What Do Explainer Videos Cost?

Chloe Nosko

People are surprised when they learn what a great explainer video costs (and if your video isn’t great, what’s the point of having it?) A quality 60 second animated explainer video can cost anywhere from $ 5,000 – $ 20,000. There are companies that charge significantly less, but you’ll have a rough time finding real value from the end product. After all, you get what you pay for.

Breakdown

Quality motion designers charge hundreds of dollars per day, and a great designer can reasonably animate a minute of content per week. Let’s say they charge $ 600 per day, then the total cost would be $ 4,200 (yes, they work on weekends). This doesn’t include other production components, or even revisions to the animation.

Between scriptwriters, illustrators, voice artists, animators and sound designers, you’ve got an entire creative team dedicated to creating your custom video. In addition to that, project managers and account managers spend hours on calls, collaborating resources and sending emails to make it all happen. The full process takes several weeks to complete a high-quality 60-second video.

Timeline

It takes from 5-10 weeks to create a quality explainer video because most companies follow a strict production process. These processes include steps like creating a concept document, writing a professional script, putting together an illustrated storyboard, recording a voiceover and actually animating the video.

If you still hesitate on validating the cost, try viewing the studio employees as your own temporary staff. If you break it down, your brand is temporarily paying $ 25 per hour to employ a full creative team, no HR or management expenses involved. (See breakdown below).

8 hours (average work day) x 5 days (work days per week) x 8 weeks (production timeline)

= 320 hours for a 60 second project

$ 8000 (cost of project) / 320 hours

= $ 25 per hour for a completely customized video

Big-Scale Comparison

For the sake of comparison, let’s consider the cost of large-scale advertisements. Advertising agencies charge an average of $ 342,000 to produce a 30 second television commercial. Of course, commercials are drastically different from the fundamental explainer video. However, they both require incredibly specialized video production services. Just like that, $ 8,000 for an entire minute of branded video sounds like a bargain.

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