Storybrdr vs Boords: which storyboard tool fits your job?

Both build storyboards and send them to clients for approval. The difference is what happens on the shoot day, and whether you want AI to draw your frames at all.

I make Storybrdr, so read the ranking on this page knowing that. Every number below is taken from each vendor's own published pricing on the date stamped above, and I would rather you checked them than took my word for it.

Boords is the established tool here. Going since 2015, polished, and good at what it was built for: making a storyboard, turning it into an animatic, and getting a client to sign it off. Its own co-founder has written that it has taken more than 250,000 signups.

The question this page answers is what happens after that signature.

The one-sentence difference

Boords finishes at approval. Storybrdr keeps going into the shoot day: the approved frames go to set on a phone, and takes, pickups and continuity photographs get logged against the shot they belong to.

That is the whole of it. Everything below is detail.

Side by side

| | Storybrdr | Boords | | --------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Single-user price | £29 a month, VAT included | $39 a month, or $26 a month billed yearly | | Currency billed in | Pounds | US dollars | | Storyboards and scripts | Unlimited | Unlimited | | AI-generated images | None, by design | 250 a month on Solo | | Client review without an account | Yes | Yes | | Animatics | Present mode, played at your durations | Yes, a core strength | | The shoot day on a phone | Yes | No | | Takes, pickups, continuity, wrap report | Yes | No | | Feature differences between plans | None. Tiers differ by seats only | Yes, plus AI image caps per tier | | Free trial | 30 days, card required, nothing charged until it ends | Free trial offered; card requirement not stated on their pricing page |

Prices are as each vendor published them on the date stamped at the top of this page. Compare them carefully rather than by the headline number: Boords bills in US dollars, so a UK buyer also pays whatever their card charges for the conversion, and Boords' lowest figure is the yearly one, paid up front.

What Boords does well, and what it does not

Boords has spent a decade on drawing and animatics, and it shows. If the animatic is your final deliverable, they have built more of that than I have. They also sell 5, 10 and 30-user plans today, where Storybrdr's Studio and Agency tiers are published but not yet purchasable.

Everything else in the comparison runs the other way.

Boords stops at the moment the client says yes. That is not a criticism of the build quality, it is what the product is for. But on a live-action job the approval is the middle of the work, not the end of it. The board still has to survive a shooting order, a 6am call, a lens change, a pickup, and an editor who was not there. Boords hands that day a PDF. Storybrdr hands it the board.

The fork nobody names: do you want AI frames?

Most tools in this category have gone AI-image-first in the last two years. Boords will generate 250 frames a month for you on its cheapest plan. Storybrdr will not generate any, ever.

That is deliberate. Storybrdr uses AI to make your image library searchable by what is in the picture, which is genuinely useful and invisible. What it will not do is draw the frames, because on the jobs I shoot the board is a promise to a client about what we are going to film, and a generated approximation of a shot nobody has planned is a promise you cannot keep on the day.

Your frames, your hand, your set. If that sentence sounds like an inconvenience, Boords is the tool that draws for you. If it sounds like the point, keep reading.

Where Storybrdr wins

The board reaches the set. The approved frames open on a phone in shooting order. Statuses get tapped with a thumb, the good take is circled with a half-second hold, pickups are logged with the reason they were needed, and continuity photographs attach to the shot they belong to. The wrap report writes itself from what the crew tapped. Boords has no equivalent, because it was never trying to have one.

Nothing is held back on a cheaper plan. Every feature is on every plan, including On Set. Tiers differ by how many of you there are and nothing else. No project counts, no storage tiers, no watermarks, and no image credits to run out of in the last week of the month. Boords caps AI images per tier and prices its features up the range.

Pounds, VAT included. Boords is a London company billing in US dollars, so a UK buyer also pays whatever their card charges to convert it. What Storybrdr's pricing page says is what leaves your account.

Stopping never costs you your work. If a subscription lapses the workspace goes read-only rather than dark: every board still opens, links you already sent to clients keep working, and you can still take a PDF. Nothing is ever deleted.

Made by someone who is on set every week. Storybrdr is built by a working filmmaker in Cornwall, on his own jobs, and every screenshot on this site is a photograph of the product doing real work on a real production.

Moving over

Boards do not import automatically, and I would rather say so than bury it. In practice people start Storybrdr on their next job rather than migrating the last one, because a storyboard belongs to a production that has usually wrapped.

Export your frames from Boords, drag them in, and the shot information gets typed once. On a normal commercial that is an evening, and it is the last time you type it, because from there the same board runs the day and hands over to the editor.

The short version

If your work ends at client approval and you want a machine to draw for you, Boords does that well.

If you shoot live action, if you are the one holding the phone at 6am, and if you want the board you got approved to be the same document that runs the shoot and reaches the edit, that is the job Storybrdr was built for and Boords does not attempt.

Thirty days free, everything switched on, and you can find out on a real job.