Yamdu and CineLog get compared a lot, and I understand why, because both start from a script and end at a call sheet, and both put a stripboard in between. So the feature list tells you nothing. What I usually like to do is pick on the shape of the production instead, because a two-week shoot with a crew of 25 and a six-month series with a production office 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 Yamdu alternative, or for apps like Yamdu, this is the long answer.
One thing before we start. Everything in here was checked on October 19, 2026. The CineLog side against the app itself. The Yamdu side against their own pages and against what their team showed us after our first comparison went out, which is also why two of my earlier claims about Yamdu are corrected below. Prices are from Yamdu’s pricing page, checked the same day. Both tools ship changes every month, so check the pricing pages again before you decide. And on November 5, 2026 I added three more questions at the end, with no change to any price or any yes and no.
Short summary
Yamdu is the pick once a production runs for months and has an office behind it, because it keeps the paperwork, the budget, the transport and the post schedule in the same place as the stripboard, and the office reports come off the same data. CineLog is the pick for scripted productions of two to twenty days, where the crew is spread across phones, tablets and laptops, more than two people change the plan, and the signal on location is bad. CineLog is the newer of the two and it shows in the interface. It’s clean, it doesn’t carry years of office features you’ll never open, and the whole project works with no signal at all.
That paragraph is 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.
Pick on production shape
| Production shape | Pick | Because |
|---|---|---|
| A one-day shoot, crew under ten | CineLog Free | Yamdu has no free plan, and the trial is 14 days. CineLog Free preps a call sheet with one project. |
| Scripted, two to twenty days, like Harbor | CineLog | Script, breakdown, strips and call sheets are one chain, the whole crew joins without a per-user price, and it keeps working offline. |
| A crew that lives on phones and tablets on set | CineLog | Native apps on iOS and Android with a local copy of the whole project. |
| A months-long series or feature with a production office | Yamdu | It models cast, crew, locations, documents, budget, transport and post together, and the office reports come off the same schedule. |
| A company running several productions at once, with one office | Yamdu Core | Twenty users and unlimited projects on one plan, with the day out of days and the daily production reports the office lives on. |
Head to head
Prices are month to month in US dollars. Both are cheaper on an annual plan.
| Yamdu | CineLog | |
|---|---|---|
| Script editor | Yes, with versions, a status and revision colors, and an .fdx round trip | Yes |
| Script import | .fdx, Fountain, Celtx, PDF | .fdx, Fountain, PDF, RTF, text, with a diff on re-import |
| Locked pages | Not seen | Yes, scene and page lock, A-pages, omitted scenes, revised-pages-only export |
| Breakdown | Yes, with the whole team, pushed to the stripboard | Yes, tagged from the script text, cast numbered for you |
| Stripboard | Yes, with a day out of days report | Yes, with a boneyard and a board PDF, no day out of days report yet |
| Shot list | Yes, shots on breakdown scenes | Yes, linear and per day, custom columns |
| Storyboards | From shot images, with a PDF | Yes, several frames per shot, no drawing tool |
| Call sheets | Yes, with movement orders, read in the Notifier app | Yes, email, with delivered, opened, confirmed and bounced per person |
| Budget, documents, tasks, transport, daily reports | Yes | No |
| Works offline | The shooting schedule, in the browser and in an offline client | Yes, the whole project, up to seven days |
| Native apps | Browser, an offline client for the schedule, plus the Notifier app on phones | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, plus the browser |
| Who pays | $22 per extra user and $45 per extra project on Flex | One subscription, collaborators are free |
| First paid plan | $45 | $15 |
| Free plan | 14-day trial only | 1 project, every tool, 2 collaborators |
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 office paperwork is 80% of your job, skip to the pricing section and come back.
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.
Yamdu imports the script, .fdx, Fountain, Celtx or PDF, and its editor keeps script versions, each with a status like production script and a revision color picked from the standard set, White through Cherry, plus Tan, Lavender and a second round of each. Scene numbers take letters like 1a and 1b, and the script exports back to .fdx. It builds everything downstream from the import, which suits a production office that gets pages from a writers’ room. 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.
