Cosplan Alternatives: 5 Apps Compared (2026)

Cosplan isn't dead. So why are you looking?

Most "alternatives" searches start with a tool that shut down. This one doesn't. Cosplan pushed an iOS update on August 31, 2026 and an Android update on August 30, 2026, and the developer (Clement Merlet, based in France, hosting on OVH) is still shipping.

So let's answer the question people actually type: what does Cosplan Premium cost? Nothing, because it doesn't exist. Their FAQ says "Cosplan is completely free. There is no premium tier and no paid features." The money comes from coin packs instead, four in-app purchases still labeled in French, running $0.99, $3.99, $8.99, and $44.99 for the "Énorme paquet de pièces." Google Play lists the range as $0.99 to $46.99 per item. Coins buy cosmetic profile themes, not planning features.

That's genuinely generous. The reason people leave is everything around it.

The web app is gone. I bookmarked pro.cosplan.app a year ago and pulled it up while planning my Alphinaud build in July. It 301-redirects to the marketing homepage now, and /login, /app, /dashboard, and /projects all return 404. Cosplan is phone-only, and an Android reviewer said it plainly on August 13, 2026: "I love it, but I stopped using a phone and there is no way to intall on your PC."

The store ratings tell two different stories. iOS shows 4.8 stars from four ratings. Google Play shows 3.1 stars from 310 reviews across 10,000+ downloads. When the gap is that wide, believe the bigger sample.

Events skew hard toward France. Cosplan's sitemap lists 1,284 events. I pulled a random 45 and checked each page: 28 were in France, 4 in the US, the rest scattered across Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechia, and England. Twenty-nine of the 45 had start dates in 2024 or 2025, so most of the index has already happened. If you're building toward Katsucon or Colossalcon, that directory won't help you.

Language gaps persist. A four-star Play review from August 18, 2025 noted "there are still some parts only in French," and a year later the in-app purchase names are still untranslated.

And the build planning is thin. A five-star Play reviewer on June 16, 2026 loved the app and still asked for "a feature for planned purchases to estimate how much money will be spent on a cosplay plus more for con/event planning (ex. packing lists for each cosplay)," then added that "event dates are still broken and show up as a day earlier than the selected date." That's a community-first app being asked to become a budget tool.

Here's what to move to, with prices I verified this month.

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Quick verdict

• Want the closest phone-first replacement? Cosplai. Same shape, deeper budget tracking, $9.99/mo if you outgrow the free tier.
• Plan at a desk? Costumary or Cosflowy. Both are web-first, which is the exact thing Cosplan gave up.
• Want the best reference board? Milanote if you only need mood boards, Costumary if you need references plus materials and budget.
• Building for US conventions? Anything but Cosplan. Its event index is a French con calendar.
• Take commissions? Costumary Studio at $19/mo. Nothing else here has intake forms or a client portal.
• Want a free social feed and event discovery in one app? Stay on Cosplan. Seriously. Skip to the fairness section below.

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1. Cosplai

Platforms: iOS, Android (no web app) Price: Free / Pro $9.99 per month or $59.99 per year Best for: Cosplayers who want Cosplan's shape with real budget math behind it

Note the domain: cosplai.app no longer resolves. The live site is cosplai.me. The iOS app (version 1.1.5, updated July 31, 2026, developer Justin Wright) is English only and still too new to show a public star rating.

What it does well:

Budget tracking is the reason to switch. Every item carries a status (to buy, to make, ordered, finished) and a cost, and the numbers roll up to a project total automatically. That's the "planned purchases" feature the Cosplan reviewer asked for, already shipped.

The July update added 25 more currencies for a total of 39, which matters if you're ordering Worbla from Germany and EVA from a US supplier in the same build.

Where it falls short:

Free tier limits are tighter than they used to be: 5 active projects, 25 completed cosplays, 25 images per project, and 3 active events. Twenty-five images killed it for me. My Alphinaud coat had 40 reference shots before I started patterning, mostly collar embroidery close-ups from three official renders.

Mobile only, same as Cosplan, so if your workflow is a laptop with six reference tabs open, this doesn't fix your problem. Full breakdown in our Cosplai alternatives comparison.

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2. Cosflowy

Platforms: Web (desktop-optimized), installable as a mobile PWA Price: Free. No published pricing page as of August 2026 Best for: Builders who think in ordered steps rather than flat checklists

Cosflowy is built by a solo developer who goes by Leo. It organizes by element instead of by project: each costume piece gets its own workflow with materials, expenses, tasks, and progress.

What it does well:

The workflow model matches how armor actually gets made. My pauldrons went pattern, cut, bevel, heat form, contact cement, Flexbond, plasti-dip, paint, weather. Nine steps in that order, and you cannot skip one. A flat task list lets you check them off in any order, which is how I once primed a piece I hadn't beveled yet and had to sand the whole edge back down.

Reference collections, a calendar view for cons and shoots, and color-coded notes with deadlines all work.

