SetKeeper and CineLog get compared because both send the script, the sides and the call sheet to the crew with a record of who got them, and both parse the script into scenes and characters. But SetKeeper is a production coordinator’s distribution platform for high-end film and television, sold per production to budgets from a million dollars up, and CineLog is the tool that writes the script, builds the schedule and makes the call sheet in the first place. So the overlap is the last step of the job. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the production instead of the feature list, because a series office under a studio’s security rules and a crew of 25 shooting one script in twelve days lose things in completely different places. So if you got here by searching for a SetKeeper alternative, or for apps like SetKeeper, 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 SetKeeper side against their site, their pricing page, their help center, all 80 articles, the legacy site that’s still live, and the pages of Revolution Entertainment Services, which bought SetKeeper in January 2024. Where SetKeeper’s public pages and Revolution’s say different things, I’ve said so. Both tools ship changes, so read every claim as correct on that date and check again before you decide.
Short summary
CineLog is the pick when the documents have to be made before they’re secured and sent. When somebody writes and revises the script in the tool, with locked pages and colored revised pages. When the breakdown numbers the cast and lands on a stripboard that SetKeeper’s public pages don’t describe. When the call sheet is built from the schedule day with the weather, the sun times and the hospital, and sent to each person with a status that includes confirmed. When the crew needs native apps and offline. And when the production’s budget is a number SetKeeper’s price list doesn’t start at.
SetKeeper is a distribution platform for the production office, built in France in 2013 for coordinators on studio shows. Upload a PDF or Final Draft script, it parses the scenes, the sets and the characters, you cut sides in shoot order across all the episodes of a series and merge them onto the call sheet, and everything goes out by email or SMS with a burned-in watermark and a forensic barcode on every page, a password or an expiring link, and tracking of who was sent it, who received it, who opened it and who downloaded it. Single sign-on, two-factor, Google Drive and Box, servers in Ireland. It names Netflix, BBC Studios and A24, and it starts at $1,500 per production for a budget between one and six million.
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, then sent from it. SetKeeper secures and sends documents made elsewhere. |
| A production that makes its own revisions | Locked scene numbers and pages, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, colors and a revised-pages-only PDF. SetKeeper imports the PDF and keeps or removes the colours it came with. |
| An AD who builds the day on a board | A stripboard with day breaks, a boneyard and scene splits, documented and on every plan. SetKeeper’s site and help center describe no stripboard. |
| A call sheet that has to be confirmed by morning | A personal PDF per person with delivered, opened, confirmed and bounced. SetKeeper tracks sent, delivered, opened and downloaded, and no confirm. |
| A production under a million dollars | Plans from free to $90 a month on a page. SetKeeper’s lowest published tier is from $1,500 per production for a budget of one to six million. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026.
| SetKeeper | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script | PDF and Final Draft upload, parsed into scenes, sets and characters, no dual dialogue, no editor, no locks, revision colours kept or removed on the sides | Editor with locked pages and revision colors, imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text with a diff on re-import |
| Breakdown | Automatic, for sides: scenes, sets, characters | Tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered for you |
| Sides | Yes, by character or set, in shoot order, crossboarded across episodes, merged onto the call sheet | No |
| Stripboard | Not on SetKeeper’s pages or help center, Revolution’s page mentions a mobile-friendly stripboard in a hub no SetKeeper page documents | Yes, with day breaks, a boneyard, scene splits and a board PDF |
| Shot list and storyboards | No | Shot list per production day, several frames per shot |
| Call sheets | Imported and distributed, merged with sides, no builder on the public pages | Built from the schedule day with weather, sun times, hospital and address lookup |
| Sending | Email as an attachment, a personal link or a password link, SMS on credits | A personal PDF per person by email |
| Tracking | Sent, delivered, opened, downloaded, delivery errors, links revocable | Delivered, opened, confirmed, bounced, per person |
| Security | Burned-in watermark on every PDF, forensic barcode, expiring links, download prevention, SSO with Okta, Google and Azure, 2FA, servers in Ireland | Roles with view or edit rights per tool |
| AV script | No | Yes, with a client review link |
| Works offline | Not on the current pages, the 2023 site listed offline access on mobile | Yes, every tool, up to seven days |
| Native apps | Browser, “mobile-friendly”, no store app today, though one existed | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Price | Starter from $1,500 for budgets of $1M to $6M, Premium from $3,500, Pro from $5,000, Blockbuster by quote, per project, by invoice, 15-day trial | 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 SetKeeper, the fourth section is its home ground.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts.
