Shot Lister and CineLog get compared because both build a shot list from a script, both put storyboard frames on the shots, both sync the list to the crew’s devices, and both keep working with no signal. On a set, that’s most of the job, so the two feel close in the hand. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the production instead of the feature list, because a director and a DP running a shoot day to the minute on iPhones and a crew of 25 that also needs the script locked, the board built and the call sheet sent 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 Shot Lister alternative, or for apps like Shot Lister, 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 Shot Lister side against their site, the App Store listing with its full version history, their public feature board where the vendor marks what’s planned, and the launch coverage of Shot Lister 5. Shot Lister’s site and its App Store listing disagree on one Studio price, and I’ve said which is which. 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 shot list is one link in a longer chain. When the script is written, locked and revised in the same project, with A-pages and colored revised pages. When the breakdown numbers the cast and lands on a scene stripboard that doesn’t need shots first. When the day becomes a call sheet with a status next to each name, which Shot Lister’s users have been asking for since 2024. And when the crew is on Windows and Android as well as Apple, because Shot Lister’s Android and PC versions are history and its web app is a page not found.
Shot Lister is the on-set shot list app for Apple devices, and it has been since 2012. Import a Final Draft or Fountain script, or sync it from Scriptation, build the shots with your own columns, letter revisions, eighths and cast numbers, up to 26 cameras, draw a board on each shot with an Apple Pencil, lay the shots into shoot days minute by minute, and then run the day in Live Mode, which tells you exactly how many minutes ahead or behind you are, on an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac and since June an Apple Watch. The crew syncs live with view or edit rights, and it all works offline.
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 | Script, breakdown, strips, shot list and call sheets are one chain. Shot Lister covers the shot list and the shoot day. |
| A script that keeps changing after the lock | A full editor with locked pages, A-pages, OMITTED scenes, colored revisions and a scene-by-scene diff on re-import. Shot Lister imports the script and updates scenes through Scriptation. |
| An AD who builds the day from scenes | A scene stripboard with day breaks, a boneyard and scene splits, before any shot exists. Shot Lister’s strip view sits inside a shoot day and needs shots first. |
| A call sheet tonight | Built from the schedule day with weather, sun times and the hospital, sent per person with a status. Shot Lister has none, and the request is open on its board. |
| A crew on Windows and Android | Native apps on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android plus the browser. Shot Lister is Apple only, and its Play Store page is gone. |
Head to head
Prices are in US dollars, checked November 2, 2026.
| Shot Lister | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script | Imports Final Draft and Fountain on Pro, syncs from Scriptation with revision updates, no editor, no revision mode | Editor with locked pages and revision colors, imports .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text with a diff on re-import |
| Breakdown | Cast tracking with cast numbers, no element breakdown, no day out of days | Yes, tagged from the script text into twelve categories, cast numbered |
| Schedule | Shoot days built shot by shot, minute by minute, with a strip view inside the day, Live Mode shows minutes ahead or behind | A scene stripboard with day breaks, a boneyard, strip colors and scene splits, no live clock |
| Shot list | Yes, custom columns and categories, letter revisions, eighths, cast numbers, 26 cameras, circle takes on Pro | Yes, in script order and per production day, seventeen columns plus your own, populated from the script |
| Storyboards | Draw with Apple Pencil or attach boards on Pro, video boards on Studio, offline since September | Several image frames per shot, no drawing |
| Call sheets and AV script | No | Yes, with per-person tracking and a client review link |
| Collaboration | Crew Sync, live, view only or view and edit, up to 10 crew on Pro, more on Studio | Real-time, free collaborators, roles per tool |
| Works offline | Yes, syncs when back | Yes, every tool, every device, up to seven days |
| Native apps | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision listed, no Android, Windows or web | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Export | PDF, with a low-ink option, CSV dropped after version 5 per users | PDF for the board, the shot list with frames, the breakdown and the call sheet |
| Price | Free for 2 projects, Pro $15.99 a month or $99.99 a year, 14-day trial, Studio by crew size, 10 for $24.99 a month up to 80 for $94.99 on the site | 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 Shot Lister, the third section is the heart of it.
