Best 5e Character Sheet App: An Honest Comparison
There is no single best 5e character sheet app, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. The right one depends on whether you play at a table or online, whether you have already bought the official books, and whether you want an account at all.
Here is what each of the main options is genuinely good at.
D&D Beyond
The official one, and the most complete. If you have bought the books digitally, your content is already there: every subclass, feat, spell and magic item, correctly applied to the sheet without you typing anything.
It is also the best option for play over video, because the sheet syncs across everyone at the table and the DM can see what you can see.
The catches are cost and connectivity. Content is bought per book and does not transfer to other tools, and the app wants a connection for most of what it does. In a village hall with one bar of signal, that is a real problem.
Fight Club 5e
A long-standing favourite among people who play in person. It is fast, it works offline, and it handles homebrew through imported XML files, which is why it has such a loyal following among tables that use third-party content.
The interface shows its age, and getting content into it means finding and importing compendium files, which is more fiddly than it sounds if you have never done it.
PrismScroll and 5e Companion App
Both aim to be a full toolkit rather than just a sheet: character building, rules reference, dice, and in some cases DM tools. Good if you want one app for everything and do not mind a busier interface.
Worth trying if you are the person at the table who ends up looking rules up for everyone else.
Reroll and Character Keep
Cleaner, more modern builders focused on getting a character made quickly and looking good. Strong at character creation, lighter on in-play tracking.
Where this app fits
5e Character Sheet is built for the table rather than the browser. Everything lives on your device, there is no account, and it opens and works with no signal at all. Nothing is lost if the server you never signed up to goes down.
In play it tracks the things that actually slow a session down: hit points, spell slots, concentration, death saves, class features with the right number of uses, and short versus long rest recovery. Tap an attack and it rolls the d20 and applies your bonus. Tap Cast and it spends the slot.
It also keeps an adventure journal, which most sheets do not: who you met, what you are chasing, and a recap of the story so far before the next session.
Your first character is free, with the whole sheet, the dice, all 319 SRD spells, levelling and the journal. Pro is a one-time purchase for unlimited characters, custom species and subclasses, your own art, and export. No subscription.
The honest limitation: because it uses the SRD, it does not ship with content from the paid sourcebooks. You can add your own species, subclasses and spells, but if you want every official option pre-loaded, D&D Beyond is the app that does that.
Which should you pick?
- You play online and own the books digitally. D&D Beyond. Nothing else matches it for official content.
- You play in person, somewhere with poor signal. An offline sheet. This one or Fight Club.
- Your table runs heavy homebrew from XML. Fight Club 5e.
- You want one character, quickly, with no account. Any free offline sheet, including this one.
- You are the rules-lookup person. PrismScroll or 5e Companion.
Questions people ask
Is there a genuinely free 5e character sheet app?
Yes. Several let you build and play a character without paying, including this one, where the first character is free and not cut down. D&D Beyond is free with the basic rules, but most content is bought separately.
Do these apps work offline?
It varies, and it is worth checking before a session. D&D Beyond expects a connection. Fight Club and fully offline sheets do not.
Can I move a character between apps?
Mostly no. There is no shared format, and most apps keep characters in their own store. If you are likely to switch, favour one that lets you export.
5e Character Sheet is a free, fully offline fifth-edition sheet for iPhone and iPad. First character free, no account, no ads.
If you are new to fifth edition, start with how to make a 5e character. If you are mid-campaign and the maths is what slows you down, how spell slots work and how concentration works cover the two things tables get wrong most often.