This animation price guide discusses a few factors when determining the cost of an animation project: concept, style/complexity, character(s) and specifications. For a basic 30 second animation pricing seems to start at $2,000 USD and go up from there depending on these factors.
- Concept: the an abstract idea or general notion of what the message or story the animation needs to tell. This phase can take more or less time depending on how clearly the client’s initial idea is flushed out.
- Animation Visual Style and the Medium required: 2D Animation, for example can be done using traditional hand drawing (think old Disney films) or vectors in After Effects or others. A 3D animation might use Maya or Cinema4D or other 3D software to create a 3 dimensional space or place an animated item into a real life scene filmed with a camera.
- Character(s): the character is the person/creature that the audience is most likely to connect with and requires special attention on their creation and rigging.
Hybrid 2D and 3D. 
2D paper cutout style. 
Vector based 2D.
- Specifications: no animation price guide would be complete without discussing the final animation’s specifications – this referrers to the frames per second, dimensions (1920×1080, 2K, 4K,…), duration (30 seconds, 2 hours,…) and the quality of the end product (television, advertising, or film).
More Information to Aid Your Animation Price Guide Choices
Below are sample animation pricing information from other animation websites.
Pricing from Get Wright On It
(They have a fun price guide. It’s a fun interactive webpage.)
- $2162-3149 For 32 seconds, motion graphics, paper cut-out, film quality (character based $7500 and up)
- $2000-25000/min motion graphics, paper cut-out depending on production quality (television, advertising, or film)
Costs from Whiteboard Animation
- $2800/min (90 sec. min.) = Entry level whiteboard style
- $3800/min standard whiteboard introducing color accents, seamless scene transitions, and more consistent hand-drawing
- $5500/min Whiteboard animation adding fuller color, basic character/accent animation, and multiple edit rounds.
- $8000/min Whiteboard animation with deeper color, more sophisticated design/visual effects, and more detailed character/accent animation.
Estimates from How Much Does Animated Video Cost?
“The average cost for a 60 second explainer video is $7,972. (That’s around €6,500 or £5,700 for our international readers, at the time of writing.)”
How Much Does it Cost to Product Animation – and Why? – Pigeon
$6000-10000
- length: 60 seconds,
- style: multi-coloured flat design in cutout technique,
- two characters,
- music, voiceover, and sound effects included,
- copyright to cover Internet, internal use, and private conferences.
Animation Costs from Full Rotation Design & Animation
- £1750+/min. Simple 2D motion graphics, can be as simple as animated typography and simple graphics like this example.
- £2500 – 3500/min 2D Motion graphics with 3D elements
- £3000 – £3500/min. 2D Animated Explainer Videos with Character Animation
- £3500 – £5000/min. Stylised 3D Animated Explainer Videos
- £3000 to £10,000/min. High quality realistic 3D animation
- £4000 to £10,000/min. 3D Character or Creature animation ( £200 – 300 per second )
Movie Animation Cost per Second… Just for fun
- Tangled $49,059 per second (68 animators)
- Toy Story 3 (2010) $36,639 per second (66 animators)
- Coraline (2009) $11,690 per second (40 animators)