Scriptmate vs Rehearsal Pro: Two iPhone Line Apps Compared

You’ve got the sides on your phone and an hour before you have to be word-perfect. Scriptmate and Rehearsal Pro both run on the iPhone, both take a PDF or a photo of your pages, and both promise to get you off book. They go about it in nearly opposite ways.

Scriptmate listens to you. Its speech recognition follows your line, and a natural voice answers when you finish. Rehearsal Pro is a script binder: you highlight your lines, record your lines and your partners’ lines, and play them back while the script scrolls. We judged both, and Offbook, on the same seven questions. Our pick for most actors is Offbook, which reads every other role with realistic voices and lets you choose how closely it listens. The reasons are below.

How We Compared Them

A line app earns its place when you still open it the night before the audition. These seven questions decide that.

• Who reads the other parts: generated voices, your own recordings, or a mix?
• How does it know it’s your turn: speech recognition, or you driving the playback?
• How does your script get in, and does the app find your lines for you?
• What memorization tools does it have: hidden lines, first letters, looping, a teleprompter?
• Can it help with the tape, by recording in the app or reading while you film?
• Where does it run: phone, tablet, laptop, or a browser?
• What does it cost: a one-time price, a subscription, or a free trial?

Offbook, Scriptmate, and Rehearsal Pro at a Glance

Each App on the Same Seven Points

Offbook

Offbook starts from the script you already have. Upload a PDF, a photo of the pages (PNG or JPEG), or a text file, and it sorts the pages into roles and lines and writes a title and summary for the scene. Pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character. Free and Starter cast from 12 voices; Pro and Premium cast from a larger catalog.

When you rehearse, Offbook plays the other lines, listens through your microphone while you say yours, and plays the next cue when it hears you finish. You can also press Enter or say “next line”. For memorizing, hide your own lines, hide the whole script for a final test, or swap your lines for the first 1-8 letters of each word. The teleprompter shows your line large and highlights each word as you say it. When you film, Offbook is the reader off camera.

Price: Starter is $9.99 a month, Pro $14.99, and Premium $29.99, with annual billing from $7.99 a month. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial (it requires a card), paid plans have no monthly cap on the number of scripts (generated audio has a monthly allowance of 50,000 characters on Starter, 100,000 on Pro, and 200,000 on Premium), and students and educators get 50% off with a valid .edu email. Best for actors who want a reader that hears them finish, for anything from two pages of sides to a full-length play.

Scriptmate

Scriptmate is an iPhone app. You import a PDF screenplay or photograph your paper sides, and it marks your lines automatically. There’s no account to make: a demo scene runs the first time you open it.

Its speech recognition runs on the phone and follows your speech word by word through the whole line, not only the last word, so it keeps up if you paraphrase or restart. The reader answers when you finish. Its line reader page lists natural voices for English, Spanish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Italian, with ten American and British voices for English. Once prepared, they play offline. Other languages use the iPhone’s own voices.

It records self-tapes in the app, in landscape, with the reader in your headphones. A Focus mode blocks the apps you pick while you rehearse, and the app itself comes in languages including English, French, German, Korean, and Spanish.

Price: Scriptmate Pro is $9.99 a month or $69.99 a year after a 7-day free trial, as its App Store listing shows. Best for iPhone users who want a reader that follows them, and whose voices play offline.

Rehearsal Pro

Rehearsal Pro, from Sotto Voce Filmworks, is built around your marked-up script. You import PDF or Word files, or photograph printed pages, then highlight your lines and your partners’ lines in colors and add bookmarks. There is no automatic line detection: its help guide has you swipe across each line with the highlighter yourself.

Then you record your lines and your partners’ lines, and playback scrolls the script like a teleprompter. A blackout mode hides lines until you reveal them, and there’s an auto-repeat option. You can attach text, audio, photo, and video notes, and your markup syncs between iOS devices. Its listing names no text-to-speech or speech-recognition cues.

Price: $19.99 once, with no in-app purchases. Best for actors who want highlights, notes, and recordings kept together with the pages.

Who Reads the Other Part

This is the real split between the two apps. Scriptmate gives each other character a natural voice and lets you swap in your own recording of any line. In Rehearsal Pro, the other parts are the recordings you make. Offbook casts realistic voices for every role but yours, so there’s no recording session before your first run.

Recording the scene costs time on every rewrite, but whatever reads the cues, the speaking is yours to do. A University of Waterloo study of 95 people compared reading silently, hearing someone else read, hearing a recording of yourself, and reading aloud in real time. Reading aloud yourself came out on top. So say your own lines out loud: that’s what you’ll remember best.

Listening for You vs. Playing a Recording

How an app decides it’s your turn changes how a run feels. Scriptmate listens: it tracks your whole line and answers when you finish, even if you paraphrase or start again. That keeps the timing yours, which matters once you start playing with pauses.

