The best storyboard app for iPad: how to choose
"Best" depends on the job. A storyboard app is not judged by how beautifully it draws — it is judged by how quickly it lets you plan a sequence a crew can shoot from. This guide lays out the criteria that actually matter on an iPad, then looks honestly at the kinds of tools available and where each fits. Full disclosure: we make one of them, Draw Storyboard, and we will point out where it is and is not the right pick.
The short version: pick the tool that makes fast, legible boarding easy — panels, shot metadata, aspect guides and a clean PDF or animatic export — not the one with the most brushes.
What actually matters
Before comparing apps, know what you are comparing. A board tool worth using on set gives you:
- Drawing built for boards, not painting — layers, onion skin and aspect guides, so sketching a frame is fast and legible.
- Shot metadata on the panel — size, lens, camera move and timing, because a board is a planning document, not just a picture.
- Real export — a shooting-board PDF the crew can read, and ideally a timed animatic for pacing.
- Apple Pencil and offline — pressure-true drawing that works with no signal on a location.
- A price model you can live with — one-time versus subscription.
The kinds of tools out there
The options fall into a few groups, each with a different trade-off:
Painting apps (e.g. Procreate)
The drawing is superb and it is native to iPad with Apple Pencil, which is why so many artists board in one. The catch is that a painting app has no concept of a panel, a shot, a sequence or an animatic — you assemble all of that yourself. Ideal if you want maximum artistic control and do not mind building the structure by hand.
Desktop board tools (e.g. Storyboarder)
Purpose-built for storyboarding and often free, these are strong on a laptop. On a shoot, the trade-off is obvious: they are not an iPad-first, Apple-Pencil-first experience, so they suit prep at a desk more than sketching on your feet.
Web board tools (e.g. Boords)
Browser-based tools handle panels, sharing and review well, and are great for teams. The usual trade-offs are a subscription and a reliance on being online — less ideal for drawing by hand on an iPad on location.
iPad-native board apps (e.g. Draw Storyboard)
This group aims to combine the two things the others split: pressure-true Apple Pencil drawing and the structure of a real board — panels, shot metadata, aspect guides, and export to a PDF or a timed animatic — all on the device, offline. Draw Storyboard sits here: built for boards rather than painting, one-time purchase, no subscription. If you want to illustrate rather than plan, a painting app may suit you better; if you want to board a sequence quickly on an iPad and hand it over, this is the category to look in.
So, which is best?
If you value the drawing above all and will build the structure yourself, a painting app wins. If you board at a desk with a team, a desktop or web tool may fit. If you want to sketch a sequence on an iPad with Apple Pencil and walk away with a shooting board or an animatic — with no subscription — an iPad-native board app is the right shape, and Draw Storyboard is ours. New to boarding entirely? Start with how to storyboard on iPad.
Buy for the shoot, not the demo reel. The best board app is the one that gets a legible sequence out of your head and onto the crew's hands the fastest.
Draw every shot, the way you'd sketch it on paper.
Draw Storyboard boards a whole sequence with Apple Pencil, hangs the shot, lens and timing on every panel, and exports a shooting-board PDF or a timed animatic. One-time purchase, on the App Store now.