Yarn Spinner vs LoreHub
Yarn Spinner and LoreHub both help you ship branching game dialogue, but they start from different places. Yarn Spinner is a script language with a runtime inside your engine. LoreHub is a visual editor in the browser where the whole narrative team writes, tests and translates the same story.
Written by the LoreHub team. Facts about other tools come from their own websites and docs, checked in November 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us on Discord.
The short answer
Choose Yarn Spinner if your writers are comfortable in a text editor, you want a ready-made runtime inside Unity, Godot or Unreal, and you like an open-source toolchain you can extend in code.
Choose LoreHub if writers and narrative designers would rather build dialogue visually, play it in the browser before the game is ready, translate it in the same place and keep the lore next to it, and your programmers are fine loading a JSON file.
Side by side
| Yarn Spinner | LoreHub | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source dialogue language and runtime | Browser-based dialogue and worldbuilding tool |
| How you write | Plain-text .yarn scripts: nodes, lines, options, jumps, commands | Visual canvas: nodes, options and links, with an inspector |
| Editor | VS Code extension (graph view, preview, debugging) and a browser tool | The LoreHub web app; no install |
| Runs in the game | Yarn Spinner runtime for Unity, Godot and Unreal | Your own loader reads the exported JSON (Unity tutorial included) |
| Game logic | Commands and functions implemented in game code | True/false variables and played/selected conditions in the export |
| Story structure checks | Diagnostics in the tooling | Route Planner: what each dialogue requires and produces, across a story |
| Localisation | Line IDs and string tables (documented for Unity) | Translate tab, outdated tracking, enforced or fallback per language |
| Team work | Through your version control | Live presence and edits, history and revert, viewers free |
| Lore | Not part of Yarn Spinner | Worldbuilder: documents, relations, gallery, timeline |
| Price | Open source | Free plan; Indie €9/mo, Team €49/mo per world |
Writing: script or canvas
In Yarn Spinner a dialogue is text: nodes, lines, options and jumps in a .yarn file, with a graph view in the VS Code extension. That is fast for writers who think in scripts, and it diffs well.
In LoreHub a dialogue is a graph you build on a canvas in the Dialogue Builder. Each option can be locked behind variables, nodes set variables, and a player under the canvas follows the playing node while you flip variables to test every branch. The story is still plain text underneath: LoreHub saves it as OSF files you can keep in Git or Perforce.
Running it in the game
This is the biggest practical difference. Yarn Spinner ships a runtime for Unity, Godot and Unreal, and your game code implements its commands and functions. LoreHub has no runtime plugin: it exports a documented JSON schema with every node, option, link, variable and translation, and your programmers write a small loader. The Unity tutorial shows one end to end.
Beyond the script
- The Route Planner checks how dialogues connect across a story, so a scene never requires a variable no route can set.
- The Translate tab keeps every language next to its line and marks translations outdated when the source changes.
- The Worldbuilder holds characters, places and factions with relations, a gallery and a timeline.
- Writers, designers and translators see each other's edits live, and viewers never take a seat.
Moving from Yarn Spinner
LoreHub cannot import .yarn files. To try it, rebuild one scene on the canvas, or ask an AI agent connected through the LoreHub MCP server to create it from your script, then play it in the browser. The Free plan is enough for that, and every plan has every feature; see pricing.
Also compare LoreHub with articy:draft, Twine or the full list of the best narrative design tools.