Rehearsal Pro’s listing names no speech-recognition cues: you highlight your lines and run the recording.

Offbook listens while you say your line and plays the next cue when it detects you’ve finished. You choose how strict it is: Strict, which keeps you close to the script, Lenient (with a 0-100 slider) while you’re still finding the words, or Manual when you want to hold a long pause and then press Enter. It can also move on after 1 to 6 seconds of silence, so your hands stay free for the blocking.

Getting Your Script In

Both iPhone apps take a PDF or a photo of your pages. Scriptmate also marks your lines for you. Rehearsal Pro adds Word files, and you mark the lines yourself with the highlighter.

Offbook takes a PDF, a photo of the pages, or a text file and sorts it into roles and lines. One scene holds up to 50 pages or about 10,000 words, and the page picker splits up to 150 pages into 10 scenes, so a full-length play fits. You can edit the dialogue afterward, move a line to the right character, or add a pause.

Memorization Tools That Make You Recall

The useful tools make you pull the line out of memory instead of reading it again. Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed why in a study summarized by the APS. Students who tested themselves read the passages about 3.4 times and recalled 61% a week later. Students who kept rereading read them about 14.2 times and recalled 40%, and they felt more confident.

Rehearsal Pro’s blackout mode hides lines until you reveal them. Scriptmate’s Focus mode blocks the apps you pick while you rehearse. Offbook hides your lines or the whole script, and its first-letter cues show the first 1-8 letters of each word or only the first word of each line. You can try first-letter cues on any text with our free first-letter memorizer.

Don’t learn the words as a string of sounds, though. Helga and Tony Noice found that actors learn lines by working out what they mean and what the character is after, which the APS Observer described as active experiencing. Lines learned while making a movement were also remembered better. Walk the blocking while the reader gives you your cues.

Runs Away From the Script, and Self-Tapes

Rehearsal Pro has an offline mode, and Scriptmate’s voices play offline once they’re made. With Offbook, rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere. With Offbook, save a scene as an MP3 and play it on the subway.

For tapes, Scriptmate records in the app in landscape with the reader in your headphones. Rehearsal Pro lets you email voice-over auditions as MP3s. Offbook reads off camera while you film on your phone or camera.

What Your Situation Calls For

• You want to set how closely the reader listens: Offbook, where you choose Strict, Lenient with a 0-100 slider, or Manual, and can have it move on after 1 to 6 seconds of silence.
• You don’t want to record every other part first: Offbook, where realistic voices read every role but yours.
• You’re learning a full-length play: Offbook, where the page picker splits up to 150 pages into scenes.
• You get new sides most weeks: Offbook, whose paid plans have no monthly cap on the number of scripts.
• You want to ask about the character, not just drill: Offbook’s Genie answers questions about motivation, scene context, and line interpretation.

If you’re weighing a switch, our Scriptmate comparison and Rehearsal Pro comparison go into more detail. For more apps judged the same way, see the best line learning apps.

Questions Actors Ask

Can I use my own voice for one character?

In Scriptmate, yes: long-press any reader line to record it yourself, and rehearsal plays your take while the voices read the rest. In Rehearsal Pro, every line is a recording, so each character sounds like whoever recorded it. In Offbook, realistic voices read every role but yours, and you can set their speed for the whole scene or for one line.

Can I share a scene with a castmate?

Rehearsal Pro syncs your markup between your own iOS devices. Offbook shares a scene by email invitation on every paid plan, or by public link on Pro and Premium, and people you invite can practice it even on a free account.

Do Scriptmate and Rehearsal Pro work on an iPad or a Mac?

Rehearsal Pro runs on iPhone, iPad, Macs with Apple silicon, and Apple Vision Pro, with no Android or web version. Scriptmate’s website says there’s no iPad or Android version yet, and its App Store listing says it is not verified for macOS. Offbook’s rehearsal runs in a laptop or desktop browser, on Mac or Windows; on a phone you listen to your scenes, with your own lines spoken, skipped, or left as silent gaps.

The Verdict

Our pick for most actors is Offbook. Realistic voices read every role but yours, so there’s no recording session before you can run a scene. You choose how closely it listens, Strict, Lenient with a 0-100 slider, or Manual, and it can move on by itself after 1 to 6 seconds of silence. And it takes a two-page side or a full-length play split into scenes, with no monthly cap on the number of scripts on paid plans.

Between the two apps compared here, the split is in who reads and who drives. Scriptmate listens and answers with natural voices. Rehearsal Pro plays the recordings you make and keeps them with your highlights and notes, with markup that syncs between iOS devices.

Offbook is made by the team behind this blog. Prices as of November 2026.