An animated explainer video earns its budget when the thing you sell cannot be put in front of a camera: software, a process, an insurance policy, a chemical treatment. Below you will find when animation costs less than filming, real explainer video costs, and a checklist of what to prepare before you brief a studio.
Key takeaways
- Animation beats filming on cost whenever a shoot would mean paying for locations, actors, gear or travel. For a simple office interview it is the other way round.
- In 2022 Wyzowl contacted 242 production studios and got a price for a one minute animated explainer from 116 of them. The average came out at 10 983 dollars, the median at 5 400, with quotes ranging from 600 to 250 000 dollars.
- In the European market a solid one minute 2D explainer runs from 1 500 to 4 500 euros. Under a thousand you get a template, over five thousand you are paying for a custom illustration style.
- According to Wyzowl's 2026 survey, 96 % of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.
- The script and the storyboard eat the most time and money, not the animation itself. Plan four to eight weeks from brief to finished video.
- Prepare three things before you brief anyone: one sentence on what the viewer should do afterwards, a list of what has to be said, and your existing brand guidelines.
When is animation cheaper than filming?
When filming would mean a production day with people on location. Animation has no weather, no actor calling in sick and no eight hour venue rental.
Here is the practical test we run in the first meeting. Animation is cheaper when at least one of these is true:
- The product is intangible. Software, insurance, a logistics process, a data service. There is nothing to point a camera at, so you would be paying for graphics anyway.
- You need to show what cannot be seen. Flow inside a pipe, an order moving through a system, a chemical reaction. A cutaway diagram says in three seconds what live action never will.
- The video will exist in several languages. With animation you swap the voiceover and the on screen text, a few hundred euros per language. With a presenter on camera you either reshoot or dub, and dubbing looks cheap.
- The content will change. When a new feature ships in six months, animation means recutting one scene. Live action means calling the whole crew back.
And the reverse: when you want to show people, spaces, craft or trust, filming is both cheaper and better. An interview with an employee takes a single morning, while an animated version of the same message would cost multiples and convince nobody. We broke down live action pricing in our piece on how much a corporate video costs.
How much does an explainer video cost?
A one minute 2D explainer sits between 1 500 and 4 500 euros. The illustration style drives the price far more than the running time does.
The spread across the market is genuinely enormous, and there is one proper survey that proves it. In 2022 Wyzowl contacted 242 production studios and collected a concrete price for a one minute animated explainer from 116 of them, published in their breakdown of how much an explainer video costs. The average landed at 10 983 dollars, but the median at only 5 400, with the cheapest quote at 600 dollars and the most expensive at 250 000. In other words, most companies pay considerably less than the average suggests, and every studio builds its price list its own way.
This is how the money splits on a one minute video with us:
- Script and storyboard: 300 to 700 euros. This decides whether the video explains anything at all. It is the cheapest line in the budget and the one clients most often want to skip.
- Illustration and scene setup: 500 to 2 000 euros. Template styles sit at the bottom, custom characters and illustrations at the top.
- Animation: 400 to 1 200 euros per minute depending on scene count and how complex the movement is.
- Voiceover: 150 to 350 euros per language with a professional voice, recording and editing included.
- Music and sound design: 100 to 250 euros using a licensed library.
The second minute always costs less than the first, because the characters, backgrounds and style already exist. If you have several topics, plan a series of three shorter videos rather than one long one.
What does the explainer video production process look like?
Five steps, and the first two decide the outcome. The whole thing takes four to eight weeks, and most of the waiting is approval on your side rather than work on ours.
- Brief and questions, three to five days. We work out who the video is for and what the viewer should do afterwards. Without that sentence the script cannot be written.
- Script, one to two weeks. A minute of video holds roughly 140 to 160 words. That sounds tiny, and it is exactly why the script gets rewritten three times.
- Storyboard, five to seven days. Static frames, scene by scene. The storyboard is the last point where changes are free. After it, every change costs money.
- Voiceover and animation, one to two weeks. The voice is recorded before the animation, not after, because the pace of speech sets the length of every scene.
- Feedback and export, three to five days. Budget for two rounds of feedback. A third round is usually a paid extra, and fairly so: it normally means the brief changed rather than the studio erred.
The video above walks through planning and scripting an explainer step by step. It is a useful companion to the point people underestimate most: the words come before any graphics.
What should you prepare before briefing a studio?
Three things that will save you at least one round of script rewrites. Send them with your enquiry and you will get a far more accurate quote.
- One sentence about the goal. "We want a salesperson to be able to explain why our policy is different after watching." Not "we want a modern video about the company".
- A list of facts that must be said. Five at most. A minute gives you 150 words, and ten facts will not fit into them no matter how much you want them to.
- Brand guidelines, or at least colours and typefaces. Without them the studio guesses, and you pay for that guessing in the feedback round.
- Examples of videos you like and ones you dislike. The second list is more valuable. It settles the argument about style before anyone illustrates anything.
- Who approves the video. If that is four people across three departments, say so upfront and expect a longer timeline. Most delays start here, not in production.
We covered what a proper video brief looks like in general in our article on how to prepare a video brief. With animation it is also worth agreeing at the start whether you get the source files.
When is animation the wrong choice?
When the video has to build trust in people. An animated character will never do what the face of the person behind the product does.
We had a project where the client insisted on animation because it felt more modern than filming. The video looked good, the campaign underperformed, and the post mortem showed that the audience, technical buyers in manufacturing, wanted to see the actual machine running. So now we ask a blunter question first: does the viewer have a reason to doubt you? If the answer is yes, animation is the wrong tool, because it proves nothing.
Skip animation as well when you need the video within two weeks (script and storyboard cannot be compressed without it showing), when you have neither brand guidelines nor the budget to create them, or when the budget is under a thousand euros. At that price you get a library template your competitors are also using. You are better off shooting a simple product video with a phone and good lighting.
Frequently asked questions about explainer videos
How long should an explainer video be?
Between 60 and 90 seconds. A minute holds roughly 150 spoken words, enough for the problem, the solution and one call to action. Past two minutes the share of people who finish the video drops sharply.
Is 3D animation always more expensive than 2D?
Usually yes, expect two to three times the cost. The exception is when you already have 3D product models from development. Then a 3D version becomes surprisingly affordable, because the most expensive part of the work is already done.
Can we write the script ourselves?
You can, and it sometimes works very well, especially when you know the product inside out. Expect the studio to rework it into spoken form though. Sentences that look fine on paper often cannot be read aloud without a breath in the middle.
How long does an explainer video take to produce?
Four to eight weeks from the brief. The animation itself takes about a third of that, the rest is script, storyboard and client side approvals.
If you have a product that is hard to explain on a single slide, get in touch through our contact page. On the first call we will tell you whether animation or filming is cheaper in your case, even when that means recommending a camera. You can read how we work in our video production section.
