Celtx is a broad pre-production suite where screenwriting is one of many tools — alongside scheduling, budgeting, storyboards, call sheets. Arqo is a focused screenwriting app that ends at FDX export. They’re different shapes of product. Pick on what you actually need.
We’d rather lose the click than lose the trust.
Celtx covers script breakdown, scheduling (strip-board), budgeting, call sheets, storyboards, shot lists. If you’re a producer who needs the whole pipeline in one app, Celtx is the only freemium option that goes that wide. Arqo deliberately stops at FDX export.
Celtx’s Education tier covers 10–700+ seats and is the reference deployment in many film programs worldwide. Students arrive at writers’ rooms already fluent in Celtx. We’re not in that distribution channel today.
Celtx supports screenplay, multi-column AV, stageplay, and comic-book formats out of the box. Arqo ships screenplay, AV, and stageplay; comic-book is not on the roadmap. If you write across all four, Celtx covers more formats today.
Celtx’s screenwriting depth is limited by the breadth of the suite — its editor is one tool among many. Arqo is screenwriting first, with the engineering attention concentrated there: deterministic paginator, industry PDF, FDX round-trip, Beat Boards live-tied to scenes.
On Celtx, beat sheets, breakdown, scheduling, budgeting are paid add-ons even on Writer/Writer Pro. On Arqo, the screenwriting feature set is all in Pro at $9/mo — beats, Story Memory, FDX, PDF, collab, mobile. The one exception is bring-your-own key: +$2/mo on Pro, included on Studio. No "+ $X for the next bit you need" beyond that.
Celtx reviews routinely flag slowness on large projects, sync glitches, and lost work. Arqo is built on a deterministic paginator with offline-first cache; the script-load path has been engineered around the 200-page case from day one.
Celtx Free caps at one project; many features are gated. Arqo Free opens two scripts with full editor and full export. If you’re evaluating the tool with a real script, Arqo’s Free is more usable.
Strip-board, budget, call sheets, storyboards. We will not ship them. The market for "the everything app" is contested and crowded; we’re building the focused screenwriting tool that hands off cleanly to whatever pre-prod stack you choose.
Celtx’s pattern is "Writer Pro, plus $X for beats, plus $X for breakdown." Arqo will not adopt that pricing pattern. Pro is one price, and the screenwriting feature set is in it.
Celtx does comics; we don’t. We will not bolt on a comic-page surface to match a comparison-table row. If comics are your medium, Celtx covers it; we’re honest that we don’t.
Full signed list at /no-list.
Free tier opens two scripts. No card. Bring your file, see how it lands.
For the screenwriting half of Celtx’s suite, yes — and arguably a more focused, faster, cleaner one. For the production-side half (scheduling, budgeting, call sheets), Arqo deliberately doesn’t replace it. Many users run Arqo for writing and pair it with a separate scheduling tool.
Yes — export Fountain or FDX from Celtx, drop it into Arqo. Celtx’s FDX import is reportedly lossy (per third-party reviews); if your Celtx-saved FDX is missing structure on round-trip, the lossy step is upstream of us. We’ll preserve everything Celtx exports.
Then Celtx is probably the right answer for school assignments — fluency in your peers’ tool matters. The Arqo Student plan (when published) and the free tier are available for personal scripts; you can run Celtx for class and Arqo for your own work, with FDX moving between them.
Celtx is the answer. Arqo doesn’t do scheduling or budgeting and won’t — it’s on /no-list. We hand off cleanly to dedicated tools (Movie Magic, Studio Binder, Yamdu) via FDX or breakdown export.
No reports of it on the 200-page case. The pagination engine is a pure function in lib/pagination/engine.ts; the editor caches script state offline. Stress-tested through 200pp and 500pp scripts in CI.
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