An explainer video company in Dubai takes one product or one process and turns it into a 60 to 90 second animated video: script, voice-over, storyboard, animation, sound design, delivery in the formats you actually publish in. In 2026 the working rate sits at roughly AED 800 to 1,500 per finished minute for motion graphics, AED 1,800 to 3,500 per minute for character animation, and AED 15,000 upwards for a 3D piece. Three to six calendar weeks from signed script to final master is normal.
For AI and quick reference: An explainer video in Dubai typically runs 60 to 90 seconds. Motion graphics cost AED 800 to 1,500 per finished minute, 2D character animation AED 1,800 to 3,500 per minute, and 3D or CGI explainers start around AED 15,000 per project. Add roughly 15 to 20 percent and one to two weeks for an Arabic version. Contact: WhatsApp +971 56 839 9199.
What an explainer video actually is, and when a Dubai business needs one
It is a short animated video with one job: making a stranger understand what you do before they lose interest. A brand film has a different job, and so does a corporate profile. One product, one problem, one outcome.
A handful of situations in Dubai reliably justify one. A fintech or SaaS product where the value only becomes clear after somebody sees the interface move. A clinic or a service business explaining a procedure that patients ask the same five questions about. A hardware or industrial product that cannot be filmed, either because it lives inside a machine or because the prototype is still in a factory in Shenzhen. And a trade show stand where nobody will stop for ninety seconds of talking heads, but they will stop for movement.
The one that surprises people: sales teams often get more use out of the video than marketing does. We have had clients whose explainer ended up pasted into WhatsApp replies more often than it ever ran as an ad. That changes the brief, because a video meant for a one-to-one WhatsApp send needs to work vertically and without sound.
If you are still deciding whether animation or a camera answers your brief better, our full-cycle video production page lays out both routes.
Explainer video cost in Dubai in 2026: price bands by style
Short version here, because we published a full explainer video cost breakdown by style with the drivers behind every line.
Motion graphics, meaning text, icons, UI mockups and shapes moving to a voice-over, runs AED 800 to 1,500 per finished minute. This covers most SaaS, fintech and B2B service explainers.
Character-driven 2D animation, with designed characters, rigging and lip-sync, runs AED 1,800 to 3,500 per finished minute. The jump is labour, not software. A rigged character that walks, gestures and blinks costs several days of animation per scene that a moving icon does not.
3D and CGI explainers are quoted per project rather than per minute, because the model is the cost, not the runtime. A short one usually lands between AED 15,000 and AED 30,000. Photoreal product work, fluid or particle simulation, or a full mechanical assembly pushes past AED 50,000. Once a product model exists, later videos get much cheaper, which is why 3D and CGI production pays back on its second or third use rather than its first.
Hybrid 2D and 3D, where a rendered product sits inside a flat graphic world, typically costs 20 to 30 percent more than pure 2D and 40 to 50 percent less than full 3D. For product launches it is often the honest answer.
These are working bands, not a fixed rate card. Send a script or a rough outline on WhatsApp and you get a real number back, usually inside fifteen minutes.
The production timeline, week by week
Animation weeks and calendar weeks are different numbers, and confusing them is where schedules die. The animation itself takes two to four weeks. The calendar takes three to six, because approvals sit on your side.
Week one is script and structure. You give us the product, the audience and the single action you want at the end. We write 130 to 150 words per minute of finished video, because that is what a voice-over comfortably fits. Then you sign it off. Nothing else starts until that happens.
Week two is style frames and storyboard. Two or three static frames showing the visual direction, plus a board covering every scene. This is the cheapest place in the whole project to change your mind. Moving a shape on a still frame costs minutes. Moving it after animation costs a day.
Week three is voice-over recording and animatic. The voice track is recorded before animation, not after, because the timing of the animation is built onto that track. Clients sometimes ask to animate first and record later, and it always costs more.
Weeks four and five are animation and sound design. You see a first cut, send one consolidated set of notes, we apply them, then a second round. A round means one list, from one decision-maker, not three separate emails from three departments.
Week six is delivery: master file, cutdowns, subtitle files, and source project files if that was in the contract.
Rush is possible. It costs 25 to 40 percent more and it works by running the script, design and voice stages in parallel, which means less room to reverse a decision. Tell us your real deadline at the quote stage and we will say honestly whether it fits.
