Coverfly
A free platform for writers and actor-writers to track competition submissions and gain industry visibility
Overview
Coverfly is a free platform designed for screenwriters and playwrights to manage their competition and fellowship submissions in one place. For actors who also write, it provides a centralized dashboard to track scripts, monitor results, and build a public writer profile.
The platform aggregates scores and placements from major screenwriting competitions into a ranking system called the Red List. Writers who perform well across multiple contests gain visibility with industry professionals who browse the platform for emerging talent.
How It Works
Coverfly has become an important discovery tool in the screenwriting world, with managers and producers actively using it to find new voices. Actor-writers can leverage their placement rankings to attract attention to both their writing and performing careers.
The platform is entirely free for writers. Revenue is generated from partner competitions and industry-side subscriptions, so individual users pay nothing to maintain profiles and track submissions.
Who Uses It
An excellent companion tool for any actor who writes their own material. Upload your screenplays, enter competitions tracked by Coverfly, and let your rankings work as a passive marketing tool for your creative work. Coverfly also hosts its own writing competitions and labs periodically, providing additional opportunities for recognition beyond the third-party contests it tracks. The platform's industry-facing side gives managers and producers a curated pipeline of emerging writers, making it one of the few free tools that genuinely connects writers with representation opportunities.
Pricing & Plans
Coverfly is entirely free for writers, with no subscription tiers, premium memberships, or hidden costs of any kind. The platform generates revenue through partnerships with screenwriting competitions that integrate their submission and scoring systems with Coverfly's tracking infrastructure, as well as through industry-side subscriptions that managers and producers pay to access the talent database. Individual writers pay nothing to create profiles, upload scripts, track submissions, or participate in the Red List ranking system. Competition entry fees are set by the individual contests and are separate from Coverfly's platform, typically ranging from $30 to $80 depending on the competition and deadline tier. Coverfly occasionally runs its own competitions or writing programs that may have entry fees, but participation is entirely optional. Compared to paid platforms like The Black List, which charges $30 per month to host a script, Coverfly's free model represents exceptional value for writers who participate in multiple competitions.
Pros & Cons
What's Great
The platform's most significant strength is its completely free access model, which removes all financial barriers to building a professional screenwriting presence and tracking competition results. The Red List ranking system provides a transparent, quantifiable metric of a writer's competition performance that industry professionals actively reference when scouting for new talent. The centralized submission tracker eliminates the need to manage spreadsheets of competition deadlines, entry fees, and results across dozens of individual contest websites. Coverfly's integration with major screenwriting competitions means your scores and placements are automatically imported, reducing manual data entry and ensuring your ranking is always current. The platform's growing adoption by managers and producers creates a genuine pipeline for discovery, meaning high-ranking writers receive legitimate industry attention without any active pitching. The user interface is clean and intuitive, making it easy to navigate your dashboard and understand your standing relative to other writers in the system.
What Could Be Better
The Red List ranking system, while useful, is heavily weighted toward quantity of competition entries, which means writers who enter many contests can outrank those with fewer but more impressive individual placements. The platform is exclusively focused on screenwriting, so actor-writers who primarily create stage plays, sketches, or other non-screenplay formats will find limited utility in the competition tracking and ranking features. Coverfly's value is almost entirely dependent on how many competitions you enter, and if you only submit to one or two per year, your Red List ranking will be negligible regardless of how well you place. The industry-facing side of the platform is not transparent to writers, meaning you cannot see which managers or producers have viewed your profile or scripts, creating uncertainty about whether the exposure is actually generating interest. Some writers report that the Red List creates an unhealthy pressure to enter more competitions than strategically necessary, spending money on entry fees to inflate rankings rather than focusing on the quality of their writing. The platform does not provide script hosting for industry reads the way The Black List does, limiting its usefulness as a standalone tool for getting scripts in front of decision-makers.
Our Recommendation
Coverfly is recommended for any actor-writer who enters screenwriting competitions and wants a centralized, free tool to track their submissions and build a visible industry profile over time. If you enter three or more competitions per year, the Red List ranking system becomes genuinely useful as a measure of your competitive performance and a potential source of industry exposure. Writers who are just beginning their screenwriting journey and are not yet entering competitions will find limited immediate value, though creating an account early establishes your presence for when you do start submitting. If you are looking for direct script hosting and professional evaluations from industry readers, The Black List is the more appropriate platform, as Coverfly does not offer those services. For actor-writers whose primary focus is playwriting rather than screenwriting, the New Play Exchange is a more relevant platform for your format. The ideal approach for serious writer-actors is to use Coverfly alongside The Black List, using Coverfly for competition tracking and ranking while using The Black List for direct industry hosting and evaluation.
Pro Tips
Enter competitions that are officially integrated with Coverfly's tracking system rather than contests that require manual score entry, as integrated placements are automatically reflected in your Red List ranking with no additional effort. Focus your competition budget on well-respected contests like the Nicholl Fellowship, Austin Film Festival, and PAGE International, which carry significant weight with industry professionals regardless of your Coverfly ranking. Upload your best scripts to your Coverfly profile even if you have not entered them in competitions, since having complete material available makes it easier for interested industry professionals to request reads. Update your writer bio and profile regularly to reflect your most current credits, training, and career highlights, as this is the context that industry professionals see alongside your ranking. Track your Red List percentile over time rather than obsessing over your absolute numerical ranking, since the percentile provides a more meaningful measure of where you stand relative to the full pool of writers. Use Coverfly's data about which competitions you have placed in to refine your submission strategy for future years, identifying which types of contests and genres consistently yield your best results.