How much does an explainer video cost in 2026?

A 60 to 90 second explainer video costs between $3,400 and $15,000 from a studio, $1,200 to $4,000 from a freelancer, and $20,000 upwards from an agency. Those are our real numbers and the market's, and the spread is not mysterious. Four variables account for almost all of it.

Most articles answering this question are written by studios who want you on a call before you hear a number. This one has the numbers in it, including the ones that make us look expensive.

The four price bands

Most companies asking this question belong in the third band and are shopping in the second. That is usually a mistake, though not for the reason studios normally give. It is not that freelancers do worse work, because many are excellent. It is that a freelancer is priced to execute a brief, not to fix one. If your script is wrong, a $2,000 animator will animate the wrong script beautifully.

What actually moves the number

Animation style, by a wide margin

This is the biggest lever and the gap is larger than most people expect. Rough per-finished-minute figures:

• Kinetic typography and simple shape motion: $2,000 to $4,000 per minute.
• Standard 2D motion graphics with icons and illustrated scenes: $3,000 to $7,000 per minute.
• Custom 2D character animation with rigging and lip-sync: $6,000 to $15,000 per minute.
• Photoreal 3D with simulation or environment work: $12,000 to $40,000 per minute.

Character animation is the expensive jump. A rig has to be built before a single frame moves, and once it exists, changing the character's design means rebuilding it. That is why studios push so hard for design approval before animation starts. It is not process fetishism, it is the cost of the alternative.

Whether anyone is writing a script

Budget $800 to $2,500 for a properly researched 90-second script. This is the line item most often cut and most often regretted. A script is not the narration. It is the decision about what the video argues, and that decision gets made whether or not you pay someone to make it deliberately.

Voice

A professional voice actor for a 90-second commercial-use read runs $250 to $900 depending on their profile and the usage term. Synthetic voice is now good enough for internal video and for testing, and still recognisable as synthetic to a decent share of listeners on a homepage. If the video carries your brand, cast a human.

Revisions, and how they are counted

Read this clause before you sign anything. Common structures, in ascending order of what they will cost you:

1. 01Fixed rounds per stage, such as two at script, one at storyboard, two at animation. Predictable, and what we use.
2. 02Total rounds across the project. Flexible, but you can spend them all at script and have none left for the edit.
3. 03Hourly after an included allowance. Fine when the hourly rate is stated, expensive when it is not.
4. 04Unlimited revisions. Always priced in somewhere, and usually a signal the vendor expects the brief to be wrong.

The variable nobody quotes is your own approval process. A project with one decision-maker and consolidated notes runs at the quoted price. A project with six stakeholders sending conflicting notes separately will exceed its rounds, and the overage is real work.

How much does an explainer video cost per minute?

Between $3,000 and $7,000 per finished minute for standard 2D motion graphics, which is the format most software companies actually buy. Treat per-minute figures as a planning tool rather than a quote. A dense fifteen-second title sequence can cost more than a simple ninety-second explainer, because the cost tracks the number of decisions and the animation complexity, not the runtime.

How much does a SaaS explainer video cost?

The same as any other 2D explainer, $3,400 to $15,000, with one caveat that catches SaaS teams out. If the video needs to show your actual interface, you are commissioning a product demo rather than an explainer, and those are built differently: recorded UI, seeded data, callout animation. Teams routinely brief an explainer, then ask for real screens in revision two, which is a scope change rather than a note.

What does not move the number as much as you think

• Length, past a point. A 90-second explainer is not 50% more than a 60-second one, because the fixed costs of script, style development and setup dominate. Going from 60 to 90 seconds typically adds 20 to 30%.
• Cutdowns and aspect ratios. Once the master is built, a 30-second cut and a 9:16 crop are hours rather than days. If a vendor charges heavily for these, ask why.
• Music. A good library licence is $50 to $500. Original score starts around $2,000 and is worth it roughly never, unless the film is the campaign.

