Best AI explainer video makers in 2026: ten tools, by the kind of explainer you need

Which kind of explainer do you need?

An explainer video makes one idea, product or process easy to follow, usually in one to three minutes with a voice-over. AI tools now make four distinct styles of explainer, and the style decides the shortlist before the price does.

• A presenter explains it. An AI avatar, or a digital twin of you, speaks to camera: Synthesia, HeyGen, Colossyan. Suits training, onboarding and messages that need a human face.
• Characters act it out. Animated people in scenes, the classic cartoon explainer: Vyond, Powtoon, Animaker. Suits stories about people, such as a customer’s day or an HR scenario.
• Templates and stock carry it. Ready-made scenes or stock clips under a voice-over: Renderforest, Steve AI. Suits quick, general videos where speed beats a custom look.
• Designed motion graphics show it. Type, diagrams, charts and your product’s screens, designed for this one film: Voom, MotionVid. Suits how a product or a system works, and anything with numbers.

Our guide to types of explainer videos shows each style with examples, and how to make an explainer video covers the script and structure that work in any of them.

The ten explainer video makers compared

Voom publishes this guide, and Voom is one of the ten tools. Every price below comes from the tool’s own pricing page, read on 3 November 2026, in US dollars before tax. Animaker, Steve AI and Renderforest show rupees to visitors from India, so their US prices come from the US view of the same pages.

Tool	Style	Starts from	Entry paid plan	Free way to start	Best for
Synthesia	AI presenter	A script, slides or a prompt	Starter: $19 a month ($9 the first month), $14 billed yearly	Basic: 10 minutes a month, watermark, no downloads	Training and HR videos with a presenter
HeyGen	AI presenter or your own twin	A script, slides or a prompt	Creator: $29 a month, $24 billed yearly	3 videos a month up to 1 minute, watermark	Presenter explainers for marketing, translated
Colossyan	AI presenter, interactive training	A script, slides, a PDF or a prompt	Professional: $89 a month, $59 billed yearly, 1 editor	Starter: 20 minutes a month, watermark	Training with quizzes, branching and SCORM
Vyond	Animated characters and scenes	A prompt, a document or a URL, or a template	Starter: $99 a month, $58 billed yearly	Trial: 3 videos, watermark, no downloads	Character explainers for company teams
Powtoon	Template animation and characters	A template, slides or a document	Lite: $49 a month, $15 billed yearly	3 minutes at 720p, watermark	DIY animated explainers on a yearly budget
Animaker	Custom cartoon characters, whiteboard	A template	Starter: $45 a month, $25 billed yearly	Watermarked exports; 7-day trial of paid features	Building your own cartoon characters
Steve AI	Animated characters, stock footage, 2D avatars	Text, a script, a prompt or audio	Starter: $29 a month, $19 billed yearly	1,200 seconds of AI video, limited downloads	Quick character or stock explainers from a script
Renderforest	Templates and AI scenes	A prompt, a script or a template	Lite: $15 a month, $9 billed yearly	20 credits, 480p with watermark, personal use	Templates, logos and a site on one budget
MotionVid	Motion graphics or AI footage	A prompt or a template	Starter: $19 a month, $14.99 billed yearly	No free plan listed	Motion graphics explainers voiced in 74 languages
Voom	Designed motion graphics with voice-over and an original score	A prompt, plus a product link and images	Pro: $29 a month for 560 credits	One film up to 30 seconds, faint watermark	A designed explainer from one prompt or link

Bottom line: choose the style, then the tool. Presenter: Synthesia for training, HeyGen for marketing. Characters: Vyond if the company pays, Powtoon or Animaker if you do. A designed explainer you describe rather than build: Voom or MotionVid.

What does a 60-second explainer cost on each tool?

The monthly fee buys different things: minutes of video, credits, or a number of exports. We turned each plan into the cost of one minute of finished explainer, using the plan’s own allowance. The minutes are not alike: a Synthesia minute is a presenter, a Steve AI minute is stock or characters, a Voom minute is a designed film.

