Best Cosplay Planning Apps: 6 Tested (2026)

Two of the apps that show up in every "best cosplay planning app" list are already gone, and the lists haven't noticed.

I checked all of them in August 2026. Cosplanner's Android listing returns a 404 and an App Store lookup on its bundle ID comes back empty, so it isn't on either store. Cosgear is worse: its Play listing at com.cosgear.app 404s, its Apple developer page lists no apps, cosgear.co returns a Shopify "this store is currently unavailable" screen, and app.cosgear.co returns a Vercel DEPLOYMENT_DISABLED payment-required error. That is what an unpaid hosting bill looks like from the outside.

Meanwhile the post that currently ranks #1 for this query, published by Cosplai, still lists Cosplanner as available on iOS and Android with a "limited free tier" and recommends it for people who "want simplicity above all else." It also ranks Cosplai first, which is understandable, since Cosplai wrote it.

I build EVA foam armor. Forty-seven finished costumes, and I've moved my build data between four apps in six years and lost it twice. So: every price checked against the company's own pricing page, every "is it alive" claim checked against the store listing, and a verdict by builder type instead of one winner for everybody.

Quick verdict

• Mobile-first casual builder: Cosplai. The most polished phone app, and the free tier covers you.
• Desktop builder with a wall of armor references: Costumary or Cosflowy. Both browser-first.
• Zero budget, want a real community: Cosplan. Free, shipping monthly, 10K+ Play installs.
• Commission maker: Costumary Studio at $19/mo, the priciest plan on this page.
• Social and convention focused: Cosplan, then Cosplai.
• Still on Cosplanner or Cosgear: export what you can this week.

1. Cosplai

Platforms: iOS, Android. No web app. Price: Free (5 active projects, 25 completed cosplays, 3 active events, 25 images per project) / Pro $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year. Best for: Casual mobile builders who want one polished app on their phone.

Cosplai is the newest app here, released to the App Store on March 22, 2026, currently at version 1.1.5 (updated July 31, 2026).

What it does well:

Multi-status task tracking is the best version of the thing Cosplanner got right. Items move through To Buy, To Make, Ordered, and Finished, and the budget rolls up from item to project automatically. Convention discovery with venue search is built in, and it's the only app here that confirms offline access, which matters when your con hotel wifi does the usual.

Where it falls short:

The free tier shrank. Their pricing page now says 5 active projects, but the App Store description still reads "create up to 10 active projects." One of those is stale, and it's the one Apple shows people deciding whether to download. Not a scandal, but know it happened before you build a year of projects on it.

The 25 images per project cap on free is the real problem for armor. My Guts build had 60 reference photos before I cut a single sheet of foam: pauldron angles, the exact shade of the breastplate, six shots of the gauntlet knuckles alone. Twenty-five doesn't get you through one pauldron.

Mobile only, and $59.99 a year is the highest annual price here. It also has zero US App Store ratings as of my check, which says more about how new it is than about quality. Longer breakdown in my Cosplai alternatives post.

2. Cosplan

Platforms: iOS, Android. The website is a public showcase for browsing profiles and events, not a place to manage builds. Price: Free. Optional coin packs from $0.99 to $46.99 per item. Best for: Cosplayers who want planning plus an actual community, at no cost.

Cosplan has been on the App Store since April 2024, sits at version 2.8.2 (updated August 31, 2026), and has 10K+ Google Play installs with an August 30, 2026 update. That is the most consistent shipping record here.

What it does well:

Its FAQ states plainly that there is no premium tier and no paid features, and the feature set backs that up: projects, photoshoot documentation with photographer and location credits, event discovery, and inventory for costumes, accessories, and materials. The photoshoot credits are a small thing only someone in the scene would build. I have never once credited every photographer from a con weekend correctly, and this is the only app that tries to help.

Where it falls short:

The "no paid features" line needs an asterisk. Google Play lists in-app purchases from $0.99 to $46.99 per item, and the App Store shows coin packs at $0.99, $3.99, $8.99, and $44.99. Coins look cosmetic and community-facing rather than a gate on your projects, but a $46.99 in-app item next to "completely free" is worth knowing about.

