SetHero and CineLog get compared because both end at the same document, the call sheet, and both send it to the whole crew with a record of who opened it and who confirmed. So if you only look at the last page of the job, they look alike. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the production instead, because a one-day commercial where the sheet is the whole job and a twelve-day feature where the sheet is the last link in a chain lose things in completely different places, and these two tools are built around those two shapes. So if you got here by searching for a SetHero alternative, or for apps like SetHero, 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 SetHero side against their own site, their help center and their changelog, and the prices against the price table their pricing page loads, because the page itself only shows “Pricing loading” to anything that isn’t a browser. Both tools ship changes every month, so read every number as correct on that date and check the pricing pages again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the call sheet has to come from somewhere. When there’s a script that gets locked and revised, a breakdown that numbers the cast, a stripboard the AD moves scenes around on, and a shot list the DP walks the location with, and you want the sheet for day five to be a live copy of day five on the board instead of a re-typed one. CineLog puts that whole chain in one project, the whole crew is on it for one price, it runs as a native app on every device, and it keeps working with no signal at all.
SetHero is a call sheet tool, and a good one. You build the sheet in a drag-and-drop editor, it loads the weather and the sun times from the location, it goes out by text and email, and you watch who received it, who opened it and who confirmed. The production report comes off the same sheet. That’s the job, and SetHero’s own FAQ says the rest isn’t: no scheduling, no script breakdown.
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 sheet is the last link of one chain. Script, breakdown, strips and shot list feed it, and nobody re-types the day. |
| A script that keeps changing after the lock | Locked scene numbers and pages, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, the standard revision colors and a revised-pages-only PDF. |
| An AD who builds the day on a board | A stripboard with day breaks, a boneyard, strip colors and scene splits across days, and the finished day flows into its sheet. |
| A crew on phones and tablets where the signal drops | Native apps on iOS and Android with a local copy of the project. The sheet, the shot list and the script open in the basement too. |
| Several projects a year | One flat plan by number of projects. No cap on headcount, no cap on shooting days, no metered days. |
Head to head
Prices are month to month in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026. Both are cheaper on an annual plan.
| SetHero | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script editor | No | Yes |
| Script import | No, scenes come in from a spreadsheet or from another tool’s export | .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text, with a diff on re-import |
| Locked pages and revision colors | No | Yes, scene and page lock, A-pages, omitted scenes, revised-pages-only export |
| Breakdown | No | Yes, tagged from the script text, cast numbered for you |
| Stripboard | No, a calendar of shoot days and a scene list per sheet | Yes, with day breaks, a boneyard and a board PDF |
| Shot list | No, a template download | Yes, in script order and per production day, seventeen columns plus your own |
| Storyboards | No, a template download | Yes, several frames per shot, no drawing tool |
| Call sheets | Yes, drag-and-drop editor, templates, custom headers | Yes, built from the schedule day |
| Sending | Text and email, PDF | Email, a personal PDF per person |
| Tracking | Received, opened, confirmed, one-click resend | Delivered, opened, confirmed, bounced, per person |
| Weather and sun times | Loaded from the location | Loaded from the location and the date |
| Production reports | Yes, one click from the sheet | No |
| AV script | No | Yes, with a client review link |
| Works offline | No | Yes, up to seven days |
| Native apps | Browser only, crew open the sheet in a phone browser | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Who pays | Per project, by headcount and shooting days, or a subscription metered by projects a year | One subscription, collaborators are free |
| Entry price | $19 a month, or one project from $10 | Free plan, then $15 a month |
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. Everybody weighs these differently, so if the call sheet is 80% of your job, skip to that section and come back, because that’s SetHero’s section.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts. If the tool can’t hold the script, somebody is going to re-type scene numbers into it by hand, and that’s where the first errors come from.
SetHero doesn’t hold the script, and it says so plainly. Their help center says you can’t import a script file, and the scene names and numbers on a sheet are typed in or brought in from a spreadsheet, from a Scriptation breakdown, from a Think Crew schedule or from a Cinapse export. There’s no revision mode because there’s no script to revise. When the pink pages come out, SetHero has a text field on the sheet where you write which script version the day is on, and that’s the right thing for a call sheet tool to have.