Tool and plan	One minute of explainer	How we got the figure
Steve AI Starter, monthly	about $0.29	Estimate: $29 for 100 minutes of AI video a month
Voom Pro	about $0.88 for a 60-second film	Exact: 8 credits plus 9 a minute = 17 credits, at $29 ÷ 560
HeyGen Creator	about $1.50 with an Avatar IV presenter	Estimate: 31 credits a minute, at $29 ÷ 600
Synthesia Starter, monthly	about $1.58	Estimate: $19 for about 12 minutes on top of the free 10
Colossyan Professional, monthly	about $2.97	Estimate: $89 for 30 minutes a month on its NEO engine
MotionVid Starter, monthly	about $2.30 to $8.20	Estimate: 15 to 54 credits per 15 seconds by model, at $19 ÷ 500
Powtoon Lite, monthly	about $9.80 per watermark-free export	Estimate: $49 for 5 watermark-free exports a month
Animaker Starter, monthly	about $4.50 per premium download	Estimate: $45 for 10 premium downloads a month
Vyond Starter	flat fee	100 downloads a month; the cost is the hours you build

About these estimates. Each one divides a plan’s monthly price by the allowance its pricing page states. Yearly billing lowers most of them: Synthesia’s $14 a month brings its minute to about $1.17, and Powtoon’s $15 brings a watermark-free export to $3. Edits, retries and premium engines raise them. Voom’s price is fixed by length, and a film that fails gives every credit back (Voom pricing). For the cheapest route to one explainer, see our cheap explainer video generator comparison.

The ten tools, one by one

Synthesia

Synthesia turns a script, slides or a prompt into a video with an AI presenter: 125+ stock avatars on Starter, or a personal avatar of yourself, speaking more than 140 languages, Hindi and eight other Indian languages among them. Starter costs $19 a month (the first month $9), or $14 billed yearly, for about 12 minutes of video a month on top of a free 10.

Falls short: the monthly allowance resets each period, and creation pauses when credits run out. Self-serve plans have one editor; brand kits and one-click translation into 140+ languages are listed under Enterprise. Free videos cannot be downloaded. See our Synthesia alternative.

HeyGen

HeyGen makes presenter videos with 700+ stock avatars or a digital twin of you, translates videos with lip sync, and makes videos from a prompt with its Video Agent. Creator costs $29 a month, or $24 billed yearly, for 600 credits, 1080p export and videos of up to 30 minutes.

Falls short: credits run at different rates by engine (Avatar III uses 4 a minute, Avatar IV 31, Video Agent 80), so minutes per month vary widely. Credits roll over for one month only. In a product explainer, a presenter takes screen space your product could use. See our HeyGen alternative.

Colossyan

Colossyan is built for learning teams: presenter videos from slides, PDFs or a prompt, with quizzes, branching, conversations between avatars and SCORM export. Professional costs $89 a month, or $59 billed yearly, for one editor and 30 minutes a month; the free Starter plan gives 20 minutes a month with a watermark.

Falls short: minutes expire each month, and every language version uses minutes again: ten languages of a 60-second video cost 10 minutes. Interactive videos cannot be exported as MP4. Its translation list has no Punjabi.

Vyond

Vyond animates characters and scenes in whiteboard, contemporary and business styles, with 1,300+ avatars, charts and stock media. Vyond Go drafts a video from a prompt, a document or a URL, and you finish it in the editor. Starter costs $99 a month, or $58 billed yearly ($699 a year), for 100 downloads a month.

Falls short: the price is set for companies, and the trial makes 3 watermarked videos with no downloads. Avatar speech costs 40 to 50 credits per 10 characters of text. Its help centre says text-to-speech in Hindi and other Indian scripts fails above 1,666 characters per clip. See our Vyond alternative.

Powtoon

Powtoon makes template-based animated explainers and slide-style videos, with characters, screen recording and an “Anything to Video” feature that turns a document into a draft. Lite costs $49 a month, or $15 billed yearly, with 1080p export and videos of up to 10 minutes.

Falls short: Lite removes the watermark on only 5 exports a month, and exporting a duplicate counts as a new export. AI credits are small on yearly plans (300 a year on Lite). Character customisation and lip sync need Advanced at $125 a month billed yearly. See our Powtoon alternative.

Animaker

Animaker lets you build your own cartoon characters and whiteboard animations in a drag-and-drop editor, with templates and AI video credits. Starter costs $45 a month, or $25 billed yearly, with 10 premium downloads a month and videos of up to 15 minutes.

Falls short: commercial rights start on Pro ($43 a month billed yearly), not Starter, according to its comparison table. Its voice pages give two different language counts (180+ and 50+) and name no Indian voices, and its translation feature is Enterprise only. Its FAQ mentions a $15 Basic plan that its plan cards do not show.

Steve AI

Steve AI turns text, a script, a prompt or an audio file into a video with animated characters, stock footage or 2D talking avatars. Starter costs $29 a month, or $19 billed yearly, for 100 minutes of AI video a month at 1080p with no watermark, the most minutes per dollar in this list.