Build planning sits behind the social layer. Budget tracking exists but it's thin, and there's no materials workflow with per-item status, cost alternatives, and supplier links. If you track which sheet of 6mm EVA came from which order, you'll outgrow it. Managing anything still means picking up your phone.

3. Cosflowy

Platforms: Web (desktop-optimized), installable PWA on mobile, downloadable Windows and macOS builds. Native Android and iOS are listed as beta. Price: Free with a premium tier. No public pricing page as of August 2026. Best for: Detail-oriented builders who plan piece by piece at a desk.

Cosflowy organizes by element instead of by project. Each costume piece gets its own workflow with its own materials, expenses, and tasks. If you think about a build as "the gorget, then the cuirass, then the greaves" rather than one giant list, this clicks immediately.

What it does well:

Reference image collections in a gallery, calendar view for cons and shoots, a visual budget overview, and shareable progress timelines. The desktop builds mean you're not stuck in a browser tab.

Element-level expense tracking is what I miss most when I use anything else. Knowing the helmet cost $94 and the sword cost $31 is more useful at quoting time than one project total.

Where it falls short:

I could not find a published price. cosflowy.com/pricing returns a 404 and the marketing site never names a number, so you sign up to find out what premium costs. The Android build at com.cosflowy.mobile also 404s on Google Play right now, so the mobile story is the PWA.

It's a solo project by a developer named Leo, which cuts both ways: thoughtful, opinionated features, slower pace. The linear workflow format fights you if your build process isn't linear, and mine never is. More in my Cosflowy alternatives post.

4. Cosgear

Platforms: None working as of August 2026. Price: Was free. Best for: Nobody, right now.

Cosgear was the free option with tutorials, patterns, 3D print files, and the Progress Hype Feed. I recommended it to beginners more than once because it cost nothing and taught while you planned.

The Google Play listing at com.cosgear.app returns a 404. The Apple developer page (ID 1681601249) loads but lists no apps. The storefront at cosgear.co shows a Shopify page reading "This store is currently unavailable," and the web app at app.cosgear.co returns a Vercel DEPLOYMENT_DISABLED error, HTTP 402, payment required.

I found no shutdown announcement, so I'm reporting what the infrastructure shows rather than what anyone has said: delisted from both stores, storefront deactivated, web app disabled for non-payment. If the app still opens from an old install on your phone, screenshot everything today.

5. Cosplanner

Platforms: None. Delisted from Google Play and the App Store. Price: Was free with optional premium. Best for: Nostalgia.

Cosplanner is the app most of us started with. Split a project into buy vs make, log prices, watch a percentage tick up. The Android listing was pulled in January 2025, the iOS build hadn't been updated since 2020, and an App Store lookup on its bundle ID now returns zero results.

The website still loads a login page with a copyright line reading "2014-2020." That's the tell. A live product doesn't leave a six-year-old copyright date on its login screen. Even at its best it capped you at 5 photos per project and 25 items on the buy/make list, which was tight in 2018. If you still have data in it, my Cosplanner alternatives guide covers the export options that still work.

6. Costumary

Platforms: Web. Responsive in mobile browsers. No native app. Price: Free (2 active projects, 100 reference uploads per project, 30 build log entries) / Base $9 per month / Studio $19 per month. Best for: Builders who want references, materials, budget, timeline, and build log connected, and commission makers who need client-facing tools.

Full disclosure: I write for Costumary, so here's the uncomfortable part first. Studio at $19 a month is the most expensive plan in this roundup, nearly double Cosplai Pro. Cosplan does the core planning job for free with a bigger community than we have. If your needs are "track two builds a year and see what cons are coming," don't pay us $19 a month. Use Cosplan.

What it does well:

The pieces are linked. The materials list carries a per-item status (need, ordered, arrived, owned, tested, used), the budget calculates itself from those materials instead of being a number you maintain by hand, and the timeline uses cosplay phases: patterning, construction, finishing, fitting, wear test, packing. The build log is structured around what worked, what failed, and what's next, which is the format I kept in a notebook anyway.