A worked example

A Series A software company needs a 75-second homepage explainer in 2D motion graphics, with a cast voice and cutdowns for paid social. At our published rates:

Strip the cutdowns and that is $750 back. Use a founder read instead of a cast voice, another $450. Hand us a script your sales team has already validated and discovery roughly halves, call it $700 — it does not vanish, because someone still has to work out what the film argues. The same film lands at $7,300. Those are legitimate savings. Cutting the storyboard to save $1,100 is not, because it moves the cost to the animation stage at a much worse exchange rate.

How much does a two-minute video cost?

Roughly $7,000 to $16,000 in 2D motion graphics, but the more useful answer is that you probably do not want a two-minute explainer. Paste your script into our runtime calculator before you commission anything, because most two-minute scripts turn out to be ninety-second scripts with a repeated section. Completion rates fall sharply past ninety seconds, and a two-minute film is usually a sign that two ideas are fighting for the same runtime. Two ninety-second films, each with one argument, cost about 30% more and get watched considerably more than twice as much.

Why quotes from India and Eastern Europe are so much lower

They are genuinely lower, and the reason is labour cost rather than skill. A 2D explainer that runs $8,000 from a US or UK studio typically quotes at $1,500 to $4,000 from a studio in India, Poland or Ukraine, with the same software and often animators of the same standard.

What you are trading is not craft. It is time zones, the number of revision cycles a language gap adds, and how much strategic pushback you get on the brief. A cheaper studio will usually build what you asked for. A more expensive one is, in theory, being paid to tell you the brief is wrong. Whether it does is a separate question, and worth testing on the first call.

We produce from India for clients in the US, UK and Australia, so treat that reading with the appropriate suspicion. The honest version is that geography sets the floor on price and says almost nothing about the ceiling on quality.

What you are paying for, week by week

Note where the money is. Weeks three and four carry half the budget, which is why every stage before them exists to make sure nobody is animating the wrong thing.

How to cut the cost without wrecking the film

In descending order of how much you save per unit of damage:

• Use a founder or in-house read instead of a cast voice. Saves $250 to $900, and for developer-facing products it often performs better.
• Drop to screen-led or kinetic type instead of illustrated scenes. Saves 30 to 50% of the animation line.
• Cut the runtime to sixty seconds. Saves 20 to 30%, and usually improves the film.
• Supply your own brand assets, colour palette and font licences. Saves a day of style development.
• Skip the cutdowns if you genuinely have no paid or social plan. Saves $500 to $900, though most people regret this one.
• License a music bed rather than commissioning score. Saves $1,500 or more and is almost never noticed.

What not to cut: the script, the storyboard, and the revision rounds. Each of those exists to catch a problem while it is still cheap. Removing them does not remove the problem, it just moves it into week four.

Red flags in a quote

• A single line item with no breakdown. You cannot tell what gets cut when the budget moves.
• Unlimited revisions. Priced in somewhere, and a signal the vendor expects the brief to be wrong.
• No named creative. If the studio will not tell you who is animating it, the reel you were shown is not the work you will get.
• Source files as a paid extra. Fine if stated, expensive if you discover it a year later when a price changes on screen.
• A voice licence limited to organic use or a two-year term, when you plan to run paid media for longer.
• Payment fully in advance. Fifty on booking and fifty on delivery is the norm and keeps both sides honest.

Five questions worth asking any vendor

1. 01What happens if we do not like the first script draft? A good answer describes a process. A bad one is reassurance.
2. 02Who owns the project files? If the answer is not you, updating a price on screen next year means a new brief.
3. 03Is the voice licence perpetual, and does it cover paid media? Some are two-year terms tied to organic use only.
4. 04How are revision rounds counted, and what constitutes one round?
5. 05Which specific person is animating this, and can we see their reel rather than the studio's?

Studio reels are curated across dozens of freelancers, so they tell you what a studio can commission rather than what you will receive. The reel of the person actually assigned to your project is the honest preview, and any studio confident in its bench will show you.