Comparison

A Beyond20 alternative — and an honest comparison.

If you came here from a search for “Beyond20 alternative”, you probably already know what Beyond20 does. This page is about where the two extensions actually differ — including the places Beyond20 is still the better answer.

First, the part most comparison pages skip: Beyond20 is good software. It is free, open source, has been carrying D&D Beyond rolls to virtual tabletops since 2020, and it is still actively maintained. Thousands of tables rely on it every week, and it earns that.

Rollwarden isn’t trying to be a better Beyond20. It’s trying to be a different thing that happens to overlap at one end. If what you want is “my D&D Beyond roll should show up in my VTT” and nothing more, Beyond20 does that well and you don’t need this page.

One is a bridge. The other is a bridge and a co-pilot.

Beyond20

Carries the roll.

You roll on D&D Beyond. Beyond20 gets that roll to your virtual tabletop — Roll20, Foundry VTT or Discord — so the table sees what you rolled instead of you reading numbers out loud.

Rollwarden

Works out the roll, then carries it.

Before the dice are thrown, Rollwarden has already applied your Bless, your Haste, your exhaustion and your homebrew rider — into D&D Beyond’s own dice, on the sheet. Then it delivers the result to Roll20 and Discord.

Where your rolls can go
DestinationBeyond20Rollwarden
Roll20 Yes YesArrives as that sheet’s own attack, damage, check and spell cards, with a breakdown card naming every modifier that contributed. Initiative lands in the turn tracker on your own token, and your HP and conditions follow your sheet.
Discord Yes YesA webhook to your own channel, with the full roll breakdown, GM whispers routed separately, and optional read-aloud text.
Foundry VTT Yes YesSince v0.73.0. Arrives as Foundry’s own roll carrying the dice you rolled, and on a D&D 5e world as the system’s own roll card. No module to install; v11–v14, verified live on v12–v14.

Beyond20 lists Roll20, Foundry VTT and Discord as its destinations, so that table is the whole picture on both sides. Rollwarden additionally posts companion and ability rolls into D&D Beyond’s own campaign Game Log, where the rest of your table is already looking.

What happens before the roll leaves the sheet
On D&D Beyond itselfBeyond20Rollwarden
Toggle a modifier, and the dice change Yes, about 60Per-character switches in its options menu — Rage, Sneak Attack, Hexblade’s Curse, Great Weapon Master and the rest — plus two free-text boxes for your own bonus dice. Yes, about 270Curated modifiers — Bless, Divine Favor, Spirit Shroud, Haste, Sacred Weapon, Crimson Rite and the rest — as tiles on the sheet that reveal the ones your character actually owns, injected into D&D Beyond’s own dice worker so the bonus dice animate and land in the Game Log as one roll. Edition-aware, so a 2014 character gets the 2014 shape of a feature and a 2024 character the 2024 one — and class-scaled dice read the right class’s level on a multiclass.
Build your own modifier A formula boxType “1d4” into the custom roll or damage field and it is added to everything, until you clear it again. A visual builderLive preview, dice-mechanics cards, and the trigger rules above — for the homebrew rider nobody has curated.
Turn a spell into a modifier Not what it’s for Two clicks
Homebrew crit rules and forced advantage YesFour critical-damage rules, a custom crit threshold, and advantage, disadvantage or super-advantage as a standing setting. YesThe same four crit rules, a standing roll type, and hold-key hotkeys for advantage, disadvantage, whisper and force-crit on a single roll.
Modifiers that know when they apply Not what it’s for YesA modifier can apply only to a Dexterity save, only to Stealth, only to a finesse weapon, or only to one action — and it knows whether its dice double on a crit.
Exhaustion, tracked from your sheet Yes, if you set itBoth the 2014 and 2024 ladders, applied to rolls once you tell it your level. Yes, read from the sheetBoth ladders, mirrored from D&D Beyond’s own condition box rather than entered by hand — and applied to initiative too.
Concentration, Arcane Ward, uses-per-rest Not what it’s for Yes
Roll a sourcebook table where you’re reading it YesIts dice button rolls the table and sends the result on. YesA Roll button in the die column’s heading rolls, finds your row, and can send it to your table.
Charged items, scrolls and consumables Not what it’s for YesAn Item Shelf tracks charge pools (Staff of Power’s twenty, spent per spell), single-use scrolls and dose-counted potions — and rolls the dawn regains into your log.
Companions and summons Rolls from the Extras tabWhatever D&D Beyond already put on your sheet as an Extra can be rolled and its HP kept in sync. A panel of its ownStat blocks, attacks and healing for your familiar, steed or summon — including ones the sheet doesn’t carry — with their own HP tracker and modifier toggles, rolled and posted like any other roll.
Roll log, breakdowns and dice stats Not what it’s for YesEvery roll kept locally, with a per-die luck breakdown, a shareable Character Wrapped for you and a Campaign Wrapped for the whole table.
Party history from your campaign’s log Not what it’s for YesImports what the whole table has rolled, so session recaps cover everyone, not just you.

“Not what it’s for” is a scope statement, not a criticism. Beyond20 is deliberately a transport layer, and a transport layer that stayed one is a well-designed transport layer. Where it does automate something — and it automates more than most comparison pages admit — that row says so.