On revisions, both carry the colors. CineLog also locks pages, so 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. And when you export, you can print only the revised pages on their revision color, because that’s what goes out to the crew on a Tuesday night. What I haven’t seen in Yamdu is that page lock, the A-pages and the revised-pages-only export.
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 color. CineLog hands over the pink pages with the rest of the script’s page numbers still where they were.
The breakdown and the schedule
Now that the script is in, the next thing is the breakdown, and the key here is whether the breakdown is tied to the script or typed next to it.
CineLog does it 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 their first cue in every scene for you, 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. Yamdu breaks the imported script down with the whole team and pushes it straight to the stripboard, and it carries the same breakdown into the office side, so a prop tagged in scene 12 shows up where the department plans its day.
The schedule is where the two split on paper. Both have a stripboard you drag scenes around on, and both print it. Yamdu also prints a day out of days report from the same schedule, the grid with a row per actor and a column per shoot day that says who starts, who works, who holds and who finishes, and on a long production that’s the report the line producer lives by. Yamdu’s stripboard feeds the rest of its office reports, the movement orders, the daily production report, the transport plan. CineLog’s 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. Every strip carries its cast numbers, 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 itself, so if you need one, you’re building it in a spreadsheet from the strips.
For Harbor, twelve days and 25 people, the chain from breakdown to strips matters more than the day out of days report, and I’d take it in CineLog. If Harbor were a six-month series, I’d want that report every week, and I’d want Yamdu’s office around it.
Shot lists and storyboards
Now that the days are laid out, the next thing is the shot list, and this is where the two feel most different in the hand.
Yamdu adds shots to breakdown scenes with size, type and movement, and when you upload an image to a shot you get a shot-based storyboard out of it, with a PDF export. It’s part of the office record more than a working document for the set. 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. 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, and you don’t draw them inside the app.
For Harbor, the DP wants the shot list on an iPad at the location scout, and the location scout has no signal. That’s the CineLog pick, and I’ll get to why in a minute.
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 of the tool nineteen of our 25 people will ever see.
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. It fills the weather and the sunrise and sunset from the location and the date, it carries the nearest hospital 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. Yamdu’s call sheets go out with movement orders, which is the office way of doing it, and the crew reads them in the Yamdu Notifier app on their phone, alongside announcements and the calendar. External contacts are unlimited, so the nineteen readers cost nothing on either tool.
So on call sheets, the difference is the shape again. CineLog builds the sheet from the schedule and tells you who confirmed. Yamdu sends the sheet with the movement order and the rest of the day’s paperwork.
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.
Yamdu runs in a browser, with one real exception. The shooting schedule keeps working when the connection drops, right in the browser, and syncs with a click when you’re back online, and there’s an offline client you can download to open and edit the schedules with no bars at all. The crew gets the latest call sheet, announcements and calendar in the Notifier app on the way to set. The rest of the product, the breakdown, the shot list, the call sheet builder, the office, waits for signal. 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 whole 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. Yamdu gets the AD through that walk. CineLog gets the DP through it too.
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.
Yamdu has no free plan, just a 14-day trial. Flex is $45 a month for one user and one project, and then $22 a month for each extra user and $45 a month for each extra project. Core is $265 a month for up to 20 users and unlimited projects. Crew who only receive call sheets are external contacts, and those are unlimited on every plan.
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 | Month to month |
|---|---|---|
| Yamdu | Flex, one user included, five extra users at $22 | $155 |
| CineLog | Production Company, all 25 on the project | $40 |
And a company running three shorts at once, with two people editing each: Yamdu Flex is $45 for the first project, $45 for each of the other two, and $22 for the second user, $157 before anyone else joins. CineLog Production Company is $40 for all three with everyone on them.
That’s not a small difference, and it’s not because CineLog is cheap. It’s because Yamdu charges for the person and the project, and CineLog charges for the production. A crew changes every week. A production doesn’t. Where the math turns is the office: at 20 users across many productions, Yamdu Core at $265 is a rounding error on a series budget, and the reports it prints are the ones the office would otherwise build by hand.
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, properly. Yamdu has a budget section, and it’s a real one for a production office. CineLog has nothing. Neither replaces the budgeting tool a production accountant uses, with account codes and fringes.
