Slate vs Highland: two Fountain apps for the Mac.
Highland and Slate are close cousins. Both are Mac apps, both write screenplays and novels, and both keep your work as plain-text Fountain underneath. They split on one question: what happens when you rewrite.
Written by the people who make Slate — bias disclosed, details from quoteunquoteapps.com as of October 2026, corrections welcome at support@slatescript.app.
The short version: if you want to write on your iPad and iPhone too, with iCloud keeping it all in step, Highland does that and Slate doesn't. If you rewrite a lot or write with a partner, Slate's drafts — branch, compare word by word, merge what works — are something Highland doesn't have. Both have a 30-day trial, so try both on the same script.
Side by side
| Slate | Highland | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $79/year, 30-day free trial (no card) | $59.99/year or $9.99/month, 30-day trial |
| Platforms | Mac only — macOS 14 or later (Apple Silicon & Intel) | Mac, iPad and iPhone, synced through iCloud |
| Try a rewrite without risking the draft | Drafts: branch, compare word by word, merge — built in | Revision Mode marks what changed |
| Co-writing | Proposed revisions you review line by line and merge; reviewing is free for your partner | Comments |
| Story planning | Beats pinned to actual script lines; a board where dragging a card moves the scenes | Navigator of sections, scenes, synopses and notes |
| Novels | A Books shelf with a 6×9 page, chapters, and the same drafts and beats | Yes — marketed to novelists as well as screenwriters |
| Production features | Locked scene numbers (12A, OMITTED), locked pages and A-pages, Characters/Locations/Scenes reports | Cast and location lists, gender analysis |
| Writing helpers | Focus mode (one section at a time) | Sprints, goals, snippets, to-dos |
| Where your script lives | On your disk as plain .fountain (scripts) or .md (books) | Fountain-based files, synced through iCloud |
| File exchange | Opens and saves .fdx · imports Fountain · exports Fountain, PDF, teleprompter PDF | See their site for current formats |
| Accounts & tracking | No account, no analytics, no AI | See their privacy policy |
Highland details summarized from quoteunquoteapps.com as of October 2026 — check their pages for current pricing and features.
What Highland does better
- iPad and iPhone. Highland runs natively on all three and syncs through iCloud. Slate is a Mac app only.
- Price. $59.99 a year against Slate's $79.
- Writing-habit tools. Sprints, goals and a to-do list are built in.
- Pedigree. Highland comes from the people behind the Fountain format itself, and it shows in how clean it feels.
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 only what works. Highland marks what you changed; Slate lets you keep both versions and pick, scene by scene.
- 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, so they don't need to buy anything to read yours.
- The outline can't drift from the pages. Beats cover real script lines; move a beat and the scenes move with it.
- Ready for production. Locked scene numbers, locked pages and A-pages, and reports for characters, locations and scenes, with pages that break the way Final Draft breaks them.
- Final Draft in and out. Slate opens and saves .fdx, so you can take notes from a Final Draft writer and send the script back.
The fair test: open the same script in both, then rewrite one scene as a Slate draft and compare it with the original. If that doesn't change how you revise, delete Slate and keep your $79.
Download Slate — free for 30 days, no cardAlso: Screenwriting software for Mac — every option · Slate vs Final Draft