Final Draft and CineLog get compared because both write screenplays with locked pages and colored revisions, both tag the script for a breakdown, and both open the .fdx file that every production in the world expects to receive. So a writer who has lived in Final Draft for twenty years looks at CineLog and sees the same revision mode with a lot of other tabs next to it. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the job instead of the feature list, because a writer delivering a draft to a studio and a crew of 25 shooting that draft in twelve days lose things in completely different places, and these two tools are built around those two jobs. So if you got here by searching for a Final Draft alternative, or for apps like Final Draft, 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 Final Draft side against the Final Draft 13 user guide, the product and pricing pages, the store listings and what search engines show of their knowledge base, which wouldn’t open for us. Final Draft was running a Black Friday price on that day, so I’ve given the standard prices and the promo. Both tools ship changes every month, so read every number as correct on that date and check again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the script’s next stop is a set. When the breakdown has to become a stripboard, a shot list and a call sheet in the same project instead of an export. When the crew needs the plan on Android as well as Apple, and on phones with no signal. When six people edit and nobody buys a licence. And when the new draft has to land on top of the breakdown without wiping it, because CineLog shows every re-import as a scene-by-scene diff.
Final Draft is the screenwriting standard, and it says so on its homepage. Version 13 writes, outlines on a Beat Board, locks pages and scene numbers, colors revisions in the WGA order with asterisks, prints the revised pages only or the character sides, compares two drafts into a marked-up third one, and tags the script so the breakdown exports to Movie Magic Scheduling. Several people on the same version can write together on the desktop, and the file it saves is the file everyone downstream opens. It’s a one-time licence, with a subscription next to it since 2026.
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 | The breakdown becomes the stripboard, the shot list and the call sheet in one project. In Final Draft it becomes a .sex file for another tool. |
| A draft that keeps changing after the lock | A scene-by-scene diff on every re-import, so the breakdown and the shot list survive the new pages. Final Draft compares two files into a third document. |
| A crew on Android, Windows and iPhones alike | Native apps on all four plus the browser. Final Draft is macOS and Windows on the desktop, iPhone and iPad through a separate app, and no Android. |
| Six people editing | Free collaborators with view or edit rights per tool. Final Draft’s desktop collaboration needs every writer on their own licence of the same version. |
| Fountain files coming in | CineLog imports Fountain. Final Draft’s knowledge base says it cannot open a .fountain file. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026, with the Black Friday promo noted.
| Final Draft 13 | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script editor | Yes, the standard | Yes |
| Script import | .fdx, text PDF, RTF, text, older Final Draft formats, no Fountain | .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text, with a diff on re-import |
| Revision mode | Yes, locked pages and A-pages, kept scene numbers with letters, omit scene, WGA colors, asterisks, revised-pages-only and unrevised-only PDFs | Yes, scene and page lock, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, standard colors, asterisks, revised-pages-only export |
| New draft of the script | Script Compare marks two files into a third, Track Changes per writer | Scene-by-scene diff on re-import, breakdown and shot list survive |
| Breakdown | Tags Mode with categories from a scheduling program, Tags reports, .sex export to Movie Magic Scheduling | Yes, tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered, into the stripboard in the same project |
| Stripboard, shot list, storyboards, call sheets, AV script | No, the Beat Board holds storyboard images as notes | Yes, all of them, in the same project |
| Outlining | Beat Board and Outline Editor, structure templates | No |
| Real-time collaboration | Yes on the desktop, every writer on the same version of 13, Cloud is asynchronous, Reader Mode is view and comment | Yes, with roles per tool |
| Works offline | Desktop works on local files after sign-in, Cloud needs a browser | Yes, every tool, every device, up to seven days |
| Native apps | macOS 12+, Windows 11, Final Draft Go on iPhone and iPad, Cloud in a browser, no Android | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | $249.99 one-time, $199.99 on the day, upgrade $79.99 to $99.99, Suite with Cloud $16.99 a month or $99.99 a year, $69.99 first year until November 27, 5-day trial, students $99.99 | 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 Final Draft, the first two sections are the whole comparison.