Post. Yamdu keeps a post-production schedule, and that’s where it stops. Both stop at review, approval and delivery, which 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, and then count the months the production runs. Under three days, CineLog Free is enough. Three to twenty days, CineLog. Past three months, or with an office that needs daily reports and a day out of days every week, look at Yamdu.
Second, figure out who will change the plan, and leave out the people who only read it, and list the changers by name. Then multiply that number by $22 and add it to the Yamdu price, and add $45 for every production you run at the same time. That’s your real monthly number.
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, ask yourself which documents you need in that room. If it’s only the schedule, Yamdu’s offline client covers you. If it’s the shot list and the script too, that’s CineLog.
The bottom line
Yamdu for the long production with an office, because it tracks the paperwork and the money, and the reports come off the same schedule. CineLog for the scripted shoot with a real crew, because the chain from script to call sheet is one thing, the whole crew is on it for one price, and the whole project works in the basement. That’s Yamdu vs CineLog.
Questions people ask
Is CineLog an alternative to Yamdu?
For a scripted shoot of two to twenty days, yes. The chain from script to breakdown to strips to call sheet is the same job, and CineLog adds locked pages, native apps and the whole project offline. For a production office running a series, Yamdu does things CineLog doesn’t try to: budget, documents with a status, transport, daily reports.
Which one is cheaper for a crew of 25?
CineLog, at $40 a month on Production Company with everyone on the project. Yamdu Flex with six users is $155, because every user after the first is $22.
Which one works offline on set?
CineLog for the whole project, up to seven days. Yamdu’s shooting schedule works offline, in the browser and through its offline client, and syncs when you’re back. The rest of Yamdu needs a connection.
Which one handles colored revision pages?
Both carry the revision colors in the editor, and Yamdu keeps script versions with a status. CineLog also locks pages, so you get A-pages, omitted scenes and a revised-pages-only export.
Can I bring my script in from .fdx or Fountain?
Both take both. Yamdu adds Celtx files and exports back to .fdx. CineLog adds RTF and shows re-imports as a diff so your breakdown survives the new draft.
Do any of them do budgets?
Yamdu has a budget section. CineLog has no budget tool. Neither replaces a production accountant’s budget.
Do my collaborators need to pay?
On CineLog, no. On Yamdu, every user is $22 a month on Flex, and Core covers 20. Call sheet recipients are free on both.
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. Yamdu Notifier shows the crew the latest sheets, announcements and calendar on the go, and the offline client carries the schedule.
Which one is best for a months-long series?
Yamdu, because it tracks documents, budget, transport and post alongside the schedule, and the reports come off the same data.
Can I switch from Yamdu to CineLog?
Yes. Export the script from Yamdu as .fdx and import it, and bring your contacts in from a spreadsheet with the column mapping. The breakdown is re-tagged on the page with the cast done for you, the shot list populates from the script, and the board is rebuilt by drag.
How much do Yamdu and CineLog cost in 2026?
Yamdu starts at $45 a month, and CineLog starts free. Yamdu has no free plan, only a 14-day trial, then Flex at $45 for one user and one project, $22 per extra user and $45 per extra project, or Core at $265 for 20 users and unlimited projects. CineLog is Free for one project, Filmmaker $15, Production Company $40 or Studio $90, with collaborators free. So on the October 19, 2026 prices, a crew of 25 is $155 against $40.
Which one has a mobile app for on-set cast and crew coordination?
CineLog, if the crew changes the plan on set, and Yamdu, if the crew only needs to read the sheet. CineLog is native on iOS and Android with the whole project on the device, so the script, the shot list and the call sheet open with or without signal, and the people with edit rights change them right there. Yamdu Notifier puts the latest call sheets, announcements and the calendar on the crew’s phones on the way to set.
Which one handles several schedule changes in one day and gets the new call sheet out?
Both, differently. On CineLog you move the day on the board and the call sheet follows, because its schedule block is a live copy of the day. Then you send again, each person gets a fresh PDF by email, and every send is tracked per person. On Yamdu the shooting schedule works with no signal and syncs with a click when you’re back, the call sheet builder waits for signal, and the crew reads the latest sheet in Notifier.
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. Yamdu won the office and the long production. CineLog won the scripted shoot with a crew on it.
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.