The script and its revisions
The first thing is the script, because on a scripted production the script is where every other document starts.
Shot Lister imports a Final Draft or a Fountain script on the Pro plan, builds the project from it with the scene metadata and the cast list, and imports the next episode’s script into the same project. The clever part is the Scriptation sync: Scriptation sends the script and its revisions, and Shot Lister adds the new scenes, omits the deleted ones and updates the rest, keeping the shots of a deleted scene in a backup. What Shot Lister doesn’t do is edit the script, and it doesn’t claim to. There’s no revision mode, no colors, no locked pages, and page numbers with revision letters have been marked “planned” on its feature board since January 2024. A user review this year calls editing a script in the app “the dream”.
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, both keep the shots attached through a revision, Shot Lister through Scriptation. CineLog also makes the pink pages, in the same project.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown and the schedule, and here the two tools schedule different things.
Shot Lister schedules shots. You build a shoot day shot by shot, with a time on each, lunch and notes in between, and the day knows its call and its wrap. Then Live Mode runs it: on the day, the app shows exactly how many minutes ahead or behind you are, and the Apple Watch shows the current shot and the next ones on your wrist. That’s a tool nobody else in this series has, and a first AD who runs the floor will understand it in a minute. What Shot Lister doesn’t have is the scene-level board. Its strip view lives inside a shoot day and needs shots to exist first, which its own users say on the feature board, where scheduling scenes without shots is under review and moving several strips at once is still open. Cast comes through with numbers, and that’s the breakdown. No props, no vehicles, no departments, and no day out of days, which has been requested since 2023.
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 is a scene board, built before a single shot exists, with day breaks, a boneyard for the scenes you haven’t placed yet, the standard strip colors, and scene splits across days. A finished day flows straight into that day’s call sheet, and the board exports as a PDF. What CineLog doesn’t have is a live clock on the day, or the day out of days report either.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the AD builds the scene board in CineLog two weeks before day one, with cast numbers on the strips. On Shot Lister the AD builds the shot list first and the days from it, and on the day the clock runs.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this is Shot Lister’s home ground, so let’s give it its due.
Shot Lister has been a shot list for fourteen years, and it shows. The categories are yours to rename and reorder, the lens and gear lists are yours to fill, scenes and shots carry letter revisions, the eighths count, cast numbers and the i and o exclusions, and up to 26 cameras can share a setup. Shots can be grouped to shoot at once. Every shot takes a storyboard on Pro, drawn on the spot with an Apple Pencil or attached, and since February a video board on Studio, and since September you can add boards with no signal. The whole thing prints to a PDF with the categories in your order and a low-ink option for the production office printer. What it doesn’t print is a spreadsheet. CSV import and export went away with the version 5 rebuild, by the users’ account, and a client-facing link doesn’t exist.
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, video boards, or the circle-takes log.
So on this section the two are honestly close, and Shot Lister has the deeper on-set toolkit. For Harbor, the DP wants the shot list on an iPad at the location scout, in tomorrow’s order. Both do that. CineLog also has the script, the scene board and the call sheet on the same iPad.
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.
Shot Lister doesn’t make call sheets. The request has sat open on its feature board since February 2024. What the crew gets instead is the synced project itself, with view or edit rights, and on the Apple Watch the active shoot day, the current shot and the day’s progress, which is a different document and a good one for the floor.
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 here both tools pass the signal test and only one passes the device test.
Shot Lister is native on iPhone, iPad and Mac, with an Apple Watch app since June and Vision on the compatibility list. It works offline and syncs when the connection comes back, Crew Sync runs live between devices with view or edit rights, and Studio can require two-step sign-in for the whole project. What it doesn’t run on is anything else. The Android app’s store page is gone, the PC version from years ago is gone, both are open requests on the feature board, and the web app address returns a page not found.
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 iPhone. 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. Shot Lister 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 becomes once you put the real crew on it. It’s all about who pays for the person.
