Scriptation and CineLog get compared because both put the script on an iPad on set, both tag the breakdown on the page, and both carry the work forward when a new revision lands. But Scriptation starts after the script is written, with a PDF somebody else printed, and CineLog starts before, with the editor that prints it. So the overlap is the script on the day. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the job instead of the feature list, because a script supervisor lining a studio show from a stack of revision PDFs and a crew of 25 running a twelve-day feature off one project lose things in completely different places. So if you got here by searching for a Scriptation alternative, or for apps like Scriptation, 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 Scriptation side against their help center, their blog, and the App Store listing, because their pricing page refused to open for us, so the plan prices come from the App Store’s purchase list and from Scriptation’s own statements elsewhere, and I’ve said where. 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 production makes its own documents instead of annotating someone else’s. When the script is written, locked and revised in the tool, with A-pages, OMITTED scenes and a revised-pages-only PDF that comes out of it rather than going into it. When the breakdown numbers the cast and lands on a stripboard in the same project. When the call sheet is built from the schedule day and sent per person with a status. And when the crew is on Windows and Android as well as Apple, because Scriptation has been Apple-only since it retired its Windows app in 2021.
Scriptation is a script annotation app for the crew, and it says itself that it isn’t a writing program. You open the script as a PDF, you mark it up with highlights, notes, stamps, drawings and layers, and when the pink pages come, Note Transfer moves every mark to the right line of the new draft and flags the ones whose text changed. That one trick won an Engineering Emmy in 2021, and it’s why script supervisors, ADs and actors on big shows use it. On Industry Pro it tags the breakdown, lines the script with up to 26 cameras, cuts sides, and sends the breakdown to a scheduling or call sheet tool.
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 script, the breakdown, the board, the shot list and the call sheet are made in one project. Scriptation annotates a PDF and hands the breakdown to other tools. |
| A production that makes its own revisions | Locked scene numbers and pages, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, the standard revision colors and a revised-pages-only PDF. Scriptation reads the colors off the header of a PDF someone else made. |
| A breakdown that has to become a schedule | Cast numbered once, strips on a board with day breaks and scene splits, in the same project. Scriptation exports the breakdown to a scheduling partner. |
| A call sheet tonight | Built from the schedule day with weather, sun times and the hospital, sent per person with a status. Scriptation says it isn’t a call sheet app. |
| A crew on Windows and Android | Native apps on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android plus the browser. Scriptation is Apple only. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026.
| Scriptation | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script editor | No, it annotates PDFs and can’t edit the text | Yes |
| Script import | PDF only | .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text |
| New draft of the script | Note Transfer moves annotations to the new PDF and flags changed lines, Compare Scripts prints a scene-by-scene change report | Scene-by-scene diff, breakdown and shot list survive |
| Revisions | Reads revision colors from the page header, shows scene numbers and eighths as layers, merges revised-page packets | Makes the revisions: scene and page lock, A-pages, OMITTED, colors, asterisks, revised-pages-only export |
| Breakdown | Tag any text into categories on Industry Pro, auto-tag cast, reports as PDF and CSV, export to Cinapse, SetHero, Think Crew, Shamel | Yes, tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered for you |
| Stripboard | No, the schedule is built in a partner app | Yes, with day breaks, a boneyard, scene splits and a board PDF |
| Shot list and storyboards | Template pages and a one-way hand-off to Shot Lister | Shot list per production day, several frames per shot |
| Script lining and sides | Yes, up to 26 cameras, lining layers, a sides creator | No |
| Call sheets | Templates to fill in, “isn’t a traditional call sheet app” | Yes, from the schedule day, sent per person with tracking |
| AV script | No | Yes, with a client review link |
| Collaboration | Layers shared as files, Live Layers on Team pushes layers near real time, one file shouldn’t be edited by several people at once | Real-time, with roles per tool |
| Works offline | Yes, fully, once the files are downloaded | Yes, every tool, up to seven days |
| Native apps | iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows retired in 2021, no Android, no web | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | Free with ads and three open documents, Industry Pro $14.99 a month or about $99.99 a year per person, Team per device | 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 Scriptation, the first two sections are the 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 Scriptation’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Scriptation opens the script as a PDF, and only as a PDF. It can’t edit the text, and its help center says so plainly: it’s a suite of tools for working with scripts after they’re written. What it does with that PDF is the thing it’s famous for. You mark the script up, with highlights, notes, stamps, pen, in layers per department, and when the next revision arrives as a new PDF, Note Transfer carries every mark to the right line of the new draft and flags the ones where the text underneath changed. The basic transfer is free. Industry Pro adds Compare Scripts, which prints a scene-by-scene report of every text change between two drafts, Collate Pages, which merges a revised-page packet into your draft and carries the notes forward, and Info Layers, which lay the revision colors, the scene numbers, the eighths and the dialogue numbers over the page, reading the color name from the page header. The sides creator makes a sides file by tapping pages. What Scriptation doesn’t do is make a revision. The pink pages come from the writing app, and Scriptation reads them.