Falls short: its own pages disagree on how many voice languages it has (6, 10 and “10+”). Unused credits reset each cycle, and generative clips are capped at 120 seconds a month on Starter. The look is template-led rather than designed for your brand.

Renderforest

Renderforest combines templates (intros, logo reveals, promos), AI-generated scenes and photo avatars with a logo maker and a website builder in one subscription. Lite costs $15 a month, or $9 billed yearly, for 800 AI credits a month and AI video downloads at 720p or 1080p with no watermark.

Falls short: Lite exports templates at 720p only; 1080p needs Pro. Yearly plans are paid up front. The free plan is for personal use, and its own pages disagree on the free export resolution (360p or 720p). Its voice pages name no Indian languages.

MotionVid

MotionVid makes motion graphics explainers and launch films from a prompt, writes and voices the script in 74 languages, adds music, and can also generate cinematic footage or work from Claude, Cursor or its API. Starter costs $19 a month, or $14.99 billed yearly, for 500 credits and 60 export minutes.

Falls short: the credits a film uses depend on the model and on every edit, so you cannot price a film before you start. Unused credits do not carry over, and no free plan or trial is listed.

Voom

Voom makes designed motion graphics explainers and launch films. Write one sentence, paste your product link if the explainer is about your product, and Voom writes the script, designs every shot for this one film in your colours and type, records a voice-over in one of 20 voices and 23 languages, writes an original score and adds optional captions. Films come in 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 or 4:5; a 60-second explainer costs 17 credits, about $0.88 on Pro.

Falls short: no presenters and no characters, by design. Films stop at 90 seconds on Pro and 3 minutes on Business, so a ten-minute training video needs another tool. There is no timeline: to change a film you make a variation from a new brief, and the app tells you a film usually takes 25 to 30 minutes.

Which explainer style fits your topic?

Match the style to what the viewer must understand.

• How a product, a system or a process works: designed motion graphics. Diagrams and real screens show the mechanism; see SaaS explainer videos, developer tool explainers or animated infographic videos.
• Rules, policies and training people must follow: a presenter, so the message has a face. Synthesia or Colossyan.
• A story about people: characters. Vyond, Powtoon or Animaker.
• A lesson for a class or a course: motion graphics for concepts, a presenter for the teacher’s voice; see educational explainer videos.
• Another language: check the voice list for your language before you buy; our guide to AI video makers for Hindi and other Indian languages compares them language by language, and the multilingual explainer page shows a Hindi film made from an English prompt.

Common mistakes when choosing an explainer video maker

• Choosing a presenter for a product explainer. A face fills the frame your product needs. Use a presenter when the message is the person.
• Comparing monthly prices only. Powtoon Lite looks cheap at $15 a month billed yearly, but it removes the watermark on 5 exports a month.
• Buying yearly before the first video works. Make one explainer on a free plan or a single month first.
• Ignoring how minutes are counted. Colossyan charges again for every language version; HeyGen’s engines burn credits at different rates.
• Writing too much. A 60-second explainer has room for about one idea and three steps. Our explainer video script template sets word counts by length.

How we chose and checked these tools

We picked the tools ChatGPT, Perplexity and buyers’ guides most often name for explainer video queries, then added the one motion graphics competitor closest to Voom. Every price, limit and feature comes from the tool’s own pricing page, help centre or docs, read on 3 November 2026 and listed under Sources. Where a tool’s own pages disagree (Steve AI’s language counts, Renderforest’s free resolution, Animaker’s Basic plan), we say so.

We did not make an explainer on every tool, so this guide describes what each product is built to do and what its plans include, not how its output looked to us. Voom is our product; it fits one of the four styles. If a price has changed, tell us through the contact page and we will correct it.

Making a designed explainer with Voom

The film below is a 75-second SaaS explainer for Zyflow, made with Voom from its product link and one prompt. It opens on the problem (“You tell your AI about every client… then you close the tab, and it’s gone.”), then shows how the product works.

1. Write the one idea the explainer should land, and who it is for.
2. Paste your product link, or leave it out for a topic explainer.
3. Choose the size, the length or Auto, a voice and captions.
4. Watch it once against your page, then make other languages or sizes as variations.

Your first film, up to 30 seconds, is free. See more on the explainer video page, or try the AI motion graphics generator. Comparing Voom with one more tool? Read Voom against Pexo, Fliki or Motion.