How to make a SaaS product video, step by step
A step-by-step guide to making a 30-to-60-second product video for a software company: the words, the shots, the timing, the shapes and the embed.
Sep 26, 2026
How much does a product video cost?
From about $200 on Fiverr to $45,000 at a top studio. The published prices, what the surveys really measure, and where the money goes.
The short answer: studios that publish prices start at about $1,800 to $8,000 for a custom one-minute animated video, and in July 2026 the median of 61 studio quotes for one was $9,680. [1] A freelancer on a marketplace will quote a few hundred dollars. A top studio will quote $15,000 to $45,000, and live action runs higher still. [2] [3]
Those numbers are far enough apart that they can’t all be prices for the same thing. They aren’t. What you pay for a product video depends mostly on how much of it has to be invented from scratch, and the rest of this post is about where that line falls.
What studios publish
In a 2026 survey of 45 agencies, Squideo counted 17 that publish no price at all and 16 that publish only part of it. [4] Here is what some of the ones that do publish charge:
Who | Published price | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
Fiverr freelancers (Fiverr’s own guide) | $200 to $400 for a 60-second explainer | 5 to 10 business days for 30 seconds |
ContentBuck | $1,800 for a 60-second explainer | 14 days |
Wyzowl, app demo | From $2,000 | 2 to 3 weeks |
Breadnbeyond | $2,000 to $3,000 for a simple 60-second 2D video | About 5 weeks |
Wyzowl, animated explainer | From $2,700 | About 6 weeks |
Yum Yum Videos | From $8,000 | 6 to 9 weeks |
Epipheo, 2D explainer | $15,000 to $45,000 | 6 to 8 weeks |
Demo Duck, higher-end animation | $20,000 to $25,000 | 8 to 12 weeks |
Sources for every row are in the notes. [5] A few studios also name real clients and what they charged. Yum Yum says it made a 90-second video for Chargebee for $22,500. [6] Epipheo lists a 75-second video for Pyramid Analytics in its $20,000 to $25,000 band, and a two-minute one for Splunk at $35,000 to $45,000. [3]
What the surveys measure
You’ll see a few surveys quoted everywhere. They’re useful, but they don’t all measure the same thing, and none of them measures what companies actually paid for a product video.
Yum Yum Videos, July 2026. 61 usable quotes from studios for a custom 60-second animated explainer. Median $9,680, mean $11,420, range $2,800 to $27,000, median timeline seven weeks. [1]
Wyzowl, fourth quarter of 2022. 116 quotes for a 60-second animated explainer. Median $5,400, mean $10,983, range $600 to $250,000. Where a studio gave a range, Wyzowl recorded the top of it. The page now carries a 2026 date, but the data is from 2022. [7]
Squideo, 2026. 45 agencies’ lowest entry price for a 30-second animation. The average was £2,960. [4]
Clutch. Built from verified buyers’ reviews, so it’s closer to what people paid, but it covers every kind of video production, live action included. It says most projects cost less than $10,000, while the average is $42,280. [8]
Two things follow. First, the surveys record what studios quoted in response to a brief, which can differ from what anyone paid, and at least one widely read article describes Wyzowl’s data as what brands paid. [9] Second, the gap between what Clutch calls a typical project (under $10,000) and its average tells you the distribution has a long tail. A few very expensive productions pull the mean far above what a typical buyer spends.
Where the money goes
Epipheo, which sits at the expensive end, says it plainly: “Two-thirds of the budget is pre-production: strategy, script, storyboard.” [3] At Epipheo, then, most of what you pay for is the work of deciding what to say and how it should look, before anything moves.
The rest breaks down roughly like this:
Length, but less than you’d think. One studio’s example for basic motion graphics prices a one-minute video at $2,000, a 30-second one at $1,800 and a 20-second one at $1,700, because a short video still needs most of the same decisions. [10]
Style. Epipheo says 3D, character animation and live action “each roughly double the budget at the same runtime.” [3]
Voice. A professional union voice-over runs $1,000 to $5,000, by Epipheo’s numbers. [3]
Revisions. Epipheo includes two rounds; each extra round adds “roughly 8–12% to the final invoice and about a week to the calendar.” [3]
Speed. Rush work costs 25 to 50% more at the studios that publish a rate for it. [3] [11]
The costs nobody quotes you
The number on the quote is rarely the whole cost. Three things tend to arrive later.