SetKeeper takes the script as a PDF or a Final Draft file, and its help says only those two, with no dual dialogue and no images in the file. It parses the scenes, the sets and the characters, you check what it found, and from then on the script is a document to distribute, with a watermark and a barcode on every page and the tracking behind it. When a revision comes, it goes out the same way, and the sides can keep or remove the revision colours the PDF came with. What SetKeeper doesn’t do is edit the script, lock a page or assign a colour, and it doesn’t claim to.
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, CineLog makes the pink pages and sends them. SetKeeper files the pink pages somebody else made, cuts the sides from them, stamps every page and sends them.
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 SetKeeper’s pages and its new owner’s pages say different things.
SetKeeper’s breakdown is the parse that feeds the sides, scenes, sets and characters, and the sides are its strong suit: by character or by set, sorted by how many scenes or lines, in shoot order, and crossboarded across every episode of a series by dragging scenes into one order. On SetKeeper’s own site and in its help center there is no stripboard and no schedule builder, and “schedule” there means scheduling an email. Revolution’s page for SetKeeper describes a production hub with a mobile-friendly stripboard and call sheets that no SetKeeper page documents, and Revolution sells scheduling as a separate product called ProCal. So on the day I checked, the honest line is that SetKeeper’s public pages describe no board, and something may be coming behind the login.
CineLog’s board is documented, on every plan including the free one. 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, and it doesn’t cut sides.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD builds the board in CineLog today and the day lands on the sheet by itself. With SetKeeper, the AD builds the board somewhere else and the office uploads the result.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this one is short.
SetKeeper has no shot list and no storyboards. The nearest thing is a creative hub for sharing location pictures, maps, casting videos and assets with the crew, which is a distribution feature for the departments and isn’t a shot list.
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, 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. This is also SetKeeper’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
SetKeeper distributes the call sheet the way a studio wants it distributed. The sheet is made elsewhere and imported, the sides are merged onto it as one PDF, and it goes out to a distribution group by email, as an attachment, a personal link or a password-protected link, and by SMS to the same group on credits. Every PDF carries a burned-in watermark and a forensic barcode, so a leaked page points at a person. Links expire when you say and can be revoked, downloads can be prevented, and the analytics show who was sent it, who received it, who opened it and who downloaded the attachment, with a delivery summary by email if you want one. The office signs in with Okta, Google or Azure, with two-factor on top. That is a serious distribution system, and it’s why the credits list reads the way it does, with the help of a clause in SetKeeper’s terms that asks productions using it for more than 45 days to credit it as a technical provider. What SetKeeper doesn’t do, on its public pages, is build the sheet, fill the weather or the sun times, name a hospital, or ask the crew to confirm. Downloaded is where its tracking ends.
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.
So SetKeeper is the stronger security system and CineLog is the only one of the two that makes the sheet and asks for a confirmation. For Harbor, nineteen people get a sheet every night. On CineLog the AD builds it from the board and knows by seven who confirmed. On SetKeeper the coordinator imports it, stamps it, and knows by seven who 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.
SetKeeper runs in a browser, at its web app, and calls itself mobile-friendly, which for a crew opening a watermarked sheet from a link is enough. There’s no app on either store today. SetKeeper’s terms still define a mobile application and a case study from the old site has a line producer saying most of the crew had the mobile app, so one existed, and the 2023 pricing page listed offline access on mobile. Neither appears on the current pages, so I’m not going to tell you they’re there.
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, and you can change them. 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. The AD walks the stone-walled house with the schedule open on a phone and moves tomorrow’s first scene to the afternoon, right there. SetKeeper is a web page in the office. CineLog is the project in the AD’s pocket.
Pricing, and who pays for the crew
And the last thing is the money, and here SetKeeper is priced for a different budget than CineLog.