CineLog 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.
So for Harbor, where the script gets locked about two weeks before day one and then revised every few days, the scene numbers on the CineLog call sheet are the scene numbers in the script, because they’re the same scenes. With SetHero, somebody keeps them in step by hand.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and this is the section SetHero tells you to do somewhere else.
SetHero’s FAQ says it “does not do scheduling or script breakdowns” and points you to another tool for that. What it has is a calendar of shoot days, where you set the first and last day, mark the days off and shift the dates when the start moves, and inside each sheet a scene list with times, company moves and banner breaks. You can pick tomorrow’s scenes from today’s sheet. That’s a day sheet, and it’s a well-made one. It isn’t a stripboard. There are no strips to drag, no boneyard, no board to print, and the breakdown that feeds a board doesn’t exist here.
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 and lands 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 for interior, exterior, day and night, and it lets you split a scene across two days, because that’s how real days go. 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, so if you need one you’re building it in a spreadsheet from the strips.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD builds the board in CineLog and the day lands on the sheet by itself. With SetHero, the AD builds the board in another tool or a spreadsheet and brings the scenes across.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this one is short.
SetHero has no shot list and no storyboards. Their own comparison pages mark both with a cross, and what they offer instead is a free spreadsheet template to download. For a call sheet tool, that’s fair. The shot list is the DP’s document, not the AD’s.
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, and I’ll get to why in a minute.
Call sheets
The next thing is the call sheet, and this is SetHero’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
SetHero’s editor is drag and drop with a live preview, and the editor was rebuilt again in October 2025. You save your own templates and share them across the company, you hide and rename columns, you put several logos in the header, and the crew call times can be locked or relative to the general call. The weather and the sunrise and sunset load from the location. The location block has Google Maps autocomplete and one-tap directions, and the basecamp, the parking and the nearest hospital are slots you fill in. The sheet goes out by text and by email, with an attachment on the email, and you watch received, opened and confirmed per person, with a one-click resend to the ones who haven’t opened it. There’s a client section with its own call times, and a public preview link for the people who need to see the sheet before it goes out. And a production report comes off the sheet in one click, with the page counts, the overtime and the cast times filled in. Over three hundred thousand sheets have gone out of it, by their count. That’s a serious call sheet tool.
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, because most productions shoot the same place several days in a row, and re-typing the parking notes every night is the part that wears an AD down by week two.
So on the sheet itself, SetHero sends by text and CineLog doesn’t, and SetHero prints a production report and CineLog doesn’t. On where the sheet comes from, CineLog builds it from the schedule and the breakdown, and SetHero builds it from what you type or import. For Harbor, that’s twelve sheets that each start from the board.
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.
SetHero runs in a browser. There’s no desktop app and no phone app, and their help center says so. The crew don’t need an app either, because the sheet opens as a page in the phone’s browser, with the call time at the top and a confirm button, and for a call sheet that’s a good design. For the person building the sheet, it’s a laptop with a connection. Offline doesn’t appear anywhere on their site, in their help center or in their changelog.
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.
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. The AD walks the stone-walled house with the schedule open and changes tomorrow’s order on the spot. With a browser-only tool, that’s a note on paper until the AD gets back to the car.
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 what the meter counts.
SetHero prices by the project. A single short shoot is a one-time price set by headcount and shooting days, and it includes texting, branding and as many admins as you want. Fifteen people for one day is $10. Thirty people for twelve days is $119. Two hundred people for twelve days is $292. If you shoot all year, there are subscriptions metered by how many projects you publish sheets for in a year. Starter is $19 a month for five projects, with up to thirty people and four shooting days per project and one admin. Pro is $49 with sixty-five people, eight days and five admins. Studio is $129 with a hundred and twenty-five people, twelve days and twelve admins. Extra shooting days are $8 a day. Annual billing is 25% off, and the first project is free. Cast and crew never need an account. The people who edit the sheet do.
