Fortelling Free vs Pro: What You Get and When to Upgrade

Fortelling's free plan covers the mobile apps, default plotting tools, pinboards, real-time collaboration, and export of your writing, but it is ad-supported. Pro costs $7.49/month or $74.99/year and adds desktop access, custom tools, custom templates, and a public wiki. If you write on your phone and can live with ads, the free plan is enough to plot and draft a novel. If you want to work on a PC or Mac, build your own tools and templates, or publish a public wiki for your world, Pro is the tier that unlocks those.

What the free plan includes

The free tier is described on the site as "the price of a cup of coffee" — meaning it costs nothing — and it is built around the mobile experience.

• Mobile apps for Android and iOS (plus the web app)
• Default tools — the standard plotting and world-building features
• Pinboards for arranging story elements visually
• Collaboration in real time with other writers
• Export your writing
• Ad-supported — the free plan shows ads

The site's own summary of the free plan lists exactly these items: "Free / Mobile apps / Default tools / Pinboards / Collaborate / Export your writing / Ad-free" — with "Ad-free" being the feature that separates it from Pro.

What Pro adds

Pro is priced at $7.49 per month or $74.99 per year (annual subscription). Compared with the free plan, it adds:

The three headline upgrades are desktop access, custom tools and templates, and the public wiki. Everything else — the core plotting workspace, collaboration, and export — is available without paying.

How to decide

Stay on free if:

• You write primarily on a phone or tablet
• The default tools and pinboards match how you already outline
• You don't need a public-facing wiki for your world
• Ads don't bother you

Upgrade to Pro if:

• You want to write or plot on a desktop computer
• You need custom tools or custom templates that fit your own workflow
• You want a public wiki to share your world-building
• You'd rather not see ads while you work

There is also a gift card option if you want to give Pro to another writer rather than subscribe yourself.

What stays the same either way

A few things are worth knowing before you decide, because they don't change with the plan:

• You keep 100% ownership of your work.
• No artificial intelligence is used — the site states this explicitly, so your writing isn't fed into an AI system.
• Version history, statistics and goals, and export to .docx are part of the workspace feature set.
• Weekly challenges run every Friday, giving you a prompt to write against.

A practical way to test the difference

If you're unsure, start on free and run one real project through it: plot a story, add characters, locations, and items, then export it. If at any point you find yourself wanting to work on a laptop, build a custom template for your series, or share a public wiki, that's the signal to move to Pro. The monthly price is low enough to try for one month and cancel if the desktop and custom tools don't change how you work.

Fortelling reports being used by over 600,000 authors, and the free tier is positioned as a complete plotting and drafting space rather than a stripped-down demo — the paid tier is about where and how you work, not whether you can finish a novel.