How Fountain+ Exporter, Fountainize, ftn2xml, Better Fountain & Studiovity Compare

The 2026 Google Docs Screenplay Landscape

Feature Matrix — The 5 Tools

Legend: Active = released an update in the last 12 months. Maintenance = listing live, no recent updates. Partial = supported with a meaningful caveat shown in the cell.

Fountain+ Exporter

Fountain+ Exporter is the tool I use on my own screenplays before they go to a writers' room. It installs into Google Docs from the Workspace Marketplace, reads the Fountain or Mangaplay markup you've typed into your Doc, and exports straight to Final Draft .fdx, FadeIn .fadein, PDF, plain TXT or back out as a clean Fountain file. No upload step, no separate web app, no script length cap.

The bits that don't get talked about enough: it ships in 14 languages, it understands FDX 1.1 as well as the current spec, and it's the only free Fountain tool that also handles comic and manga page/panel format. Everything stays inside your Google account — the Doc is the source, the Add-on is the export button, that's the whole product.

Best For: Screenwriters who already draft in Google Docs and want to leave with a real industry-format file without changing tools.

Fountainize

Fountainize is the historical incumbent for writing Fountain inside Google Docs. 412K+ installs, half a decade of brand momentum, and almost every "how to write a screenplay in Google Docs" tutorial from the last five years points at it. If you've used a Fountain-aware Docs add-on before, you've probably used this one.

Where it stops being competitive in 2026 is the export side. Fountainize doesn't actually produce a Final Draft or FadeIn file — it just visually reformats your Doc into screenplay layout, and the free tier caps at around 800 lines (~15 pages). For anything past a short, you hit the wall and have to either pay $10 CAD/year for Pro or take your text somewhere that can export. Fountain+ has no cap and ships real .fdx, .fadein, .pdf and .txt straight from the menu.

Best For: The first 15 pages of a short film draft, by a writer who's happy with the visually-formatted Doc as the deliverable.

ftn2xml

ftn2xml is a C++ command-line converter for the terminal crowd. It ships four binaries — ftn2xml, ftn2html, ftn2pdf, ftn2fdx — that convert a Fountain file to XML, HTML, PDF or Final Draft FDX. It's GPL-3.0, build-from-source, and there's no UI of any kind.

If your idea of a screenwriting tool is make && ./ftn2pdf script.fountain, this is the one. It's also the smallest audience in this lineup — five stars on GitHub and effectively zero overlap with Fountain+'s Google-Docs-resident user. Where the two coexist gracefully: a developer-screenwriter could draft in Docs with Fountain+, then run a static-site build over the exported Fountain text with ftn2xml.

Best For: Developers and Linux power users who want a scriptable Fountain converter inside a shell pipeline.

Better Fountain

Better Fountain is a Visual Studio Code extension and it is the best one in its category — 440 GitHub stars, syntax highlighting, autocomplete for character names and scene headings, a live preview that scrolls in sync with your editor, and PDF export. If you live in VS Code for everything else you do, you already know about it.

It doesn't compete with Fountain+ because the user lives somewhere else entirely. The honest workflow for a VS-Code-native writer is to draft your script with Better Fountain, then if you need Final Draft .fdx (which Better Fountain doesn't ship), drop the Fountain text into a Google Doc and export with Fountain+. Two tools, one pipeline.

Best For: Developer-screenwriters who already draft inside VS Code and want Fountain syntax highlighting and live preview where they already work.

Studiovity

Studiovity is what happens when a Fountain converter grows up into a full Final-Draft-alternative SaaS. There's a web editor, iOS and Android apps, index cards, an act-structure board, an AI dialogue assistant, character analysis, real-time collaboration, and a screenplay converter that handles FDX, PDF, Fountain and plain text. It's $1.88/month after the free trial.

It does not live in Google Docs — Studiovity wants you to leave Docs and write in Studiovity. That's a different bet than the one Fountain+ is making. If you've outgrown Docs and want a full screenwriting suite without paying Final Draft prices, Studiovity is a real conversation. If you want to keep using the tool you already write in, Fountain+ is the lighter answer.

Best For: Writers ready to leave Docs for a dedicated screenwriting suite with mobile apps and AI assist.

1-on-1 Comparisons

The Verdict

In 2026, the choice for a writer who already drafts in Google Docs comes down to: do you want your screenplay to leave with a real industry file in hand?

If yes — Fountain+ Exporter is the only free tool in this list (see Feature Matrix) that lives inside Google Docs, parses Fountain markup, and exports to .fdx, .fadein, .pdf and .txt with no cap and no second account.

If you only need the Doc to look like a screenplay, Fountainize still works for short pieces. If you've outgrown Docs entirely, Studiovity is the SaaS conversation. If you live in VS Code, Better Fountain is the editor. If you live in a terminal, ftn2xml is the converter.

Fountain+ is built and used by Pistol Taeja on his own screenplays — same pipeline he ships Enemy Of The State through. Not a frozen 2015 project. Not a dormant 2024 build.