NOT A COMPETITOR
Grimoire vs Roll20
Roll20 is a virtual tabletop. Grimoire is not one, and is not trying to become one. That makes this the least competitive page on the site and probably the most useful.
THE SHORT ANSWER
One of these is a virtual tabletop. It is not this one.
If your group plays remotely on a grid, you want a VTT, and Roll20 is one of the best of them. Grimoire has no player-side grid to log into, no tokens your players move themselves, and no plan to add either. Dedicated map tools are also more powerful than ours and always will be, because that is their whole product and one module of ours.
What Grimoire does is everything on either side of the grid: the prep before the session, and the campaign that has to survive it. If you play in a room, that is most of what you need. If you play online, the honest answer is to run both and let each do its job.
Row by row
| Roll20 | Dungeon Grimoire | |
|---|---|---|
| Playing remotely on a grid | Roll20 wins thisThe core of the product. Maps, tokens, dynamic lighting and fog of war revealed as players explore, in the browser with no downloads. | Not offered. There is no player-side grid to log into and no per-seat licence, because the assumption is that your table is a table. |
| Maps | Roll20 wins thisIntegrated mapmaking through Dungeon Scrawl, plus a marketplace of map art. | The Cartographer paints battle maps and dungeon layouts, and an encounter opens on top of one with the initiative order already on it. Fog of war works for a single shared screen: reveal a room at a time with everyone looking at the same monitor. |
| Game systems | Roll20 wins thisD&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu and 1,200+ systems by their own count. | 5e, done properly. One system, and the tools assume it. |
| What your players pay | LevelNothing to join. Their own description is a free tier available forever, whether you are a GM or a player. | LevelNothing, on every plan, forever. The Player Portal carries sheets, inventory, spells and notes. |
| Prep between sessions | Outside what a virtual tabletop sets out to do. | Grimoire wins thisNPCs, quests and factions, an atlas from continent down to the tavern stool, in-world calendars, a bestiary, loot tables, traps and puzzles. The session is the output, not the workspace. |
| The campaign after the session | Outside what a virtual tabletop sets out to do. | Grimoire wins thisLinked notes, a chronicler that drafts the recap you did not write, and a calendar the notes pin to, so three weeks later there is an answer to what the party promised the harbourmaster. |
| Playing in person | Works on one screen, but the design target is players at their own screens. | Grimoire wins thisThe design target. The Encounter Runner, the Soundboard and Interlude all assume one room and one shared display. |
3 of these 7 rows go to Roll20 and 1 is level. A table that wins everything is an advert, not a comparison.
THE SETUP WE ACTUALLY SUGGEST
If you play online, run both
Prep the session here, run the grid there. The prep is the part a virtual tabletop was never built to hold: who these people are, what they want, which quest moved last week, what day it is in the world, and what the party promised the harbourmaster three sessions ago.
Then open your VTT and play. If you have already drawn or bought a battle map you like, you can drop it into an encounter's map view here and run on that instead of redrawing it. There is no export step and no filename convention to maintain, because nothing needs to move between the two.
The questions this page exists to answer
So is Grimoire a VTT or not?
Not one, deliberately. There is no player-side grid to log into, no per-seat licence and no expectation that your table is five webcams. There is a map you can put on a screen in the middle of a real table, with fog of war you control.
Can I run both together?
Yes, and for an online group that is the setup we would suggest. Prep the session in Grimoire, run the grid in Roll20. If you have already drawn or bought a map you like, you can drop it into an encounter's map view here and run on that instead.
Why not just add tokens and dynamic lighting?
Because doing it badly is worse than not doing it, and doing it well is a product rather than a feature. The teams building VTTs have spent a decade on that grid. We would rather be the best thing on the table in front of you than the fourth-best thing in a browser tab.
How do I know this table is accurate?
Everything in the Roll20 column was read off their own site on the date under the table, and the source is linked. If a row has gone stale, tell us and we will correct it rather than leave it standing.
Keep your tabletop. Fix the prep.
Free tier, no card, and your players never pay a seat licence here either.
Open your grimoire for freeNo card. No beta waitlist. Always free for your players.
How we checked this
Every claim in the Roll20 column was read from their own published pages on 10 August 2026, not from memory and not from a review site. Our own column is checked against what the app actually ships. Prices and features change: if a row here has gone stale, email info@dungeongrimoire.com and we will correct it.
Roll20 and Dungeon Scrawl are trademarks of their respective owners. Dungeon Grimoire is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by them.