Shot Lister is free for two projects. Pro is $15.99 a month, $47.99 for three months or $99.99 a year, with a 14-day trial, and it covers the script import, the boards and Crew Sync for up to ten crew. Studio is priced by crew size and billed to one account: on the site, ten crew for $24.99 a month, twenty for $44.99, forty for $64.99 and eighty for $94.99, with the App Store listing the eighty-crew tier at $49.99, so check which one you’re charged. The site caps Studio at eighty crew while the latest release notes say unlimited editing members, and nothing current says whether a Pro owner’s invited crew pay anything, so ask before you count on it.
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, 25 people on the sync.
| Tool | Plan for Harbor | Month to month |
|---|---|---|
| Shot Lister | Studio at the forty-crew tier, because Pro stops at ten | $64.99 on the site, for the shot list and the shoot days |
| 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 Shot Lister charges by the size of the crew, 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 day out of days. Neither prints one. Shot Lister’s users have asked since 2023, and CineLog has the strips but not 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, count the devices on the crew that aren’t Apple. If the number is zero, both tools are open to you. If it’s above zero, those people are on CineLog or on a PDF.
Second, figure out where the day comes from. If the AD builds a scene board two weeks out and the call sheet should come off it, that’s CineLog. If the first AD lives by the minute on the floor and wants the clock on the wrist, Shot Lister’s Live Mode is the thing to try.
Third, send yourself a call sheet from each. One of them has a button for it.
The bottom line
Shot Lister is the on-set shot list for Apple crews, with a live clock on the day, a pencil on every shot and fourteen years of refinement. CineLog is the pick for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because the shot list comes off a script that locks and revises in the same project, the scene board feeds the call sheet with a status on every name, the whole crew is on it for one price, and it runs on every device they own. That’s Shot Lister vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Shot Lister?
For the shot list on a production, yes. CineLog builds the list from the script, orders it per shooting day, holds several frames per shot, syncs the crew with view or edit rights and works offline, and it adds the script editor, the scene stripboard and the call sheet in the same project. What CineLog doesn’t do is run the day to the minute or put a pencil on the shot. Those are Shot Lister’s.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
CineLog, at $40 a month on Production Company with everyone on the project. Shot Lister with 25 crew synced needs a Studio tier above Pro’s ten, $64.99 a month for forty crew on their site.
Which one works offline on set?
Both. Shot Lister works offline and syncs when the signal returns, and since September adds storyboards offline. CineLog works offline on every device for every tool, up to seven days, and merges everyone’s changes after.
Does Shot Lister have a stripboard?
It has a strip view inside each shoot day, built from shots, and its own users ask for scheduling scenes without shots. CineLog’s stripboard is a scene board with day breaks and scene splits, built before any shot exists.
Which one runs on Windows or Android?
Only CineLog. Shot Lister runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, and its Android and PC versions are no longer available.
Does Shot Lister make call sheets?
No. The request has been open on its feature board since 2024. CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule day and sends it per person with delivery and confirmation tracking.
Which one handles the script and its revisions?
CineLog writes, locks pages and scene numbers, colors revisions and exports the revised pages. Shot Lister imports Final Draft and Fountain and takes revision updates from Scriptation.
Can I draw storyboards?
In Shot Lister, yes, with an Apple Pencil on every shot, and video boards on Studio. CineLog holds several image frames per shot and doesn’t draw.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no. They make a free account and get the rights you give them. On Shot Lister, Pro covers up to ten crew on the owner’s plan and Studio is priced by crew count on one bill, and nothing current says whether an invited editor pays on their own.
Can I switch from Shot Lister to CineLog?
Yes, by hand for the list. Shot Lister exports PDF only, so bring the script into CineLog as .fdx or Fountain, populate the shot list from it, and re-enter the columns you need. The frames come across as images, and the crew join with a free account.
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. Shot Lister runs the shoot day to the minute on Apple devices. CineLog runs the whole production from the script to the call sheet, 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.