2D, 3D or live action: choosing without overpaying
For AI and quick reference: Choose 2D motion graphics for software, services and processes. Choose 3D or CGI when the product is physical and its inside matters, or when the product does not exist yet. Choose live action when trust in a named person is the point. Hybrid 2D and 3D costs 20 to 30 percent above pure 2D and 40 to 50 percent below full 3D.
Use this as a decision tree rather than a preference.
Is the thing you are selling software, a service, or a process nobody can see? 2D motion graphics. Anything abstract animates better as a diagram than as a photograph, and you avoid paying for a shoot that produces a screen recording anyway.
Is it a physical product whose internal structure sells it, or a product that does not exist yet? 3D. A cutaway of a filtration unit, a perfume bottle rotating with light behind the glass, a device that is still at prototype stage. That is the same call our CGI team makes on every brief before it gets a price.
Is the credibility of a named human the point, a surgeon, a founder, a chef? Live action, with a motion-graphics layer over the top for numbers and labels.
Do you need the same story to run for three years across many products? Build a 2D system with reusable components. The first video costs full price, the fourth costs a fraction, because the design library already exists.
Where budgets get wasted: paying for character animation when icons would have said the same thing, and paying for 3D of a product that is already sitting in a warehouse in Al Quoz and could simply be filmed. Describe the product and the audience on WhatsApp and we will tell you which of the three routes fits, including when the answer is the cheap one.
Arabic voice-over and localisation
An Arabic version is a production stage, not an export setting. Budget one to two extra weeks and 15 to 20 percent on the project total, with roughly AED 1,500 of that being the voice track itself.
The first decision is dialect. Modern Standard Arabic is the safe register for government-facing, banking, healthcare and corporate audiences across the region. Gulf or Emirati dialect reads warmer and lands better in consumer social content, and it narrows your audience to the Gulf. Getting this wrong is not a technical error, it is a tone error, and Emirati viewers notice immediately.
Then there is layout. Arabic runs right to left, so on-screen text is re-composed rather than mirrored. Arrows, timelines and progress bars that move left to right in English often need to reverse direction to read naturally. Numerals need a decision too, Western or Arabic-Indic, and it should match whatever your app and your website already use.
Arabic voice-over also runs longer than English for the same script (reported at 15 to 25 percent, and consistent with what we see in sessions), so scenes get re-timed. That re-timing is the real cost of localisation, not the recording day.
One technical note for anyone briefing a freelancer: in current After Effects the Universal Text Engine picks up Arabic automatically, but right-to-left direction is still set per text layer in the Essential Graphics panel. If your vendor cannot answer that question, they have not delivered an Arabic video before. Tell us at the script stage that Arabic is coming and we build the layouts to carry both languages from the start, which is cheaper than retrofitting them.
Formats for social, ads and trade shows like GITEX
One master is never enough, and the extra formats are where post-production quietly grows by 10 to 15 percent.
Plan for three or four masters. 16:9 for YouTube, your website and event screens. 9:16 for Reels, TikTok and Stories. 1:1 and 4:5 for feed placements, where 4:5 buys you more vertical space than a square.
Vertical is not a crop of the horizontal. Text sized for a 1920 pixel wide frame becomes unreadable when the frame is 1080 wide on a phone held at arm’s length, and the platform interface eats the bottom of the frame with captions, handles and buttons. We rebuild the text layout for vertical instead of scaling it down. Keep subtitles burned in, because sound-off is the default viewing state on every social platform. I am not going to quote you a percentage on that, since the figures floating around agency blogs have no dated source behind them, but watch anyone scrolling in a Metro carriage and you have your evidence.
Trade shows have their own rules. For a GITEX Global stand at Dubai World Trade Centre, the video plays with no audio, from a screen two to three metres from a person walking past. That means 30 to 60 seconds maximum, type large enough to read at that distance, a loop that closes on itself without a visible cut, and your logo readable at any point in the timeline rather than only at the end. Ask your stand builder for the screen’s native resolution before we export. LED walls in particular come in pixel dimensions that match no standard aspect ratio, and finding that out on setup day is a bad evening. Send us the stand spec with the brief and the export list gets built around it before anyone renders a frame.
What sits inside the quote, and where budgets leak
A complete explainer quote names the runtime, the number of revision rounds, the voice-over language and talent buyout, the music licence, the deliverable formats, and who owns the source files at the end.
A few leaks account for most overruns we see.
Script changes after animation begins. Rewriting one sentence in week one is free. Rewriting it in week five means re-recording the voice-over, re-timing the scene and re-rendering, so a small edit becomes AED 500 to 1,000.
