How much does a brand video cost, and what actually drives the number

Length is the worst predictor of what a brand video costs. Here is what a studio is really pricing when it reads your brief, and how to shape a scope that comes back affordable.

August 26, 2026 · 9 min read

Almost every enquiry that reaches a studio starts the same way: we need a sixty second brand video, what does that cost. It is a reasonable question and it is unanswerable as asked, because the length of the finished file is close to the least important thing about it.

Two sixty second films can differ in cost by an order of magnitude. One adapts an existing identity into motion, using type, colour and product UI that already exist, reviewed by one decision maker. The other invents a visual language, builds 3D assets from scratch, involves a shoot with a crew and a location, and passes through a founder, a head of marketing and an investor who all get an opinion. Same runtime, different jobs.

So the useful version of the question is not what does a brand video cost. It is what am I paying for, which parts of my brief are expensive, and which of them can I change. This post answers that, without quoting our numbers, because a figure with no scope attached to it is how buyers end up comparing two quotes that describe completely different work.

The price is decided before anyone opens a timeline

Production is the visible part, so it absorbs the blame for the invoice. In practice, most of the cost is committed in the first days, when the questions being answered are what the film says, who it is for, and what it should look like. Those decisions determine how many assets have to be built and how many times the work will be redone.

This is why a brief that arrives resolved is cheaper to make than a brief that arrives open, even when the final films are identical. If the narrative spine and the visual direction are settled at the start, execution is a straight line. If they are settled at the first review, everything made before that review is thrown away, and the throwing away is billed.

What actually moves the number

When a studio reads a brief, it is pricing a small number of variables. None of them is runtime. Here is the honest list, with the direction each one pushes.

Read that table as a menu rather than a verdict. Most teams who come back with sticker shock are paying for two or three expensive-end rows they did not know they had chosen, usually asset creation, deliverable count and approval structure. Those three are also the easiest to change without making the film worse. The technique row is the one worth interrogating first, and we set out when it is justified in our post on 3D product animation for a software launch.

Buy a build, not a minute

The single largest saving available to most companies is structural. A brand film, a product explainer, three social cuts and a conference loop, commissioned separately over a year, are four productions. Commissioned as one build with several outputs, they are one production and a set of edits, and the difference is not marginal.

This works because the expensive part is the system underneath: the narrative, the type treatment, the motion rules, the 3D assets if there are any. Once that exists, a fifteen second vertical cut is an afternoon of edit rather than a new project. The same logic runs through our post on startup video marketing strategy, which treats a year of content as one construction and many derivatives.

It also changes what you should ask a studio for. Instead of asking for a quote on a film, ask what the build produces in total: which cuts, which ratios, which stills, which source files, and what you are able to re-edit yourselves later. Two quotes at the same number can differ hugely on that answer, and it is the answer that decides your cost per asset over the next twelve months.

Where budgets actually get burned

Overruns are rarely caused by ambition. They are caused by process, and the same four causes come up repeatedly.

1. 01Direction that changes after production starts. Feedback on an edit is normal. A new visual direction at the first cut means the build is remade, and it is the most expensive single event in a project.
2. 02Unbounded review rounds. Two structured rounds with consolidated feedback is a plan. An open loop where every viewer sends notes separately has no end, and the budget for it is whatever it turns out to be.
3. 03Assets arriving late or unusable. Logos in the wrong format, product screens that are still mockups, a font nobody has licensed. Every day of waiting is a day of a booked team.
4. 04Scope added quietly. A vertical version, a second language, a shorter cut for paid, each requested as a small favour. Individually small, together another production.

None of these are fixed by choosing a cheaper studio. They are fixed by naming the review structure, the asset deadline and the deliverable list in the scope, before the work starts. A studio that insists on that is protecting your budget as much as its own schedule, which is one of the things worth looking for when you compare agencies, covered in our post on how to read a motion design agency.

When a fast, cheap video is genuinely the right answer

Not every moment deserves a build. A feature ships on a Tuesday, a listing goes live, a competitor posts something and your feed has been quiet for a week. The correct response is often a small clip today rather than a good film in three weeks.

We should be transparent here, because the tool is ours: ShipTeaser was built by the same founder as this studio. You give it a product URL and it returns a 15 second 1080p motion graphics teaser designed for muted feeds, with an optional music bed, and the first one is free without a card. It has no voice-over, no screen recording and no timeline to edit, and it will not give you a narrative spine or a visual system. For a gap in the calendar it is a fair trade. For the film your brand is judged on for the next two years, it is not the job, and pretending otherwise would cost you more than it saved.

The distinction is worth holding on to when a budget is tight. Spend on the pieces that compound, the identity and the one film everything else inherits from, and be cheap on the pieces that expire in a week. Spending evenly across both is how teams end up with a lot of forgettable content and no anchor.

How to get quotes you can actually compare

Send the same document to everyone, and make it short. Four things are enough: the one sentence a viewer should be able to repeat, the surfaces the work has to run on, the assets you already have and their state, and the date something has to be live. Anything you cannot answer, say so rather than inventing it, because a studio pricing around a fictional certainty will reprice later.

• Ask for the deliverable list in writing, including ratios, durations and stills, not just the headline film.
• Ask how many review rounds are included and what happens after them. The answer tells you how the studio expects the project to run.
• Ask who does the work. A quote that assumes a named team and a quote that assumes freelancers found later are not comparable, whatever the numbers say.
• Ask what you own at the end. Source files and usage rights should be part of the engagement, not an upsell discovered at delivery.
• Ask what is not included. Community moderation, media buying, smart contract work and full app builds are outside what we do, and a studio claiming all of it is thin somewhere.

If a quote comes back higher than you expected, the productive reply is not to ask for a discount. It is to ask which parts of the brief are driving the number, then decide which of them you are willing to give up. Cost usually falls fastest when technique or asset creation is relaxed, and it falls least when a deadline is compressed, because speed is the one variable that adds cost to every other row at once. You can see the range of work those decisions produce across the projects and the shape of each engagement on the service cards.