Slate vs Fade In: buy once, or rewrite better?
Fade In is the best-value professional screenwriting app there is: one payment, free updates, every platform, and the production features a set needs. Slate costs more over time and runs only on the Mac. Here's what you get for that.
Written by the people who make Slate — bias disclosed, details from fadeinpro.com as of October 2026, corrections welcome at support@slatescript.app.
The short version: if you want to pay once and never think about it again, or you work on Windows or Linux, or you need colored revision pages, Fade In is the honest pick. If you're on a Mac and most of your time goes into rewriting — trying the bolder version, trading passes with a co-writer — Slate's drafts do something Fade In doesn't, and the 30-day trial needs no card.
Side by side
| Slate | Fade In | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $79/year, 30-day free trial (no card) | $79.95 once, free updates |
| Platforms | Mac only — macOS 14 or later (Apple Silicon & Intel) | Mac, Windows and Linux, plus mobile apps |
| Try a rewrite without risking the draft | Drafts: branch, compare word by word, merge — built in | Revision tracking on one script |
| Co-writing | Proposed revisions you review line by line and merge; reviewing is free for your partner | Online collaboration |
| Story planning | Beats pinned to actual script lines; a board where dragging a card moves the scenes | Outlining and navigation tools |
| Production features | Locked scene numbers (12A, OMITTED), locked pages and A-pages, reports · no colored revision sets yet | Revisions, locking and reports, including colored revision pages |
| Novels | A Books shelf with a 6×9 page, chapters, and the same drafts and beats | Built for scripts |
| Where your script lives | On your disk as plain .fountain text — readable in any editor | On your disk in Fade In's own format |
| File exchange | Opens and saves .fdx · imports Fountain · exports Fountain, PDF, teleprompter PDF | Imports and exports .fdx, Fountain, PDF and more |
| Free version | Every feature for 30 days | Demo with watermarked output |
Fade In details summarized from fadeinpro.com as of October 2026 — check their pages for current pricing and features.
What Fade In does better
- Price over the years. $79.95 once with free updates. After the first year, Slate costs more every year you use it. We won't pretend otherwise.
- Platforms. Windows and Linux as well as the Mac, plus phones and tablets. Slate is Mac only.
- Production. Colored revision pages and the rest of the set-ready toolkit. Slate locks scene numbers and pages, but doesn't do colored revisions yet.
What Slate does better
- Rewrites are the whole design. Start a draft, write the brave version, compare it word by word against the original, and merge what works. No more NIGHTSHIFT_v7_FINAL_final2.
- Co-writing in passes. Your partner works on their own draft and sends a proposed revision. You read the whole change, comment in the margin, and merge or decline. Reviewing is free for them.
- The outline can't drift from the pages. Beats cover real script lines; move a beat on the board and the scenes move with it.
- Built only for the Mac. Slate 3 is written with Apple's own frameworks: about a 13 MB download, and a 128-page script opens in a fraction of a second.
- Novels too. One app for your screenplays and your book, with the same drafts and beats on both.
- Files that outlive us. Plain-text .fountain on your disk, no account, and no AI anywhere.
The fair test: import your current script and rewrite one scene as a new draft. If the compare-and-merge isn't worth the yearly price to you, Fade In is a great app — go buy it.
Download Slate — free for 30 days, no cardAlso: Screenwriting software for Mac — every option · Slate vs Final Draft