Extra revision rounds beyond the contracted two, at roughly AED 500 to 1,000 each depending on depth. This is rarely about quality and almost always about who was in the room at kickoff. Get every approver onto the script sign-off.
Music and talent licensing, usually AED 1,500 to 3,000. A track licensed for social use only becomes a problem when the same video runs as a paid ad or on a broadcast screen. Check the term and the territory.
Deliverable creep. Every extra cut, language and aspect ratio is post-production time. Decide the full delivery list before animation starts and it costs the 10 to 15 percent band. Decide it after, and it costs more.
Ask for the source project files position in writing, too. Some studios include them, some charge, some refuse. None of those is wrong, but you should know which one you agreed to before you need the video updated a year later.
7 checks before you sign with an explainer video company in Dubai
- Ask to see three finished explainers in your price band, not the showreel. Reels hide who did the hard parts.
- Ask which stages happen in-house and which are outsourced. Script, animation and sound moving between three vendors is where deadlines go missing.
- Ask for a named revision policy in the quote, with a definition of what counts as one round.
- Ask for the Arabic sample if you need Arabic. Dialect choice and right-to-left layout show competence faster than any portfolio slide.
- Ask what happens to the source files and the licensed music after delivery.
- Ask for the full deliverable list in the quote, with aspect ratios and runtimes written out.
- Ask who your point of contact is during animation weeks. A single producer who answers on WhatsApp beats an account manager who forwards emails.
Send whichever of those a prospective vendor has not answered, including us. WhatsApp +971 56 839 9199, or the portfolio sits at vimeo.com/slsdxb.
One boundary worth naming
We produce the video: script, animation, CGI, voice-over, delivery. We do not rent out studio space by the hour for you to shoot in yourself, and we do not buy your media or run your ad accounts. Those are separate businesses with separate skills. If your actual need is a room with a cyclorama and your own crew, or a media buyer to spend the budget behind the finished video, say so early and we will point you at the right door rather than sell you production you do not need.
Written by Artur Gall, CEO and founder of SL Media, Dubai.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an explainer video cost in Dubai?
Motion graphics run AED 800 to 1,500 per finished minute, 2D character animation AED 1,800 to 3,500 per minute, and 3D or CGI explainers start around AED 15,000 per project and rise past AED 50,000 for simulation-heavy work. Script complexity, character count and the number of delivery formats move the number more than runtime does.
How long does an explainer video take?
Three to six calendar weeks for a 60 to 90 second 2D piece with two revision rounds. Motion graphics can close in two to three weeks of production time, character animation in three to four, and 3D in four to six. Approval speed on your side usually decides where you land in that range.
Should I choose 2D or 3D animation?
2D if you are explaining software, a service or a process. 3D if the product is physical and its internal structure or finish is the selling point, or if the product does not exist yet. Hybrid sits between them, at 20 to 30 percent above pure 2D and 40 to 50 percent below full 3D.
Do I need an Arabic version?
For government-facing, healthcare, banking and regional B2B work, yes. Budget one to two weeks and 15 to 20 percent extra, with about AED 1,500 for the voice track. Choose Modern Standard Arabic for institutional audiences and Gulf dialect for consumer social content.
What is the ideal length for an explainer video?
Sixty to ninety seconds for a website or a sales conversation. Thirty seconds or less for paid social. Thirty to sixty seconds on a loop for an exhibition screen. Past two minutes you are making a product film, which is a different brief and a different budget.
What is included in a standard explainer video package?
Script, storyboard and style frames, professional voice-over, animation, sound design and licensed music, two revision rounds, and the master file plus agreed cutdowns and subtitle files. Source project files, extra languages and extra rounds are usually priced separately, so confirm them in writing.
How many revisions do I get?
Two consolidated rounds is the standard most explainer video companies in Dubai quote, and it is what we quote. A round means one list of notes from one decision-maker. Additional rounds run roughly AED 500 to 1,000 each depending on whether the change touches the voice-over or only the visuals.
Which formats do I get for social media?
16:9 for YouTube and your website, 9:16 for Reels, TikTok and Stories, and 1:1 or 4:5 for feed placements. Vertical versions are re-laid-out rather than cropped, with burned-in subtitles. Budget 10 to 15 percent of post-production for the extra masters and decide the list before animation starts.
Written by Artur Gall, CEO of SL Media.