The reference board is why I use it. It's an annotated canvas with images, video, links, notes, checklists, color swatches, and groups, at 100 uploads per project on the free tier, against Cosplanner's 5 and Cosplai's 25. There's a browser extension for clipping references, and boards share publicly with a link, which is how I send a client a mood board without making them sign up for anything. The cosplay planner page shows the workspace, and the budget calculator works without an account.

Studio's commission workflow is the thing nothing else here has: public intake form, request queue, quote builder with approval gates, a client portal your client uses without an account, payment tracking, and a pipeline view. It replaces the Google Forms plus Trello plus PayPal stack most commission makers run.

Where it falls short:

No native mobile app. It works in a phone browser, but you won't find it in either store, and Cosplai beats it badly on the couch. No offline mode, so a basement workshop with no signal is a problem. No social feed and no community, which Cosplan has and we don't. The free tier is 2 active projects, tighter than Cosplai's 5.

How they compare

What actually goes wrong when a planner app dies

Cosplanner is the case study, and the failure wasn't that the app stopped working. It's that the exit was worse than the shutdown.

When the Android listing came down in January 2025, existing installs kept running for a while, so most people didn't act. Then they changed phones, and a delisted free app can't be reinstalled from your purchase history. The data was on the device, the website's account system was already unmaintained, and the backup feature was the part that crashed most reliably.

I lost the material lists for six builds that way. Not the photos, those were in my camera roll, but the itemized costs, which is exactly the data you can't reconstruct. I had no idea what my Berserk armor cost until I dug through two years of card statements, and I gave up halfway.

Three rules I follow now, and they apply to every app here including the one I write for. Keep your reference images somewhere you control, in a folder or an exportable board, not only in a planning app's gallery. Screenshot or export your materials list and costs at the end of every build, while the numbers are fresh. Check the store listing of whatever you use twice a year. A stale copyright date on the marketing site is the earliest warning you get, and it usually shows up a year before the login page breaks.

What about Notion, Trello, and Milanote?

Notion is free for personal use and $10 per member per month on Plus. You can build a cosplay planner in it, and people sell templates for $5 to $15 that save the setup. The cost is real: you're building a database schema instead of patterning a gorget, and the mobile app slows down on image-heavy pages, which cosplay pages always are.

Trello is free for up to 10 boards per workspace, then $5 per user per month on Standard billed annually or $6 monthly. It's good at exactly one thing here, coordinating a group cosplay where four people watch the same card move. No budget tracking without Power-Ups, nothing cosplay-specific.

Milanote is the best pure mood board in this conversation, and cosplayers love it for good reason: drag-and-drop images, a web clipper, color swatches, a clean canvas. The free plan is 100 notes, images, or links total, which one armor build eats, and paid is $9.99 per month billed annually or $12.50 month to month. That buys references only, with no materials list, budget, or timeline, so most people pair it with something else. I compared the two in my Milanote alternative post.

Which one should you pick

Mobile-first casual builder. Cosplai. Five free projects covers a year of casual cosplay, the interface is the nicest on a phone, and offline mode covers the con floor. Budget for Pro if you pass 25 reference images on one build, which armor people will.

Desktop builder with a wall of armor references. Costumary or Cosflowy. Reference organization is the whole game for foamsmithing, and a 6-inch screen is a bad place to compare eleven photos of the same pauldron. Cosflowy if you plan piece by piece and want a desktop app. Costumary if you want the budget to calculate itself from the materials list. Our cosplay page has the phase breakdown.

Commission maker. Costumary Studio, $19 a month, the priciest thing on this page. The comparison isn't Cosplai Pro, it's the Google Form plus Trello board plus spreadsheet you run now, plus the two hours a week chasing quote approvals in Instagram DMs. At four commissions a year it doesn't pay for itself. At twenty it does by February.

Zero budget. Cosplan. Free, shipping monthly, real community. Costumary's free tier gives 2 projects and a 100-image reference board, worth a look if references are your bottleneck rather than project count.

Social and convention focused. Cosplan first, Cosplai second. Cosplan's photoshoot credits and event discovery are built for people whose hobby is half con-going.

Whatever you land on, keep a copy of your materials list somewhere else. Two apps here went dark in eighteen months and neither warned anybody. Happy crafting!