Freelance booking for creative studios
Scout runs your freelance bookings from first pencil to final invoice. Plan the job, reach the right people, and let Scout read the replies and keep every hold in order.
Free to start · Free forever for freelancers
Outreach
Pick the people you want and Scout drafts a personal availability email to each. Freelancers just reply. Scout reads every answer and tells you what it means: free, a 2nd pencil, a challenge, or a no.
Nothing changes until you say so. Approve Scout's read in one click, and the booking, the board and the conversation all update together.
Scheduling
Lay out roles, planned days, phases and milestones on one timeline. Kick-off, delivery and every deliverable sit right where the team can see them.
Keep versions of the schedule side by side, like sheets in a workbook. Duplicate it, move the dates, cut a role, then make the one you like Live. Everyone booked moves across with it.
Everything in one place
From who's on hold next week to what the job is making, Scout keeps it all connected, so nobody has to go digging through inboxes and spreadsheets.
Every pencil, challenge and booking across every project, with clashes flagged before they bite.
Freelancers and staff with their rates, skills, software and availability, ready to shortlist.
Every conversation with every freelancer, threaded and searchable, with Scout's read on each reply.
Days and hours logged against bookings, so actuals are always in step with the plan.
Client estimates, deposits and invoices, plus freelancer bills matched to the right project.
A dashboard you arrange yourself, and a "Needs you" list of the replies and clashes waiting on you.
Money
Scout prices the schedule from your rate card, adds fixed costs and discounts, and turns it into a client estimate. As people are booked and time is logged, projected cost and margin update on their own.
Ask Scout
Who's free next week? What's our average day rate for Houdini artists? Which jobs are running over? Ask in plain English and Scout answers from your own projects, roster and numbers.
Every project also gets a Scout summary: a couple of sentences on what's happened and what's coming, so you can catch up on a job in seconds.
Timeline
Each project keeps a timeline of everything that happened and who did it: people pencilled and booked, dates moved, deliverables added, invoices sent. No more "who changed this?"
For freelancers · Free
Freelancers never need an account to work with a Scout studio: they just reply to the email. But a free Scout account puts every request, pencil and booking from every studio in one handy place, with your rate, your calendar and your messages alongside.
Create a free accountFAQs
Scout is a booking and production tool for creative studios that work with freelancers. It plans your schedules, handles availability emails and replies, keeps every pencil and booking on one board, and tracks estimates, invoices and margins.
Producers, coordinators and studio managers at animation, VFX, motion design and production studios — anyone who spends their week pencilling people in. Freelancers get a free account too.
Scout isn't a marketplace. It works with your own roster and the people you already know, over plain email, and runs the whole job around them: schedule, outreach, holds, time and money.
No. Freelancers reply to Scout's emails like any other email. If they want to see all their requests and bookings in one place, a Scout account is free.
Yes — studios can start free at app-scout.com.
Pricing
For use in production with your team
100 credits / month
For custom needs and big teams
Talk to us
Get started
Set up a studio in minutes and send your first availability emails today.