CineLog makes them. 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, because that’s what goes out to the crew on a Tuesday night. What CineLog doesn’t have is a pen on the page, layers per department, lining or sides.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, both know which lines changed. On CineLog the revision is made in the project and the breakdown is already on it. On Scriptation the revision arrives from outside and the notes follow it.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and this is where Scriptation hands off.
Scriptation’s tagging, on Industry Pro, lets you tag any text into categories you can rename, recolor and add to, with an auto-tag for the cast per scene, and it prints a breakdown summary, an element report and a category report as PDF or CSV. Then the breakdown leaves. It exports to Cinapse or Think Crew or Shamel Studio to become a schedule, and to SetHero to become call sheets, each of those on its own subscription, and SetHero is the one that assigns the cast numbers. After a revision, you transfer the notes, re-export and re-import on the other side. There’s no stripboard in Scriptation and no day out of days, and it doesn’t claim either.
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.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD tags and builds the board in one place on CineLog. On Scriptation the breakdown is tagged on the iPad and scheduled in a second app on a second bill.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and here Scriptation’s answer is lining, which is a different document.
Scriptation’s lining tool, on Industry Pro, draws the script supervisor’s tramlines down the page for up to 26 cameras, with slates, straight and squiggle lines, and an editor’s export, and the lines transfer to the next draft like everything else. For shot lists and storyboards it has template pages you insert as facing pages and fill by hand or with photos, and a one-way sync that sends the scenes to Shot Lister. There’s no shot list table and no storyboard tied to a shot.
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 lining, and it has no drawing tool.
For Harbor, the DP wants the shot list on an iPad at the location scout, in tomorrow’s order. That’s CineLog. The script supervisor lining the master on day one is Scriptation’s job, and CineLog doesn’t do it.
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.
Scriptation says it isn’t a traditional call sheet app, in its own article on the subject, and calls itself the easiest place to read one. It has call sheet and daily report templates in its library that you fill in by typing or by hand, and the building and sending goes to SetHero through the integration.
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 Scriptation is strong on the set and narrow on the platform.
Scriptation runs on iPad, iPhone and Mac, on iOS 16 and macOS 13 or later, with one subscription for all your Apple devices, and it’s fully functional offline once the files are on the device, with edits uploading when you’re back. That’s exactly right for a script on set. What it doesn’t run on is anything else. The Windows app was retired on March 1, 2021, there’s no Android version, and there’s no web version. Collaboration works by layers: each department’s marks are a layer you export as a file, and on the Team plan, Live Layers push each person’s layer to the group near real time. Scriptation’s own advice is that several people shouldn’t work on one shared file at the same time.
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 crew where everyone had an iPad. On Harbor, the production designer is on Windows and two of the six changers are on Android phones. CineLog puts all of them on the project. Scriptation puts the Apple owners on it, and that’s a real limit on a crew.
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 how many apps sit behind it.