Where Beyond20 is still the better pick.

A comparison page that finds nothing good to say about the alternative isn’t a comparison, it’s an ad. Four real ones:

  1. Foundry VTT, with years behind it. Rollwarden reaches Foundry as of v0.73.0, so this is no longer a destination gap — but Beyond20 has done it since 2020, across far more worlds, versions and system quirks than a release this new has met. It also reaches systems Rollwarden doesn’t: its HP sync falls back to a generic health track, so it can keep step on worlds that aren’t D&D 5e, where Rollwarden refuses rather than guessing. If your table is on an unusual system or an older Foundry, the mature answer is still Beyond20.

    The one place the comparison runs the other way is worth stating plainly, because it’s easy to read as a point in Beyond20’s favour: Beyond20 renders its Foundry rolls as its own HTML, so by its own FAQ, players who don’t have the extension — and the DM in the main Foundry window — won’t see those rolls properly unless the GM installs its companion module into the world. Rollwarden posts ordinary Foundry chat messages carrying real rolls (the D&D 5e system’s own roll cards on a 5e world), so everyone sees them and nothing is installed on the Foundry side.
  2. It’s open source, and it’s been proven in public for years. Anyone can read exactly what Beyond20 does, and a great many people have. That is a real form of trust and it is worth naming. Rollwarden’s repository is private, so the nearest thing it offers is this: the extension ships unminified. The code your browser runs is the code as written — comments and all — sitting readable on your own disk, over a permission surface small enough to check in a minute. Not the same thing. Closer than nothing.
  3. It’s simpler, and simple is a feature. Beyond20 installs and works. Rollwarden adds panels, trackers and a builder to your character sheet, and if none of that is what you wanted, it’s clutter. There’s a guided first run and everything hides, but the honest version is: it is more software than Beyond20, on purpose.
  4. A bigger install base finds breakage first. D&D Beyond changes its site, and both extensions have to keep up. More users means more people hitting a problem the same afternoon it appears.

No AI. No account. No server.

Rollwarden runs entirely in your browser. There is no model call anywhere in it, no sign-in, and no backend of its own to send anything to. The narration and dice-persona flavour text is hand-written and rule-based — templates, not generated.

permissions   storage, scripting, activeTab
host access   roll20.net, discord.com
asked only if used   your own Foundry server’s address
accounts   none
analytics   none
servers of its own   none
source   unminified, readable on disk

That is the whole manifest. A self-hosted Foundry lives at an address only you know, so that one is requested from you the first time you connect a world and never before — decline it and everything else still works. Everything Rollwarden stores stays in your browser profile — the developer has no access to it and no way to get it. Details on the privacy page.

The questions people actually ask.

Can I run both at once?

You can, but expect conflicts. Both extensions hook into D&D Beyond’s own roll flow to inject bonus dice and automate rolls, so running them together on the same character sheet can cause rolls to double up, apply the wrong modifiers, or behave inconsistently. If rolls start behaving strangely, disable one of the two on D&D Beyond first. Rollwarden shows a one-time notice if it detects Beyond20 is also active.

Neither extension is doing anything wrong — they simply weren’t designed to share the same dice pipeline.

I play on Foundry. Should I switch?

You can now — Foundry support shipped in v0.73.0, and it needs no module on the Foundry side. Rolls arrive as Foundry’s own rolls (as the D&D 5e system’s own on a 5e world), and initiative, HP and conditions keep step. Foundry v12, v13 and v14 have each been verified against a live world. The honest caveat is mileage, not coverage: Beyond20 has supported Foundry for years, across far more systems and module combinations than Rollwarden has met. If your Foundry table is your whole reason for an extension and you want the proven one, stay. If you want the modifier automation on your sheet as well, it’s worth a try — and Discord is where to tell us if something on your world doesn’t land.

Do I lose anything by switching from Beyond20?

Not a destination: Roll20, Discord and Foundry VTT are all covered on both sides now, with the automation layer on top. What you’d be trading is maturity on Foundry specifically — Beyond20 has years of it, and reaches game systems other than D&D 5e that Rollwarden doesn’t. One small thing still goes the other way, if you use it: Beyond20 can pop your character portrait into the VTT, and Rollwarden can’t. (Rolling on a sourcebook table — Wild Magic Surge and the like — is covered on both sides these days.)

There is no migration either way. Neither extension stores anything the other needs.

Is Rollwarden free?

Yes — free to install and use, with nothing held back behind a payment. If you would like to support development you can buy the developer a coffee, but that is all it is.

Which browsers does it work on?

Chrome, Firefox and Edge, each from its own store — the Firefox build is a genuine port, not a cut-down repackage. Brave, Vivaldi and Opera install from the Chrome Web Store, and Chromebooks work too: ChromeOS runs the same Chrome extension, with no desktop application to install. There is no mobile version; mobile browsers don’t support extensions of this kind.

Who makes it, and where do I get help?

One developer. Support is on Discord or at support@rollwarden.app, and both reach a person.

Try it on one character.

Install it, open a character sheet, and see whether the automation layer is something you want. If it isn’t, uninstalling takes all of it with it — and Beyond20 is still right there.

Also on Firefox and Edge · or read the full feature tour first.