SetHero pricing: what does SetHero actually cost?

Three ways to pay, and you only see one

SetHero does not open on a price list. It opens on a question: is this one project, or ongoing productions at a company? Answer "one project" and it asks a second one, whether you shoot twelve days or less. Each answer leads to a different grid, priced on different variables, and the page never puts the three next to each other.

A single project of twelve shooting days or less is a one-time purchase, set by two controls, a cast and crew slider and a number of shooting days. More than twelve days and you are moved to long form, which is sold by the shooting week. A company takes a subscription instead, and that one ignores crew size when setting the price: it is metered on how many projects you expect to run in a year.

This is why the other pages you find when you search for this disagree with each other. Each one quotes a single monthly figure, which is one branch of a wizard reported as if it were the price. Which branch you come through decides the model, and the three do not convert into each other.

One-time: what crew size and days cost

The crew slider has seven stops: 15, 30, 50, 75, 100, 150 and 200. Days run from one to twelve. All figures below are in US dollars.

Fifteen people for a single day is $10, and that is the floor of the grid. Thirty people for a day is $14. Fifteen people over three days is $26. Hold the shoot at three days and move the crew instead: fifty people is $44, seventy-five is $52, one hundred is $62, two hundred is $88. Hold the crew at one hundred and stretch the days: ten days is $187, twelve days is $204. The ceiling of the grid, two hundred people over twelve days, is $292.

The page says this price "includes all features (texting, custom branding, and unlimited admins)". Custom branding and unlimited admins are exactly what the subscription tiers withhold from their cheaper plans.

Set against what a shoot costs, none of this is expensive. Two hundred people over twelve days works out at about twelve cents per person per day. Before the calculator gives you a number you need a headcount, a day count, and the bracket each falls into.

The thirteenth day roughly doubles the bill

Inside the twelve-day grid there is no step. On a hundred-person shoot, each extra day adds somewhere between eight and twenty-three dollars. The thirteenth day disqualifies the project from the one-time grid altogether and moves it to long form, which is sold by shooting week.

Long form will not sell you fewer than three weeks. The stepper starts at three, and pressing minus refuses with a message instead of moving. Three weeks is described on the page as covering up to eighteen shooting days. At one hundred cast and crew, long form is $150 per shooting week, or $405 if you pay the three weeks upfront, which the page marks as a ten percent saving of $45.

So a hundred-person shoot of twelve days is $204. The same shoot at thirteen days is $405 upfront, or $450 paid weekly. One extra shooting day, and you are buying eighteen days of capacity to use thirteen of them.

Long form does have one thing the short grid does not: its crew slider ends on "Unlimited" rather than on two hundred.

The subscription: the caps at $19 are the caps at $119

The subscription page has four tiers, and their per-project limits are fixed. Starter allows up to 30 people and up to 4 days per project, with no extra admins, no custom branding and no priority support. Pro allows 65 people and 8 days, up to 5 admins, and adds custom branding. Studio allows 125 people and 12 days, up to 12 admins, and adds priority support. Enterprise is unlimited on people, days and admins, and its price is a quote.

None of those move the monthly price. A stepper labelled "Projects per year" does. At five projects a year, the three listed tiers are $19, $49 and $129 a month. At fifteen: $39, $89 and $129. At thirty: $79, $129 and $179. At fifty: $119, $179 and $259. At eighty: $169, $219 and $299. The caps do not move at any point along that range.

Starter costs $19 a month at five projects a year and $119 at fifty, six times the entry price, and at both ends it still stops at 30 people and 4 days per project.

Yearly billing is offered at a stated 25 percent saving. The first project is free, capped at 75 cast and crew and 5 shooting days. Students enrolled at a school or university pay nothing. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time.

What the model asks of you

All three grids meter something you would rather not have to count. The one-time grid counts names and days, long form counts weeks, and the subscription counts jobs per year.

That arithmetic arrives while you are still adding people. A production assistant, a second driver and a client who wants to visit are three more names on a sheet, and on a capped plan they are also a tier decision. Nothing in the software stops you adding them, but the size of your crew is a line on your bill.

The shape of your year decides which grid is cheaper. We read nine other call sheet tools on the same terms: what each one bills you for.

How Mustyn charges, and where it costs more

Mustyn bills one thing: a shoot day, the first time it leaves the tool. Publishing it to the team counts it, and so does downloading its PDF, whichever happens first and only once. Versions, re-notifications, reminders and the number of people on the sheet never count, and crew are never billed.

Five days are free for life, with no card. After that, days are bought outright at $15 for one, $39 for three and $109 for ten, each valid twenty-four months. On a plan, Studio at $49 a month releases five days a month and Company at $149 releases twenty, both accumulating while you stay subscribed. Paid annually at $490 and $1,490, the whole allowance lands on the first day.

At zero, Mustyn stops: it will not publish the day and it will not hand you the PDF, and there is no overdraft. Seats run one, then two, then three as you go up, and are uncapped on Company. The free plan keeps ninety days of delivery history, where the paid plans keep a year or all of it. It also caps the sheets you can read in with AI at ten a month.

SetHero is the better buy on a long shoot with a modest crew. Thirty cast and crew across three shooting weeks is $135 upfront, which covers up to eighteen shooting days. Eighteen published days bought as Mustyn packs comes to $217. That is a feature film, or a documentary that runs for weeks.

It reverses when the year is made of many short jobs. Take thirty separate one-day shoots with a crew of forty. On Mustyn that is thirty published days, covered by the $490 annual plan, which releases sixty days at once. On SetHero a crew of forty is past Starter's thirty-person cap, so that is Pro, and at thirty projects a year Pro is $129 a month, $1,548 for the year.

No feature of the day sits behind a plan. A day published on the free plan reaches the crew exactly as it does on the $149 plan, with the same logo on it. The plans meter volume, nothing else.

Publishing in test mode sends you the day exactly as the crew would get it, and does not touch your balance.

Mustyn sends no SMS, which the one-time SetHero price includes, and it has no iOS app. Shot lists, storyboards and script breakdowns are outside it entirely. And a day you publish and then cancel still counts against your balance.