Novelcrafter vs World Anvil

Novelcrafter

• Novelists and series writers who want a story bible tied to the manuscript
• Writers who want to pick and pay for their own AI models
• Co-authors and writing groups, on the Specialist plan

World Anvil

• Fantasy and science-fiction writers documenting a setting as linked articles
• Game masters who keep campaign notes, maps and statblocks with their lore
• Worldbuilders who want to present a setting to readers as a themed site

Novelcrafter

• There is no free plan. Without an active subscription, data stays viewable and exportable but cannot be added to or edited.
• AI starts at the Hobbyist plan and is bring-your-own-key, so model usage is paid separately to the AI provider unless local models are used.
• Workshop Chat needs Artisan, and inviting collaborators or creating teams needs Specialist. Each user needs a subscription of their own.
• It runs in the browser with nothing to install, and is described as mobile compatible; no desktop or mobile app is listed.

World Anvil

• Free accounts are capped: the April 2024 announcement listed 2 worlds, 42 articles, 5 drafts, 2 maps with 10 markers and 100 MB of images.
• A free account over its limits can view, export and delete content but cannot edit until it is back under them.
• World Anvil describes Manuscripts and Notebooks as features for paying guild members.
• URL embeds were removed from free accounts in April 2024 and need a paid guild account.

Novelcrafter

The Codex

A wiki for characters, locations and lore with aliases, relations, tags and progressions over time. It finds mentions across scenes and can be shared by every book in a series.

Planning views

The Grid reorders acts, chapters and scenes by drag and drop, the Matrix shows the whole story as a spreadsheet-like table, and the Outline is a single-page summary.

Manuscript editor

A rich text editor with focus mode, highlighter markers, sections for alternative ideas, revision history, and import from Word, Markdown or HTML files.

Bring-your-own-key AI

From Hobbyist up, connects to services such as OpenAI, Anthropic and OpenRouter or to local models through LM Studio and Ollama, with custom prompts and a prompt preview.

Workshop Chat

On Artisan and above, a chat for feedback and brainstorming that can take the outline, a scene or the full novel as context and extract scene beats or Codex entries from the reply.

Collaboration and teams

Any account can be invited as a viewer, and editing needs a paid plan. Inviting others to a novel or series, and creating teams, needs the Specialist plan.

World Anvil

Articles and templates

A world is written as articles built on templates with prompts, such as characters, organizations, languages, plots and prose, then sorted into categories and folders. The Autolinker links articles to each other.

Interactive maps

Maps take markers and layers, and the world search covers map markers along with articles, images, timelines and events.

Timelines and historical events

Timelines collect dated events from a world's history, and events can be filed in folders with the rest of a world's content.

Family trees and diplomacy webs

Family trees are generated from the parents set on character articles. Diplomacy webs chart relations between factions, countries and other organizations.

Manuscripts

A paid feature for writing fiction such as a novel. The Plot and Prose article templates, used for outlining and for short stories and scenes, are free.

Tabletop campaign tools

RPG campaigns and statblocks are kept in the same account as the worldbuilding. The 2024 free-account limits allow one campaign and 20 statblocks.

Novelcrafter

• Scribe$4

  per month, or $40 billed annually

  Unlimited books, the Codex, series and basic review tools. No AI features.

• Hobbyist$8

  per month, or $80 billed annually

  Adds AI with your own API key or local models: scene summarization, character extraction and generating prose from scene beats, plus live chat support.

• Artisan$14

  per month, or $140 billed annually

  Adds Workshop Chat for feedback and brainstorming on scenes. Advanced review tools are listed for this tier but marked as planned.

• Specialist$20

  per month, or $200 billed annually

  Adds inviting other users to novels and series, creating and managing teams, and priority support.

World Anvil

Pricing could not be confirmed. See worldanvil.com.

Novelcrafter

• Annual discount

  2 months off with annual billing

  Annual billing costs ten times the monthly price: $40 for Scribe, $80 for Hobbyist, $140 for Artisan and $200 for Specialist, against $4, $8, $14 and $20 a month.

World Anvil

No public discounts listed.