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 Final Draft’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Final Draft 13 is the editor the industry writes in, and the revision tooling is complete. You lock the pages and the overflow goes to A-pages, then AA-pages if you lock again. You keep the existing scene numbers and an inserted scene becomes 28A. Omit Scene turns the heading into OMITTED and keeps the number. Revision sets run through the WGA colors, White, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Green and on, with the asterisk in the margin, and the print dialog gives you the revised pages only, the unrevised pages only, or a character’s sides. Script Compare takes two drafts and builds a third document with the differences in red and blue, Track Changes shows each writer’s edits in their own color with accept and reject, and the Beat Board and the Outline Editor sit in front of all of it for the people who plan before they type. It imports .fdx, a text PDF, RTF and text. What it won’t open is a Fountain file, and their own knowledge base says so, so a Fountain script goes in as plain text.
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 same production things. 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 Beat Board, an outline editor, structure templates or a sides print.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, both hand the AD the pink pages with the page numbers true. The difference is what the pink pages are attached to, which is the next section.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and this is where Final Draft hands off.
Final Draft 13 tags the script. Tags Mode highlights text into categories that come, in the manual’s words, from a leading scheduling program, you can add your own, Tag All Characters tags the speaking cast, and the Tags reports print by scene and by tag. Then the breakdown leaves. It exports as a .sex file, or Movie Magic Scheduling opens the .fdx directly, and the board, the day out of days and the reports happen there, on another licence. There’s no stripboard in Final Draft, no breakdown sheet and no cast ID numbering, and it doesn’t claim them. The manual’s line is that there’s no need for a separate program to tag, and that’s true. There is a need for one to 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, with no export in between. 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, and it doesn’t write a .sex file.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD tags and builds the board in one place on CineLog. On Final Draft the writer tags, exports, and the AD schedules in a second product.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this one is short.
Final Draft has no shot list, and no storyboard tool. A shot in Final Draft is a paragraph element. The Beat Board can hold a storyboard image as a note card next to a scene, which their blog suggests for planning, and that’s as far as it goes.
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, and the scout has no signal. 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.
Final Draft doesn’t make call sheets. The manual mentions them once, as the outside documents that page locking protects, which is exactly the right way to think about a writing app. There’s also no two-column AV format in 13. Final Draft AV was a separate product years ago, and it’s gone.
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 script 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 here Final Draft is a desktop product with a mobile app next to it.
Final Draft 13 runs on macOS 12 and Windows 11, one licence on two computers, and it works on your local files once you’ve signed in. On the iPhone and iPad there’s Final Draft Go, a separate app at $3.99 a month or $19.99 a year that handles revisions and locked pages but opens only .fdx and leaves out the Beat Board and the collaboration. In the browser there’s Final Draft Cloud, which comes with the Suite subscription, needs a phone number, gives you a gigabyte, and collaborates asynchronously, and its editor doesn’t do Revision Mode or page locking, so for those you go back to the desktop. There’s no Android version. Real-time collaboration lives on the desktop, with any number of writers, every one of them on their own licence and on the exact same version of 13, and the host approves who joins. Reader Mode is free and lets anyone view and comment in a browser without editing.
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 the same version of the same app. On Harbor, the production designer is on Windows, two of the six changers are on Android phones, and two of the four locations have no signal. CineLog puts all six on the project and all 25 on the call sheet. Final Draft puts the writers who own 13 on the script.
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.
