Everything a screenplay needs is free, and stays free. What costs money is what happens around the writing: your work on every machine you use, as many readers as you like, and the companion in your pocket.
Both columns below, at no cost, for as long as the beta runs. Anyone writing with us now keeps the premium tier free for a year after it starts being charged for.
Free
The whole craft of it. Write, structure, format and export a finished screenplay without paying anything or making an account.
Premium
Everything in Free, and the work follows you: every screenplay backed up and open on any machine, as many readers as a draft needs, and the companion app with nothing held back.
| Free | Premium | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats | 1 | 1 |
| Writing | ||
| Story line and treatment | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structure templates, beats and page targets | ✓ | ✓ |
| Beat sheet and ruler — where each act falls, against where the structure said it would | ✓ | ✓ |
| Outline, and scene reordering from it | ✓ | ✓ |
| Index cards | ✓ | ✓ |
| Script in industry-standard format | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cast and character profiles | ✓ | ✓ |
| Settings — every place the script visits, and what it costs to be there | ✓ | ✓ |
| Page breaks exactly as they will print | ✓ | ✓ |
| Find and replace | ✓ | ✓ |
| Screenplays on this machine | ✓ | ✓ |
| Getting it out | ||
| PDF and epub | ✓ | ✓ |
| Fountain and FDX in and out | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bundle — the whole project as ordinary files | ✓ | ✓ |
| Works with no account at all | ✓ | ✓ |
| Drafts and notes | ||
| Your own notes, on any line | ✓ | ✓ |
| Freeze a draft before a rewrite | ✓ | ✓ |
| Colaboration | ||
| Revise a draft from a peer | ✓ | ✓ |
| Send a draft to a reader — no account at their end | X | ✓ |
| Their notes back in your margin | — | ✓ |
| Told the moment notes arrive, and by email | — | ✓ | Co-writing | X | ✓ |
| Backup and devices | ||
| Screenplays backed up to the server | X | ✓ |
| Open your work on another machine | By Export/Import | ✓ |
| Storage | — | 100 MB |
| The companion app (Android available - ios in development) | ||
| Read a screenplay on a phone, with the page numbers the export will have | Limited features | ✓ |
| Story, structure, outline and cast, on the phone | Limited features | ✓ |
| Read a draft somebody sent you, and write notes in the margin | Limited features | ✓ |
| In development | ||
| Idea Hub — catch a line on a bus, and place it at the desk | In development | In development |
You will be told well before, and nothing will be switched off under you. Everyone writing with Fabula One during the beta keeps the premium tier free for a year after charging starts, and the free tier does not change.
They stay where they have always been — on your machine, in your browser, openable and exportable. Fabula One is built local-first: the backup is a copy, not the original. Nothing you have written is ever held on the other side of a paywall.
A subscription here buys convenience, never access to your own work. If that ever stops being true, the product has gone wrong.
Because a screenplay takes months, and a tool you have to pay for before you know whether you like it is a tool you never find out about. The format, the structure, the cards and the export are the product; if they are good, the writing goes somewhere, and the things that cost money are the ones you only want once the work matters.
Yes — write and ask. The free tier is already enough for a whole course, and a class that needs more than that is exactly what this should be used for.