Fountain vs FDX vs PDF: Which Screenplay File Format Should You Use?

The short answer

• Fountain for your master copy if you value portability, version control and independence from any single app.
• FDX for your master copy if you work with production teams that live in Final Draft, or if your editor's native format is FDX.
• PDF for anything you send to someone who is going to read it rather than edit it.

If you are unsure, keep both a Fountain and an FDX export of every finished draft. They are small files and the export takes seconds.

Fountain: plain text with rules

Fountain is an open markup syntax for screenplays, created in 2012 by John August and Nima Yousefi (with Stu Maschwitz's earlier Screenplay Markdown as a starting point). The idea is that a screenplay is mostly recognisable from its shape, so a plain-text file with a few conventions can be rendered into standard format by any app that understands them.

A Fountain file is a .fountain (or .txt) file that looks like this:

Title: The Suitcase
Author: A. Writer
Draft date: 2026-09-25

FADE IN:

INT. MARA'S KITCHEN - NIGHT

MARA (30s, hospital scrubs, hasn't slept) drops her keys on the counter.

Upstairs, a floorboard CREAKS.

MARA
(barely audible)
Who's up there?

JIN (O.S.)
Don't.

She freezes.

> SMASH CUT TO:

EXT. HIGHWAY REST STOP - DAY

The rules are minimal. A line in capitals that starts with INT, EXT, EST, INT./EXT or I/E is a scene heading. A line in capitals followed by a line of text is a character cue and dialogue. Text in parentheses under a cue is a parenthetical. A line ending in TO: in capitals is a transition (or force one with >). Everything else is action. There are a few more conventions:

Because it is text, Fountain works with everything text works with: Git, Dropbox version history, diff tools, search, and any editor on any device including a phone. A script written in 2013 opens today. It is also what many AI tools produce when you ask for "a formatted scene", because the model can emit it without knowing anything about page layout.

The weaknesses: Fountain does not store page locking, scene numbers with revision colours, or the production metadata a shooting script accumulates. It also renders slightly differently across apps, so two people printing the same file may get page counts that differ by one or two. For a spec script that does not matter. For a script in production it does.

FDX: Final Draft's XML

FDX is the native format of Final Draft, which Final Draft's own marketing describes as used by the large majority of film and television professionals. Since version 8 (2009), the format has been XML rather than a binary blob, which means other software can read and write it. A minimal FDX looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<FinalDraft DocumentType="Script" Template="No" Version="5">
  <Content>
    <Paragraph Type="Scene Heading">
      <Text>INT. MARA'S KITCHEN - NIGHT</Text>
    </Paragraph>
    <Paragraph Type="Action">
      <Text>MARA drops her keys on the counter.</Text>
    </Paragraph>
    <Paragraph Type="Character">
      <Text>MARA</Text>
    </Paragraph>
    <Paragraph Type="Parenthetical">
      <Text>(barely audible)</Text>
    </Paragraph>
    <Paragraph Type="Dialogue">
      <Text>Who's up there?</Text>
    </Paragraph>
  </Content>
</FinalDraft>

Each paragraph carries an explicit element type, so there is no ambiguity about what is a slugline and what is action. Beyond the content, an FDX file can carry scene numbers, revision marks and colours, locked pages, the title page, character and location lists, the Beat Board, and template settings. That is why production offices want it: scheduling software (Movie Magic, StudioBinder and the like) reads FDX and pulls out scenes, characters and locations directly.

FDX is the lingua franca between screenwriting apps too. As of September 2026, WriterDuet, Arc Studio Pro, Highland, Fade In, Celtx, Laper and Saga all import FDX, and all except Fountain-only tools export it. If you are moving a script between tools, FDX is usually the safest intermediate because it preserves element types exactly. (It does not preserve everything: an app's own notes, colours and outline cards often do not survive.)

The weaknesses: it is verbose and unreadable without software; it is a de facto standard controlled by one company rather than an open specification; and it does not diff well in version control, because a small text change produces a large XML change.

PDF: fixed for reading

A PDF is a picture of the page. It preserves exactly what you saw, including page breaks, so the reader's page 47 is your page 47. That is its whole purpose, and it is the right format for:

• Competition submissions (most require PDF).
• Sending to producers, managers, agents, actors and anyone who will read rather than edit.
• Archiving a draft as a record of what was sent on a given date.
• Table reads, where everyone must be on the same page number.

It is the wrong format for anything else. Editing a PDF screenplay means converting it back, and PDF-to-script conversion is lossy: elements are guessed from indentation, dual dialogue breaks, and page-break artefacts like (MORE) and (CONT'D) get pulled into the text. Every screenwriting app offers PDF import; none offers it cleanly. If you have only a PDF of your own script, you have a problem, and the fix is to keep the editable file next to every PDF you make.

Two PDF details worth knowing. First, embed the font. A PDF that references Courier rather than embedding it can render differently on a machine without that font. Any modern export does this automatically. Second, some free tiers watermark PDF exports: as of September 2026, Arc Studio Pro's free plan produces watermarked PDFs, while WriterDuet's free plan does not. Check before you send a watermarked script to a competition.

Comparison

Other formats you will meet

• DOCX. Useful for scripts in Korean broadcast format, where production still runs on word processors, and for producers who want to add comments in Word. Poor for American format because Word does not know what a slugline is; the styles are only paragraph formatting. Our manuscript export guide covers DOCX in depth.
• HWP. The Korean word-processor format from Hancom. Korean drama scripts are still commonly written and delivered as HWP, and converters such as dramaformat.kr export to it. Outside Korea you will not need it.
• Celtx, .wd (WriterDuet), .highland, .fadein. App-native formats. Fine while you are in the app; export to FDX or Fountain before you leave.
• TXT. A Fountain file without the extension, effectively. Acceptable in a pinch.

Which apps export what (as of September 2026)

This matters more than it should, because a tool that cannot export Fountain or FDX locks your work in. From the published documentation of each product:

If a table row is out of date, the vendor's own export documentation is the authority; formats change and free tiers change more often.

A working rule

Write in whatever your editor uses. After every draft you would mind losing, export Fountain (small, permanent, readable in 2040) and, if your editor supports it, FDX (for the day a producer wants to schedule it). Send PDFs. Never keep a PDF as your only copy.

Try it in SparkLore

SparkLore's script editor exports Fountain and DOCX, and the DOCX export for Korean broadcast format is laid out so it opens cleanly in Hangul word processors as well as Word. Plain-text and Fountain files import directly. If you want to see how a scene renders before creating a project, paste plain text into the free drama script formatter, which outputs both American and Korean layouts, or generate a scene with the AI script generator. A comparison with tools that do or do not export Fountain is on our alternatives page.