Where it falls short:

I could not verify a price. Third-party listings describe a premium tier, but /pricing, /plans, and /premium on cosflowy.com all return 404 and the homepage mentions no plans. Treat it as free with an unknown future.

There's no native app either. The homepage says Cosflowy "works best on a desktop browser, but you can install and use Cosflowy on mobiles as a progressive Web App." The workflow structure also gets rigid if your build is not linear. Our Cosflowy comparison post goes deeper on that.

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3. Costumary

Platforms: Web (responsive in mobile browsers) Price: Starter free / Base $9 per month / Studio $19 per month, 20% off annual Best for: Builders who want references, materials, budget, timeline, and a build log connected to each other

Full disclosure, this is us. I'll be specific about the gaps too.

What it does well:

The reference board is an annotated canvas, not a gallery. Images, video, links, notes, checklists, color swatches, and groups live on one board, so my Alphinaud collar reference sits next to the swatch I mixed for it and a note reading "4:1 ivory to deck tan, never straight white."

Materials carry six statuses (need, ordered, arrived, owned, tested, used) and the budget calculates itself from those items. That "tested" status exists because I once bought six sheets of a foam with a closed skin no contact cement would grip, and it sat marked "owned" for four months while I assumed it was fine.

Free tier is 100 reference uploads per project, four times Cosplai's 25. There's a browsable convention directory with a packing checklist tool you can use without an account, and the cosplay workspace page shows the phase timeline (patterning, construction, finishing, fitting, wear test, packing).

Where it falls short:

No native mobile app. We're not in the App Store or Google Play, and if you log one-handed at a work table, that's a real cost. Cosplan wins on that. There's also no social feed, no community, and no profiles, so if what you liked about Cosplan was seeing other people's WIPs, we don't replace it.

The free tier is 2 active projects. Three concurrent builds means $9/mo, and commission makers need Studio at $19/mo for the intake form, quote builder, client portal, and payment tracking.

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4. Milanote

Platforms: Web, iOS, Android Price: Free (100 notes, images or links plus 10 file uploads) / $9.99 per month billed annually or $12.50 billed monthly / Team $49 per month Best for: Pure visual reference work when planning lives somewhere else

Milanote is the best mood board tool in this list and it isn't close.

What it does well:

Layout freedom. I built the color story for a Final Fantasy group cosplay in Milanote, five characters side by side, and dragging swatches next to each other until the palette read correctly is something a list-based app cannot do.

Where it falls short:

The 100-card free limit is combined across notes, images, and links, and one armor build burns through it. My Alphinaud board hit 100 at the patterning stage, before a single WIP photo. You're also paying $9.99/mo for a board with no materials list, no budget, no timeline, and no build log. If you already love it, pair it with a planner. Our Milanote alternative writeup covers that pairing.

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5. Cosgear

Platforms: None currently reachable Price: N/A Best for: Nobody, as of August 2026

Cosgear used to be the free-forever recommendation, and older comparison posts (including one of ours) still list it. It looks gone.

I checked three domains this month. cosgear.app no longer resolves in DNS. cosgear.co returns a 404. app.cosgear.co, the URL that still ranks in search as "the world's best cosplay planner," returns HTTP 402 Payment Required, which is what a host serves when the bill stops getting paid.

If you have data in Cosgear, export it now if you still can. This is the same pattern that took down Cosplanner, which we documented in the Cosplanner shutdown post, and it's the best argument for picking a tool you can export from.

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How they compare

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When you should stay on Cosplan

I'm not going to pretend Cosplan is bad, because for one specific person it's the best option on this page.

If you're a French or Benelux cosplayer, Cosplan is the only app here that knows your cons exist. Japan Manga Wave, Paris Manga, Kaiten Matsuri, Herofestival, and hundreds of smaller regional salons are in that directory. Cosplai and Costumary both index primarily US events, and that's the whole reason to use an event app.

If you want a community, Cosplan has 2,948 public profiles in its sitemap plus a working feed, polls, photoshoot credits for photographers and models, and collaborative workshop groups. Costumary has none of that and isn't building it.

And it's free with no cap. An App Store reviewer on August 10 called it "80% to its full potential" and "a bit finicky and glitchy at times," then closed with "PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP ON THIS!" That's someone who likes the app and wants it to survive.

Move if you need desktop access, deep budget math, or US conventions. Stay if you need community and European events.

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What about Notion or Trello?

Notion will do everything on this page if you build it yourself, which is the catch. A cosplay database with materials relations, budget rollups, and a reference gallery is a weekend of setup, and marketplace templates run $5 to $15 without guaranteeing the structure fits your process. The mobile app also slows down badly on image-heavy pages, and cosplay boards are nothing but images. We broke this down in the Notion for cosplay writeup.

Trello is fine for coordinating a group cosplay where four people need to see who's making what, but it has no budget tracking without Power-Ups and no concept of materials. Both are reasonable if you've already built your system. Neither is where I'd start in 2026 when purpose-built tools are free to try.

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