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, no headcount tiers and no day caps. 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. Twenty-five people, twelve days, six editors, one project.
| Tool | Plan for Harbor | Price |
|---|---|---|
| SetHero | One short project, the 30-person tier, twelve days | $119 one time, call sheets only |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 a month, the whole chain |
This may sound like I’m stacking the deck, but the two numbers are close, and that’s the honest part. For one shoot a year, SetHero’s one-time price is a fair price for a call sheet. What the CineLog number buys is the script, the breakdown, the board, the shot list and the sheet, on every device, for every project that month. And when the crew grows from 25 to 40 in the second week, the CineLog price doesn’t move. SetHero’s meter does.
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. Neither replaces the budgeting tool a production accountant uses, with account codes and fringes, and neither pretends to.
The day out of days report. SetHero doesn’t schedule, so it can’t print one. CineLog has the strips but doesn’t print the report yet, so if you need one you’re building it in a spreadsheet.
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, count the shoot days and write the number down. If it’s one, and there’s no script, a call sheet tool is enough. If it’s three or more and there’s a script, read the next two steps.
Second, figure out where the day comes from. If the AD builds the day on a board and the sheet should copy it, that’s CineLog. If the AD builds the day in a spreadsheet and types it into the sheet, you’re paying for the spreadsheet in hours.
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
SetHero is a very good call sheet tool, with text delivery and a production report that CineLog doesn’t have. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because the sheet is the last link of a chain that starts at the script, the whole crew is on it for one flat price on any device, and it works in the basement too. That’s SetHero vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to SetHero?
For the call sheet, yes. CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule day, fills the weather and the sun times, and tracks delivered, opened, confirmed and bounced per person. Where it goes past SetHero is everything before the sheet: the script with locked pages, the breakdown, the stripboard and the shot list in the same project. SetHero sends by text and prints a production report, and CineLog does neither.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
They’re close for one shoot. SetHero charges $119 one time for a 30-person, twelve-day project, sheets only. CineLog is $40 a month on Production Company with the whole crew on it and every tool. For a crew that changes size, CineLog’s price doesn’t move with the headcount.
Which one works offline on set?
Only CineLog. SetHero runs in a browser, and offline doesn’t appear anywhere on their site.
Which one has the best call sheets?
SetHero’s editor is the more developed of the two, with templates, custom headers, text delivery and a production report. CineLog’s sheet comes from the schedule and the breakdown, so the scenes, the times and the cast numbers are never re-typed, and the next day starts from the one before.
Does SetHero do a stripboard or a breakdown?
No. Their FAQ says so, and their comparison pages mark both with a cross. It has a calendar of shoot days and a scene list on each sheet, and it imports scenes from a spreadsheet or from other tools.
Can I bring my script in from .fdx or Fountain?
Into CineLog, yes, with RTF, PDF and text as well, and re-imports show as a diff so your breakdown survives the new draft. SetHero doesn’t import script files.
Which one handles colored revision pages?
CineLog. It locks scene numbers and pages, gives you A-pages and OMITTED scenes, colors every revision round and exports the revised pages only. SetHero has a text field for the script version on the sheet.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no. They make a free account and get the rights you give them. On SetHero, cast and crew never need an account, and the people who edit the sheet are admins, with one on Starter, five on Pro and twelve on Studio, or unlimited on a one-time project.
Which one runs as a real app on a phone or tablet?
CineLog is native on iOS and Android with the whole project on the device. SetHero has no app, and the crew open the sheet in the phone’s browser.
Can I switch from SetHero to CineLog?
Yes. Export your contacts from SetHero as a spreadsheet and import them into CineLog’s Cast and Crew with the column mapping, then bring the script in as .fdx, Fountain or PDF and build the board. From then on the call sheets come off the schedule, with delivered, opened, confirmed and bounced on every name.
To recap
To recap, in this article we talked about picking on production shape 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 price lists. SetHero does the call sheet very well and stops there. CineLog builds the sheet from the script and the schedule, puts the whole crew on it for one price, and works where the signal doesn’t.
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.