Other shapes. Some quotes cover only one 16:9 video. Epipheo prices social cut-downs as a $2,000 to $8,000 add-on; ContentBeta says 1:1 and 9:16 versions are “often priced as separate deliverables”, at $300 to $1,000 per format. [3] [12] You’ll want them, because a 16:9 video cropped to 9:16 loses about two-thirds of the frame. (Why you can’t just crop a 16:9 video to 9:16 shows what gets cut.)
Product changes. Software changes constantly, and a video of your interface ages with it. ContentBeta writes that “every major UI update requires a partial or full re-production” of an animated product demo, and prices that at $2,000 to $8,000 per update. [12] Your homepage changes too. When we rechecked six example films we’d made from software companies’ websites, three days after making one of them, that company’s homepage had a new headline. (SaaS product video examples, taken apart has the details.)
Your team’s time. A six-week project spreads reviews, feedback rounds and approvals on your side across all six weeks. Demo Duck notes that the most variable part of its timeline is how long the client takes to review. [13] (Why a product video takes six weeks looks at where the calendar goes.)
Why the cheapest and dearest are both rational
A $300 marketplace video isn’t a steal, and a $30,000 studio film isn’t a rip-off. They’re different amounts of invention.
At the top end you’re paying a team to research your market, find a message, write a script, design a visual world, cast a voice and animate all of it, with rounds of approval between each step. If you don’t know what to say yet, that’s worth a lot. At the bottom end you’re usually paying for a template with your words dropped in, and the words are yours to write.
A software company that already has a website sits somewhere odd on that spectrum. The expensive part, deciding what to say, is done. It’s on your homepage, rewritten and argued over for years. So is the visual world: your product and your brand. What’s left is choosing six lines, putting the right piece of product under each one, timing it to work on mute, and laying it out in three shapes. That’s real craft, but it’s hours of work, not weeks. (Your website is already a product video makes the longer case.)
How to budget
Before you ask anyone for a price, write down three things: who will watch the video, where it will play, and what they should do next. (Types of product videos will tell you which kind you need.) Then, when quotes arrive, ask the same questions of each:
Which stages are included: script, storyboard, illustration, voice, music?
How many revision rounds, and what does one more cost?
Does the price include 9:16 and 1:1 versions, and the source files?
What does it cost to update the video when the product or the homepage changes?
How long will it take, counting your team’s review time?
The answers explain the difference between two quotes better than the totals do.
We make the 30-to-45-second kind, the showcase for the top of your homepage, from your own website, in all three shapes, delivered within 24 hours. You can request a preview without payment details, and we email pricing before you decide.
Notes
Yum Yum Videos, “How much does an explainer video cost?” (research conducted July 2026; 125 companies contacted, 76 responded, 61 usable quotes for a custom 60-second animated explainer).
Fiverr, 2D animation cost guide (August 3, 2026): “a 60-second explainer video typically ranges from $200 to $400.” Demo Duck, explainer video production: higher-end explainers “run in the $20,000–$25,000 range for animation, and the $35,000-50,000+ range for live action.”
Epipheo, explainer video cost and premium explainer video: “a 2D animated explainer typically runs $15,000–$45,000”; the priced client work; “Two-thirds of the budget is pre-production”; revision rounds; union voice-over; rush rates; “Do you do social cutdowns?” in its FAQ.
Squideo, “How much does an explainer video cost in 2026” (45 agencies responded). Its pricing-transparency chart counts 12 agencies with fully public prices, 16 partially public and 17 hidden.
ContentBuck, pricing. Wyzowl, app demo videos and explainer videos. Breadnbeyond, video production cost. Yum Yum Videos, as in note 1. Epipheo, as in note 3. Demo Duck, as in note 2. Fiverr, as in note 2. All read on September 26, 2026.
Yum Yum Videos, “How much does animation cost per minute?”
Wyzowl, explainer video cost survey: 242 companies contacted, 147 replied, 116 gave a price, collected in Q4 2022.
Clutch, video production pricing guide, updated September 21, 2026, compiled from verified client reviews.
HubSpot, “How much does an explainer video cost?”, describes Wyzowl’s survey as “over 240 brands”. Wyzowl’s own page says it contacted production companies for quotes.
Blue Carrot, explainer video pricing guide.
Video Igniter, explainer video cost: rush delivery “can increase the cost of your explainer video by 25%-50% or more.”
ContentBeta, product demo video cost.
Demo Duck, animation process.