Scriptation’s core is free: annotation, highlighting, layers, basic Note Transfer and playback with the basic voices, with ads and up to three open documents. Industry Pro, the plan with tagging, lining, sides, the info layers and the integrations, is $14.99 a month on the App Store and about $99.99 a year, which Scriptation’s founder has quoted as $99 a year or $15 a month, with a fourteen-day trial. Team is sold per device activation, around $12.49 to $19.99 a month each by the figures we could find, and adds Live Layers. AI voices are a separate subscription. Students and teachers get half off a year. People without a paid plan can still receive layer files. And then the schedule and the call sheet are other subscriptions in other apps.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Scriptation | Industry Pro for the AD and the script supervisor, billed yearly, plus a scheduling app and a call sheet app on their own plans | About $17, plus two other subscriptions |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 |
That’s not a comparison of two prices. It’s a comparison of two stacks. Scriptation is one good app in a three-app stack, and CineLog is the stack.
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 day out of days. Scriptation hands scheduling to a partner, and CineLog has the strips but doesn’t print the report yet.
The budget. Neither has one.
Post. Both stop at wrap. 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 revisions come from. If they arrive as PDFs from a writers’ room and your job is to keep your notes alive across them, that’s what Scriptation was built for. If the production makes its own revisions, read on.
Second, count the apps. Write down who tags, who schedules and who sends the call sheet, and next to each name write the app and the subscription. On the Scriptation stack that’s three. On CineLog it’s one.
Third, count the devices on the crew that aren’t Apple. Scriptation retired Windows in 2021 and never had Android. Those people are on CineLog or on paper.
The bottom line
Scriptation is the best way to carry your notes across revision PDFs on an iPad, and the lining and sides tools are the real thing. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because it makes the revisions instead of reading them, builds the breakdown into a board and a call sheet in the same project, runs on every device the crew owns, and costs one subscription instead of three. That’s Scriptation vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Scriptation?
For the breakdown and the script on a production that makes its own documents, yes. CineLog writes and revises the script, tags the breakdown into a schedule and a call sheet in one project, and runs on every platform. What CineLog doesn’t do is annotate a PDF with a pen and layers, line the script for the editor, or cut sides. Those are Scriptation’s.
Which one is cheaper?
Scriptation Industry Pro is about $99.99 a year per person, and the schedule and the call sheet are other apps. CineLog is $40 a month on Production Company for 25 people and every tool from the script to the call sheet.
Does Scriptation do a script breakdown?
Yes, on Industry Pro. You tag text into categories, it auto-tags the cast, and it prints reports and exports the breakdown to scheduling and call sheet partners. The schedule itself is built in those partners. CineLog’s breakdown becomes the stripboard and the call sheet in the same project.
Which one works offline on set?
Both. Scriptation is fully functional offline once the files are downloaded. CineLog works offline on every device, for every tool, up to seven days, and merges everyone’s changes after.
Which one runs on Windows or Android?
Only CineLog. Scriptation retired its Windows app in March 2021 and has no Android version.
Can several people work on the script at once?
On CineLog, yes, with view or edit rights per tool. On Scriptation, each person works on their own layer, Team pushes layers to the group near real time, and Scriptation advises against several people editing one shared file at the same time.
Which one handles colored revision pages?
CineLog makes them: scene and page lock, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, colors, asterisks and a revised-pages-only export. Scriptation reads the color from the header of a PDF someone else made, shows it as a layer, and carries your notes to the new draft.
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. Scriptation says it isn’t a call sheet app and hands that to a partner.
Can I use Scriptation with CineLog?
Export the script from CineLog as a PDF, and Scriptation opens it like any other PDF for annotation and lining. The breakdown and the schedule stay in CineLog.
Can I switch from Scriptation to CineLog?
Yes. Bring the script into CineLog as the .fdx it was printed from, or as the PDF you annotated, and re-tag the breakdown on the page with the cast done for you. Your Scriptation notes stay in Scriptation, which keeps opening CineLog’s PDF export like any other PDF.
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. Scriptation carries your notes across revisions on an iPad better than anything else. CineLog makes the revisions, the board and the call sheet in one project, with the whole crew on it, on any device.
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.