VideoScribe alternative: hand-draw the pictures you already have
VideoScribe is a full whiteboard video editor: scenes, text, a stock image library, voice-over and music on one timeline. WhiteboardAnimation.ai does one part of that — it takes a finished picture you already have, any PNG, JPEG or WebP, and draws it by hand, line art first and then colour — and you finish the video in your own editor.
| Compared | VideoScribe | WhiteboardAnimation.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Lite $150/year, Core $255/year, Max $320/year per licence (billed annually); monthly billing also offered. | Free to start; Starter and Pro monthly or yearly, or a one-off credit pack. One credit draws one picture. Current prices are on the pricing page. |
| Free option | 7-day free trial, no card: 3 video downloads, up to 5 minutes, watermarked. | 5 free credits on sign-up, no card; free exports are 720p with a watermark. |
| What you start from | A blank canvas or a template; add text, images from its library (9,000+, or 5M premium on Core) or your own JPEG, PNG, SVG or GIF. | One finished picture: PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 10 MB. It does not generate pictures from text. |
| Your own PNG or JPEG | Revealed by a diagonal wipe behind the hand; stroke-by-stroke drawing needs an SVG. | Drawn stroke by stroke from the picture itself: outlines first, then colour region by region. |
| Output | 1080p MP4, or a GIF of the first 15 seconds. | MP4 or WebM, up to 1080p, in the picture’s shape or 16:9, 1:1 or 9:16; transparent WebM or PNG frames on Pro. |
| Editing | Scenes, camera moves, text, voice-over, music library, AI script and image tools. | Length, one of six hands or none, lines only or lines + colour, colour order. No timeline, text or voice-over: you edit elsewhere. |
| Best for | Building a whole explainer video, start to finish, in one tool. | Turning illustrations you already have into drawing clips for your own edit, or for an agent through the API. |
The same picture in both
On 20 October 2026 we uploaded the same PNG — our water-cycle illustration, 724 × 543 — to a VideoScribe free-trial project in the browser, set its entrance to Hand draw for 20 seconds, framed the camera on it and downloaded the 1080p MP4. The frames below are from that file at a quarter, half, three quarters and the end of the drawing, beside our clip of the same picture at the same points.
The hand sweeps across the picture on a diagonal and the finished, coloured picture appears behind it. There is no separate line-art pass; the trial adds its watermark.
The hand traces the outlines first — cloud, mountain, river, arrows — and the colour comes after, region by region, as if someone drew it. Watch the full wasserkreislauf als whiteboard-animation
What each costs
VideoScribe sells yearly or monthly licences per person: Lite at $150 a year with 5 downloads a month, Core at $255 with 30, Max at $320 with unlimited downloads and reseller rights. Lite watermarks premium images; Core and Max do not.
WhiteboardAnimation.ai: Free to start; Starter and Pro monthly or yearly, or a one-off credit pack. One credit draws one picture. Current prices are on the pricing page. Pricing
When VideoScribe is the better choice
- You want to build the whole video in one place: scenes, captions, voice-over and music on a single timeline.
- You draw with stock icons, or your artwork is SVG — VideoScribe draws SVG paths stroke by stroke.
- You need reseller rights or seats for a team (Max and multi-licence plans).
Using both, or moving over
- Export the scene or illustration you want drawn as a PNG and upload it here; every picture is its own clip.
- Put the clips into your video editor — Premiere, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve or CapCut — and add your voice-over and music there.
- For drawings over your own footage, export with a transparent background.