Explainer video script examples and generator: write a video explainer script for SaaS or ecommerce

Shorter than you think. Voiceover for explainer video is read at roughly 130 to 150 words a minute, a little slower than conversation because the narration has to stay intelligible over motion. That puts a 60 second explainer at about 130 to 150 spoken words, which is around half a page.

The second number to fix is the scene count. Scenes in an explainer run about four to six seconds each before the visual changes, so a 60 second script holds somewhere between 10 and 15 of them. Write to both numbers at once and the script arrives at the studio already costed.

Length does not price linearly, and two studios publish figures that agree on it. Piehole TV states that every extra sixty seconds costs 50 percent of the cost of the first minute. Video Explainers states that each 30 second extension adds 25 to 40 percent, which works out to 50 to 80 percent per extra minute. IdeaRocket, which prices per finished second, says outright that the first 60 seconds are the most expensive and that the per-second price drops after that. Three independent sources, one conclusion: going from 60 to 90 seconds does not add half again to your bill, it adds roughly a quarter to two fifths. Read on the vendors' own pages on 10 September 2026.

Four parts, in the same order almost every time: the problem, the solution, how it works, and what to do next. The variation between good scripts is in how many seconds each part gets, not in whether the parts are there.

The part people get wrong is the opening. A surprising number of first drafts open with the company, the founding year or the category. The viewer has not agreed to care yet. Open on the situation they are already in, and the rest of the script earns its attention.

One call to action, not three. A script that ends with start a trial, book a demo and follow us on social gets a smaller share of all three than a script that asks for one thing. The same applies to features: two or three demonstrated properly beat six mentioned.

It looks like a two column document, not prose. The left column is what the viewer hears, the right column is what they see at that moment, and the timings run down the side. Anything written as paragraphs has to be converted into that format by somebody before it can be animated, and that somebody usually charges for the conversion.

Here is a 60 second SaaS example in the problem and solution shape. The product is an invented scheduling tool, so the words are illustrative rather than a claim about anybody real.

That is 142 words and eight scenes. Notice that no sentence describes the interface in the abstract. Every claim is said while the thing being claimed is on screen, which is the difference between a script and a brochure read aloud.

The second common shape is the process walkthrough, used when the product is not solving an emotional pain but a procedural one. It drops the problem section to about six seconds and spends the recovered time on the steps. Ecommerce products, hardware, and anything with an unboxing moment usually want this version, and it is the shape that transfers well to creator-filmed video rather than animation, which is covered on our product demo videos page.

Between roughly $149 and $2,000 where it is broken out at all, and most studios do not break it out. We read five explainer video companies' own published pages on 10 September 2026 and found five different ways of pricing the same deliverable.

Piehole's figure is the most useful one on that table even though it carries no price. Scripting is 10 hours out of 150 to 200, so about 7 percent of the labor, while animation and design is 95 hours, about 63 percent. Divide the animation hours by a typical 12 scene script and each scene you write costs somewhere near eight hours of animation labor. That division is ours, not Piehole's, and it is rough, but the direction of it is not in doubt: adding a scene is expensive and cutting one is free.

We should name our own position here, because everybody else on this subject has one. Every page that ranks for explainer video pricing is published by a company that makes explainer videos and is quoting the category it sells into. We are not neutral either. We sell the script, at $29 a month after a free first one, so we have an obvious interest in you treating the script as the important part. Check the arithmetic above against the vendors' own pages rather than taking our word for it. The full five-studio rate comparison, including how each one meters the whole video rather than the script, is in our breakdown of explainer video cost.

Start from the moment before the software is opened. Software explainers fail in a specific way: they describe the interface instead of the situation, and the viewer has no reason to care what a dashboard looks like until they know which afternoon it saves.

Write the first sentence as something the viewer did last week. Then say what the product is in one sentence a non-user would understand, with no category jargon in it. If the sentence needs the words platform, solution or workflow to survive, it is not finished.

For the how it works section, pick the two or three steps that a real user actually performs, in order, and cut everything else. Integrations, permissions, admin settings and pricing tiers do not belong in a 60 second script even when they are the reason people buy, because they are the second conversation. Anything you cut here can go in a follow-up video, and the second video is cheaper per second than the first one was.

End on one action, and make it the smallest one that is still real. Start a free trial beats request a consultation for most self-serve products, and book a 20 minute call beats learn more for anything sales-led, because learn more is not an action.

One practical constraint worth writing into the script itself: name every on-screen element you expect to see. If a scene says shows the dashboard, three different animators will build three different dashboards and two of them will need redoing. If it says shows the calendar grid with three conflicts greyed out and one column highlighted, you get what you meant the first time. Revisions late in an animation project are the single most avoidable cost in the whole category, and vague on-screen notes are what causes them.

Write it yourself, or generate it, and then let the studio edit it. That is the version that costs least and lands closest to what you meant, and it is worth saying plainly that we sell the tool that does this, so weigh the reasoning rather than the recommendation.

The case for it is not that studios write badly. It is that the script is where the product knowledge lives, and the studio does not have it. A studio writing from a kickoff call produces a first draft that is 70 percent right and burns a revision round getting the remaining 30 percent, and revision rounds late in the process are the expensive ones. Piehole TV, which sells the production, argues the opposite case, that agencies suggesting you write your own script to save money are cutting a corner. Both things are true at once: the script has to be good, and it is cheaper for it to start from you.

The practical middle is a locked scene list before quoting. Take a finished, timed, scene-by-scene script to three studios and the quotes come back comparable for the first time, because they are pricing the same number of assets rather than guessing at scope. Studios are usually happy about this, since scope creep is their risk too.

UGCMarketplace generates that document. Describe the product, the audience and the runtime, and you get the timed scene list, the voiceover line for each scene, the on-screen action next to it, and the brief covering deliverables and technical spec. It takes about a minute, the first one is free with no account, and it is $29 a month after that. We write the words. We do not animate anything, we do not supply a studio, and the script is yours to take to whoever you hire. If the video is going to be filmed by a real person rather than animated, the same generator writes that version, and the UGC script template page covers the creator-filmed shape.