at least hands the animatic to it. Review, approval and delivery of the real footage 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 what the boards are for. If a client has to sign them off and an editor has to cut an animatic from them, that’s what Boords was built for. If a crew has to shoot them in an order, read on.
Second, count the people who will change the plan, and find them on Boords’ plan ladder. Five fit on Pro, six need Team. On CineLog the number to count is zero.
Third, check the signal at each location before you sign up for anything. Stand in the room where you’ll shoot, open a web page on your phone, and see what happens. If it doesn’t load, a browser tool is a printout on that day.
The bottom line
Boords is the best storyboard and animatic tool for getting a client’s sign-off, and it says plainly that it stops there. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because the frames hang off a shot list that runs in day order with the cast numbers on it, the day becomes a call sheet with a status on every name, the whole crew is on it for one price, and it works on a phone in the basement. That’s Boords vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Boords?
For storyboards and a shot list on a production, yes. CineLog holds several frames per shot, runs the shot list per shooting day, and ties it to the schedule and the call sheet. What CineLog doesn’t do is draw, generate frames, or cut an animatic. For an agency delivering boards to a client, those are Boords’ own things, and a Boords export drops into a CineLog shot as an image.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
CineLog, at $40 a month on Production Company with everyone on the project. Boords with six editors needs Team at $125 a month, or $85 billed yearly, and the readers are free on both.
Does Boords have a shot list?
Yes, since October 2026, as a tab on the storyboard with one row per frame, exported to Excel or Sheets. It isn’t ordered by shooting day. CineLog’s shot list runs in script order and per production day.
Which one works offline on set?
Only CineLog. Boords runs in a browser and holds edits until the connection comes back.
Can I write a screenplay in Boords?
No, and Boords says so. Its script editor is a pageless document with an AV block, and it won’t open Fountain or .fdx. CineLog’s editor is a screenplay editor with locked pages and revision colors, and it has a two-column AV script as well.
Which one has client review?
Both, on the AV side. Boords sends one review link where unlimited reviewers comment on text or frames without an account and the approval is recorded with a name and a time. CineLog’s AV script has a client review link where the client comments and approves without an account.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no. They make a free account and get the rights you give them. On Boords, reviewers are free and unlimited, and editors are capped by plan, one on Solo, five on Pro, ten on Team, thirty on Agency.
Which one makes the call sheet?
CineLog, from the schedule day, with the weather, the sun times and the nearest hospital, sent per person with delivery and confirmation tracking. Boords has a template download and, by its own account, no call sheet.
Which one draws?
Boords, with a pressure-sensitive brush, shapes, onion skin and a lockable revision on every frame. CineLog holds image frames and doesn’t draw.
Can I switch from Boords to CineLog?
Yes. Export the frames from Boords as images, an images ZIP on the paid plans, and attach them to the shots in CineLog. Bring the script in as .fdx, Fountain or PDF, populate the shot list from it, and paste the AV script’s text into CineLog’s AV script, which has its own client review link.
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. Boords makes and approves the boards for a client, in a browser, by the editor. CineLog runs the boards through the shoot, with the whole crew on it, on any 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.