Final Draft 13 is $249.99 as a one-time licence, $199.99 on the day I checked, with upgrades from an older version at $79.99 or $99.99 depending on which page you read. Since 2026 there’s also the Suite, Final Draft 13 plus Cloud, at $16.99 a month or $99.99 a year, with a first year at $69.99 until November 27, 2026. The trial is five days and rolls into the subscription. Students pay $99.99 and the military $129.99. Every writing partner needs their own copy, and their knowledge base says so. For one writer who delivers to studios, the one-time licence is a fair price for the standard, 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 | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Final Draft 13 | Six licences at $199.99, or six Suite subscriptions at $99.99 a year | About $1,200 once, or about $50 a month, for the script, plus a scheduler and a call sheet tool |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 a month, for the script and everything after it |
That’s not a comparison of two prices. It’s a comparison of two jobs. Final Draft is priced per writer for writing, and CineLog is priced per production for 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. CineLog holds several image frames per shot, and Final Draft holds an image on a Beat Board card.
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 where the script is going. If it’s going to a studio, an agent or a writers’ room that will open it in Final Draft, you need an .fdx on the way out, and both tools make one. If it’s going to a crew you’re going to run, read on.
Second, count the apps between the tag and the call sheet. On Final Draft that’s the writing app, a scheduler and a call sheet tool, on three licences. On CineLog it’s one project.
Third, count the devices on the crew that aren’t a Mac or a Windows laptop. Those people are on CineLog, on Final Draft Go for the script only, or on a PDF.
The bottom line
Final Draft is the screenwriting standard, with the most complete revision tooling in the business and the file everyone opens, priced per writer. CineLog is the pick once the script has a crew, because the breakdown becomes the board, the shot list and the call sheet in the same project, every person is on it for one price, it opens Fountain, and it runs on every device the crew owns, with or without a signal. That’s Final Draft vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Final Draft?
For writing a script that’s going into production with your own crew, yes. CineLog imports and exports .fdx, locks scene numbers and pages, colors revisions and exports the revised pages, and adds the breakdown, the stripboard, the shot list and the call sheet in the same project. For delivering a draft to a studio that will open it in Final Draft, the .fdx export is the same file.
Which one is cheaper?
For one writer, Final Draft’s one-time licence, at $199.99 on the day I checked, works out cheaper over a few years than any subscription. For a production with a crew on it, CineLog, because $40 a month covers 25 people and every tool, and Final Draft is a licence per writer with the schedule and the call sheet in other products.
Does Final Draft do a script breakdown?
It tags the script in Tags Mode and prints Tags reports, and it exports the breakdown as a .sex file for Movie Magic Scheduling. It has no stripboard, shot list or call sheet of its own. CineLog’s breakdown becomes the stripboard and the call sheet in the same project.
Can I bring my Final Draft script into CineLog?
Yes. Import the .fdx, and re-imports of a new draft show as a scene-by-scene diff so your breakdown survives. CineLog exports .fdx too, so the file can go back.
Which one works offline on set?
Both work on local files on a laptop. CineLog also works offline on phones and tablets, for every tool, up to seven days, and merges everyone’s changes after. Final Draft Cloud needs a browser and a connection.
Which one runs on Android?
Only CineLog. Final Draft runs on macOS, Windows, and on iPhone and iPad through Final Draft Go.
Can two people write in the script at the same time?
On both. Final Draft 13 does it on the desktop, with every writer on their own licence of the same version. CineLog does it on any platform, with free collaborators and view or edit rights per tool.
Which one handles colored revision pages?
Both, fully. Final Draft locks pages and scene numbers, omits scenes, runs the WGA colors with asterisks and prints revised pages only or character sides. CineLog does the same, apart from the sides, and keeps the breakdown and the shot list attached through every revision.
Does Final Draft open Fountain files?
No. Its knowledge base says it cannot open a .fountain file, and suggests saving it as text. CineLog opens Fountain directly.
Can I switch from Final Draft to CineLog?
Yes. Export the script from Final Draft as .fdx and import it. CineLog tags the cast for you and you re-tag the rest on the page, every later draft shows as a scene-by-scene diff, and if a studio wants a Final Draft file back, CineLog exports .fdx.
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. Final Draft is the writing standard, per writer. CineLog takes the same script to the set, 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.