The DM Screen vs Roll20: which one fits your table?

What Roll20 is

Roll20 has been the default browser VTT since 2012. It runs entirely in a tab, so nobody installs anything, and its map layer is genuinely good: dynamic lighting, fog of war, token vision, drag-and-measure. The marketplace is the deepest in the hobby, with official D&D and Pathfinder modules that drop in with maps, monsters, and handouts already placed. There is integrated dice and macros, character sheet templates for dozens of systems, and built-in video and voice so a remote group never leaves the page.

If your table is remote and grid-based, Roll20 is a mature, well-supported tool with a community big enough that any problem you hit has already been answered in a forum thread somewhere.

Where The DM Screen wins

The DM Screen is built for the in-person session, and that changes everything about how it feels. It works on a phone first, so you can run a whole fight from the couch without a laptop open. A cold visitor is dropped straight into a sandbox as a guest, so you can start prepping before you make an account. The battle tracker is laid out for a DM's eyes mid-fight: HP, concentration, death saves, legendary actions, and one-tap short and long rests. The dice are simulated physics you throw across the sheet and read off whatever face lands up.

It also carries eight systems with their real mechanics, not just sheet templates: D&D 5e (2014 and 2024), Pathfinder 2e, Draw Steel, Daggerheart, Mörk Borg, Blades in the Dark, Fate, and Dungeon World. Draw Steel rolls its 2d10 power roll, Daggerheart rolls Hope and Fear, Blades tracks stress. Real-time multiplayer is free on every tier, players join from a phone with a link or a six-character code, and everything exports, so your campaign is never trapped.

Where Roll20 wins

For remote play, Roll20 does things The DM Screen does not try to. Its tactical grid with per-token vision and dynamic lighting is built for a group scattered across four cities, and there is no in-person equivalent that matters as much when nobody shares a room. The marketplace is the real moat: you can buy a published adventure and have every map, token, and stat block already placed, which saves hours of prep. Integrated video keeps a remote table on one screen. And after more than a decade, the community and the pile of community-made character sheets and API scripts are enormous.

The honest catch is prep and platform. You know that thing where you spend an hour dragging tokens onto a Roll20 map and wiring up macros before a session, then a player joins late and their vision is set wrong? That work is the cost of what the grid buys you. And Roll20 is a laptop tool. Its phone experience is an afterthought, which is exactly the moment The DM Screen was built for.

When to pick which

If your table plays online, week after week, with battle maps and tokens and bought modules, pick Roll20. Nothing here replaces a real VTT for a remote grid game, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.

If your group meets in person, or you run more theater-of-mind than tactical grid, or you bounce between systems and want the bookkeeping carried on the phone already in your pocket, pick The DM Screen. Plenty of DMs run both: the map lives in Roll20 on a laptop, and the initiative, HP, rests, and lore live in The DM Screen on a phone beside it.

Pricing side by side

Approximate and in USD. Roll20 changes its tiers periodically; check roll20.net for current pricing.

Common questions