SetKeeper prices per production, by the production’s budget. Starter is from $1,500 for a budget between one and six million dollars. Premium is from $3,500 for seven to twenty million. Pro is from $5,000, and Blockbuster, above twenty million, is a conversation. Nothing is published for a budget under a million. The subscription covers one project, by invoice, for as long as the quote says, with onboarding and support included for the length of the production, a trial of fifteen days by default, and SMS credits and the stronger security options on top. The crew don’t subscribe. Users are authorized by the production, recipients open documents without an account, and the old pricing page said unlimited users, so the per-production price is the whole price.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| SetKeeper | Starter, if Harbor’s budget is at least a million dollars | From $1,500 for the production, for the distribution |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 a month, for the chain from script to call sheet |
That’s not a comparison of two prices. It’s a comparison of two budgets. SetKeeper is built and priced for the show with a studio, a security review and a coordinator’s desk. CineLog is priced for the production that is its own office.
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. Revolution sells it next door, and CineLog has none.
Confirmations by text. SetKeeper sends SMS without a confirm, and CineLog confirms by email without SMS.
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 whether a studio or a distributor will ask how the script was protected. If the answer is a security review with watermarks and an audit, that’s the job SetKeeper was built for, and the per-production price is the price of that answer. If nobody is going to ask, read on.
Second, write down where each document comes from. The script, the board, the shot list, the sheet. If every one of them is made in another tool and only secured and sent in this one, you’re paying for the sending and for the other tools. On CineLog the documents are made and sent in the same project.
Third, write down the budget. If it’s under a million, SetKeeper’s price list doesn’t have a line for you, and CineLog’s starts at free.
The bottom line
SetKeeper is the studio-grade distribution platform, with forensic watermarks, SSO and tracking that CineLog doesn’t have, priced per production from $1,500. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because it makes the script, the board, the shot list and the call sheet and then sends them, with a confirmation on every name, on every device the crew owns, at a price on a page. That’s SetKeeper vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to SetKeeper?
For a scripted shoot that makes its own documents, yes. CineLog writes and locks the script, builds the schedule and the call sheet, and sends the sheet per person with tracking that includes confirmed. What CineLog doesn’t do is the studio-grade security: burned-in watermarks, forensic barcodes, expiring links, SSO. Those are SetKeeper’s.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
CineLog is $40 a month on Production Company with everyone on the project. SetKeeper’s lowest published tier is from $1,500 per production, for a budget of one to six million dollars, with nothing published below that.
Which one works offline on set?
CineLog, for editing, on every device, up to seven days. SetKeeper’s current pages don’t describe an offline mode, though its 2023 site listed one on mobile.
Does SetKeeper make call sheets?
On its public pages it imports and distributes them, merged with the sides, with a watermark and tracking. Revolution’s page mentions call sheets in a production hub that SetKeeper’s own pages don’t document. CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule day with the weather, the sun times and the hospital.
Which one tracks who opened the call sheet?
Both. SetKeeper shows sent, delivered, opened and downloaded, with delivery errors. CineLog shows delivered, opened, confirmed or bounced per person, and the confirmed is the one the AD wants.
Does SetKeeper have a stripboard?
Not on SetKeeper’s site or in its help center. Revolution’s page for it mentions a mobile-friendly stripboard, and Revolution sells scheduling separately as ProCal. CineLog’s stripboard is documented and on every plan.
Can I bring my script in from .fdx or Fountain?
Into CineLog, yes, with PDF, RTF and text as well, and re-imports show as a diff. SetKeeper takes PDF and Final Draft files and parses them for sides.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On neither. CineLog’s collaborators make a free account and get the rights you give them. SetKeeper’s users are authorized by the production and recipients open documents without an account, inside the per-production price.
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. SetKeeper is a mobile-friendly web app today, with no store app, though its terms still describe one.
Can I switch from SetKeeper to CineLog?
Yes. Bring the script into CineLog as the .fdx or PDF you uploaded to SetKeeper, and import your contact list from a spreadsheet with the column mapping. The breakdown is tagged on the page with the cast done for you, and the call sheets from then on are built in CineLog and sent from it.
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. SetKeeper secures and sends the studio’s documents, per production, from $1,500. CineLog makes the documents and sends them, with the whole crew on it for one price, on any device, with or without a signal.
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.