# CineoBoard vs Wonder Unit Storyboarder

Canonical URL: https://www.cineoboard.com/vs/wonder-unit-storyboarder

Wonder Unit Storyboarder is a free desktop drawing tool. CineoBoard is local-first Reframe plus a cloud project layer, Slack and Teams, an agent API and an in-board production assistant. A hands-on comparison.

Last updated: 2026-08-27

## Verdict

Storyboarder is the best free way to draw frames on one machine. It stops at the file. CineoBoard keeps the same offline drawing speed in Reframe, then adds the project, scene and shot management, review and integrations a production actually runs on.

## Feature comparison

| Feature | CineoBoard | Wonder Unit Storyboarder |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Works offline | Yes — Reframe is local-first | Yes — desktop only |
| Cloud project & scene management | Yes | No |
| Shot list synced to frames | Yes | Partial (shot fields, no synced list view) |
| Client review links & approvals | Yes | No |
| Slack / Microsoft Teams | Yes | No |
| API / CLI for agent tools (Codex-style) | Yes | No |
| In-product assistant | Yes — CineoBoard Assistant | No |
| Price | From $30/month USD | Free |

## Choose CineoBoard if

- You need boards, shot lists and versions shared with a crew, not a folder of PSDs
- You want Slack or Teams to say when a scene changed or a client approved
- You want an assistant that can restructure scenes, write shot data and answer questions in context
- You still want the board to work with the network off

## Choose Wonder Unit Storyboarder if

- You draw alone, on a tablet, and never share anything but an export
- Your budget is strictly zero
- You want a Photoshop round-trip as the core of the workflow

## Two different definitions of 'storyboard tool'

Wonder Unit built Storyboarder to answer one question well: how fast can a director get an idea out of their head and onto a frame? It is a drawing surface with shot fields, it is free, and for solo sketching it is genuinely excellent.

CineoBoard answers a different question: how does a board stay true for the twelve people who depend on it? Think of it as Linear for pre-production, Dropbox-grade local sync, an agent interface in the shape of Codex, and Intercom-style assistance — wrapped around a storyboard editor.

## Local-first is not the same as local-only

Storyboarder is local-only: the file lives on your disk and that is the end of the story. Share it and you are back to email attachments and filenames ending in _v7_final.

Reframe, the CineoBoard desktop app, is local-first. Every stroke, panel reorder and shot edit is written locally and rendered locally, so it never waits on a connection. The cloud layer then reconciles that work into a shared project with scene status, assignees, version history and review links.

- Draw and play back animatics offline with no spinner
- Reconnect and the project, scene and shot state merges automatically
- Version history you can roll back per frame, not per file

## Where the crew actually lives

Boards do not get read inside boarding software; they get read in Slack, in Teams, and in a client's inbox. CineoBoard posts scene changes, comments and approvals into the channel the production already uses, and every frame carries a permanent link back into the board.

Storyboarder has no notion of a team channel, a reviewer or an approval state. That work moves to whatever chat and spreadsheet you bolt on beside it.

## Automation and the in-board assistant

CineoBoard exposes projects, scenes, shots and exports through an API and CLI, so an agentic tool like Codex can assemble a board from a script commit, renumber a sequence or push a fresh PDF as part of a pipeline.

On top of that sits the CineoBoard Assistant, an Intercom-grade helper that lives in the board: ask it to split a scene into coverage, rewrite shot notes in the client's language, find every frame missing a duration, or produce the next revision — and it does the edit, not just the suggestion.

## FAQ

### Is Wonder Unit Storyboarder still free?

Yes. Storyboarder is free and open source, which makes it a reasonable first tool for a solo artist. The cost shows up later, in the coordination work it leaves to you.

### Can CineoBoard work offline like Storyboarder?

Yes. Reframe is a local-first desktop app: drawing, reordering and animatic playback all run on your machine and sync when you are back online.


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More machine-readable entry points: [/llms.txt](https://www.cineoboard.com/llms.txt) · [/sitemap.xml](https://www.cineoboard.com/sitemap.xml)