What is the cost of a traditional boardomatic vs. an AI boardomatic?
Last updated August 1, 2026
A traditional boardomatic costs $5,000–$10,000 and takes 2–3 weeks; even a leaner freelance storyboard-artist animatic runs $500–$2,000 over about a week. An AI boardomatic — the same storyboard-images-on-a-timeline-with-voiceover deliverable — assembles in half a day for under $50, roughly a 100–200x cost reduction.
Budget an AI boardomatic at under $50 and half a day of work; budget a traditional one at $500–$10,000 and one to three weeks, depending on whether you hire a single freelance storyboard artist or commission it through an agency pipeline. A boardomatic is storyboard images laid out on a timeline with a voiceover track underneath — something to put in front of your DOP, creative team, or client before a single day of shooting. Because the question is fundamentally a numbers comparison, here are the documented figures side by side:
Approach | Cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
Traditional boardomatic (commissioned) | $5,000–$10,000 | 2–3 weeks |
Traditional animatic via freelance storyboard artist | $500–$2,000 | ~1 week |
AI boardomatic | Under $50 | Half a day |
External benchmarks line up with the traditional range: practitioners on Reddit quote roughly $4,000–$6,000 for 22 minutes of custom boards plus $800–$1,000 for editing, and AI-assisted production services now advertise from about $175 per finished minute — both consistent with the collapse in cost the table shows.
The AI workflow that hits the under-$50 number runs entirely inside one tool: generate or upload your storyboard frames, then ask the invideo agent to line them up on Slate, invideo's timeline, so you never download individual frames separately. Once the frames sit on the timeline you control length, placement, and audio directly — record or generate the voiceover underneath the images, then layer sound design as a separate track on top. The result is presentable to a client or crew the same day, and it does the core job of a boardomatic: catching production pitfalls before you spend a shooting day on them.
One adjacent number worth knowing: if you want moving AI-generated video previz rather than static boards on a timeline, documented workflows run $150–$200 per finished minute — still far below traditional previz, which costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes weeks.
Watch some of these to see what works for you:
Half a day, under $50. The old way: a week with a storyboard artist, and $500 to $2,000.
— invideo's creative team