How Much Does an Animated Explainer Video Cost in the UK? (2026)
Animation work for McLaren x Deloitte
Direct answer
A custom 60-second animated explainer video in the UK typically costs between £8,000 and £25,000, with the most common landing point for B2B brand-quality work sitting around £12,000–£18,000. The price depends on animation style, script length, voiceover requirements, and — more than anything else — the time invested in the strategy and storyboard before a single frame is animated.
What you get at each tier
It is genuinely useful to think of the market in three bands.
The £1,500–£4,000 band buys you template-based work, often produced offshore or via a marketplace. The animation is functional, the script is yours to write, and the result is fine for an internal demo or a low-stakes social asset. It is rarely the right fit for a public brand moment, because the visual language is shared with hundreds of other companies using the same templates.
The £8,000–£18,000 band is where most serious B2B explainers live. You get a custom script developed with you, custom-designed characters or visual system, a professional voiceover, and a process that includes a proper kick-off, two storyboard rounds, an animatic, and final animation with two revision passes. Most importantly you get senior creative attention — the difference between a video that simply works and one that is recognisably yours.
Above £20,000 you're paying for distinctiveness. Bespoke illustration, original soundtrack, advanced motion design, or very specific subject-matter expertise (financial services, regulated industries, technical SaaS). You're also paying for a studio that will defend the strategy when a stakeholder pushes for changes that would weaken the work — that protection is genuinely worth what it costs.
What actually changes the number
• Length. Each additional 30 seconds typically adds £2,500–£5,000 because animation time scales linearly.
• Style. Simple 2D motion graphics is the most cost-efficient. Character animation adds 20–40%. 3D adds 40–80%. Mixed-media or live-action-with-animation can double the budget.
• Strategy depth. A clear brief and confirmed proposition costs less than "help us figure out what we want to say". The latter is often money well spent, but it should be priced separately and named honestly.
• Reviews and stakeholders. Three named reviewers with one consolidated round of feedback is fast and cheap. Twelve stakeholders, each with conflicting feedback, is the single most expensive thing on a video budget.
• Compliance review. Regulated industries (finance, pharma, legal) add 10–25% for additional rounds and time.
Where the real value sits
After ten years of producing this kind of work, the strongest correlation we see is not between budget and quality, but between brief clarity and outcome. The most effective explainers we've made were not the most expensive ones; they were the ones where the client knew exactly which audience the video was for, what action they wanted them to take, and which two or three things absolutely had to be in there. A clear brief is worth £5,000 of production budget.
CTA
If you would like a sense of where your specific project would land in those bands, send us the brief in any form you have it — bullet points, a sales deck, a half-finished script — and we will come back with a costed scope within two working days.