Feldar vs Novelcrafter

At a glance

The Codex and the Canvas

Novelcrafter's Codex is the heart of the app, and it is very good. Each character, place or object entry can carry custom details, a thumbnail, aliases and tags. Novelcrafter spots mentions of an entry in your prose and shows where each one appears. Progressions record how an entry changes over the course of the book, so the AI knows that your heroine has lost her arm by chapter twenty. Relations link entries, and you control which entries the AI sees. A Codex can be shared across a series.

The price of that depth is upkeep. Entries stay useful when you keep them current. A Tom's Guide writer who tried both Novelcrafter and Sudowrite said there was more setup involved, and that the payoff was control.

Feldar's Canvas is a visual board rather than a database. Characters, locations, plot beats, items, factions and notes sit as cards you drag into place, joined by labelled links such as Part of, Causes or Opposes. Branch makes a new card that knows about the one you selected: a rival for a character, a district inside a city. You can also ask Chat to add or change cards, and accept or reject what it proposes. Feldar draws on the cards when it writes.

What Feldar does not have is Novelcrafter's progressions or automatic mention tracking. If you write a long series where characters change a great deal, the Codex does more for you.

Setting up the AI

This is the biggest practical difference. A Novelcrafter subscription includes no AI usage. To use the AI features (from the Hobbyist plan up), you connect a provider. Most people use OpenRouter, which gives access to GPT, Claude, Gemini and many others. You can also connect OpenAI or Anthropic directly, a fixed-price service such as Featherless, or a model running on your own computer through LM Studio or Ollama. A ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription does not work inside Novelcrafter; you need an API key.

The upside is real. You can use any model the day it comes out, switch models mid-chat, read the exact prompt before it is sent, and write your own prompts. With a local model, your text never leaves your computer.

In Feldar there is nothing to connect. You choose a model per feature in Settings, or per chat in the model picker, and the plan's credits pay for it. The list is shorter: GPT-6 Astra, Sol and Luna, and Claude Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5. The free plan uses GPT-6 Luna, Core has everything except GPT-6 Astra, and Pro and Ultra have all six. Feldar's prompts are built in; you steer with Instruct, the Generation settings and your Voice & Style sample.

Planning, drafting and revising

Novelcrafter plans in acts, chapters and scenes, and shows the plan as a Grid, a Matrix or an Outline, with scene labels and custom POVs. To draft, you write Scene Beats, short notes of what happens, and the AI turns them into prose with your Codex as context. You can mark text "Exclude from AI", keep spare passages as snippets, and pin panels side by side.

Feldar plans each chapter as an Outline of scenes, which you write or generate and then edit. Draft Page writes a page from those scenes at a word count you set, and Continue from here writes a few lines in blue at the caret, which you Accept, Revise or Dismiss. How scenes become chapters.

Revision is where Feldar has more built in. Select a passage and choose Polish, Deepen or Enhance, or type an instruction, and the rewrite arrives in a card with the changes marked. Checks reads the page for grammar and spelling, clarity, repetition and word choice, dialogue transitions and point of view. Lens gives you six reader personas, and Reader reactions marks the moments that landed in the margin. Novelcrafter's features page does not list a grammar checker; its review tools focus on structure, such as which characters appear in which scenes.

Novelcrafter vs Sudowrite, briefly

Many writers choosing Novelcrafter are also looking at Sudowrite, so here is the fair version. Sudowrite includes AI usage in its plans, has its own fiction models (Muse and Ballad), and has iPhone and Android apps. Novelcrafter costs less up front, lets you pick any model, including local ones, and shows you its prompts, but the AI is a second bill. Sudowrite's Story Bible is a guided path from idea to drafted chapters; Novelcrafter's Codex is a reference you build and maintain. We compare Feldar with Sudowrite in detail on Feldar vs Sudowrite.

When Novelcrafter is the better choice

• You want to choose any model. New releases, open models, or a local model for privacy.
• You want to see and write the prompts. Prompt preview and custom prompts give you control Feldar does not.
• You write a long series. A shared Codex with progressions tracks how characters change from book to book.
• You want the lowest subscription. $4 a month for the workspace without AI, $8 with your own key.
• You co-write. Specialist lets you invite others to your novels and series. Feldar has no sharing.
• You want revision history. Novelcrafter has it; Feldar does not.

When Feldar is the better choice

• You don't want to manage keys and bills. The AI is part of the plan, and one price covers it.
• You want to start writing today. A scene Outline and a few Canvas cards are enough to begin.
• You want revision tools. The rewrite card, Checks and Lens cover line edits, error passes and reader feedback.
• You want a free plan. Feldar's Starter plan has no time limit and needs no card. Novelcrafter has a 21-day trial.
• You want a Mac app. Feldar runs on the web and natively on Apple silicon Macs.
• You want a record of your process. The private Writing record shows which words you typed and which came through Feldar's tools. Why we built it.

What a year costs

Novelcrafter's subscription is cheap, and the AI is billed by someone else. Here is a year of each, with the AI cost shown separately where it applies.

What the AI adds on Novelcrafter depends on the model and how much you generate. Novelcrafter's own help article works through one example: turning scene beats into 400 words of prose, with about 2,000 words of earlier prose, nine Codex entries and chapter summaries sent as context. At November 2024 prices, that one request cost about $0.02 on Claude 3.5 Sonnet and about $0.10 on Claude Opus. Five hundred requests like it would come to roughly $10 to $50 at those rates. Those models are old now, so check your provider's current prices; long chats and large Codex context cost more, and free or local models cost nothing.

On Feldar the plan price is the whole bill unless you buy a top-up (5,000 credits for $5, up to 15,000 for $15). We don't publish a credit cost per action, so we can't give you a per-request figure to set against Novelcrafter's. Writing, planning and organizing never use credits.

Moving from Novelcrafter to Feldar

1. Export your novel from Novelcrafter as a .docx file.
2. In Feldar, choose Import manuscript in your Library and pick the file (up to 20 MB).
3. The Codex does not come across as Canvas cards. Add the main characters, places and threads to the Canvas, or paste your notes into Chat and ask it to propose cards you can accept or reject.
4. Paste 600 words or more of your prose into Voice & Style.
5. Turn your remaining Scene Beats into an Outline of scenes on each page.

If you cancel Novelcrafter, its pricing FAQ says you keep read-only access and can still view and export your data.

Questions

Sources

All checked November 5, 2026.

1. Novelcrafter pricing and FAQ
2. Novelcrafter features
3. Novelcrafter help: AI and support
4. Novelcrafter: How much does the AI cost?
5. Novelcrafter: I have a subscription to ChatGPT Plus / Claude Pro
6. Novelcrafter: Can I use Novelcrafter in offline mode?
7. Novelcrafter: Exporting your novel
8. Novelcrafter: Importing from Word
9. Novelcrafter privacy policy
10. Tom's Guide: Sudowrite and Novelcrafter tested
11. Feldar pricing and Feldar privacy policy