Storybrdr vs Boords: which storyboard tool fits your job?

Both build storyboards and send them to clients for approval. The difference is the shoot day, and whether you want AI drawing your frames. Prices checked September 2026.

I make Storybrdr, so weigh this page accordingly. 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 is built around making, presenting and approving the board, and turning the approved board into a shot list. Storybrdr carries those same shots into the shoot day as well: they open on a phone in shooting order, and takes, pickups and continuity photographs are logged against the shot they belong to.

Side by side

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: a zoomable timeline with your soundtrack against it, MP4 out, and onion skinning in the drawing tool so a movement reads across two frames. They also publish an API and webhooks, which I do not.

They also sell 5, 10 and 30-user plans, and from the Team tier up a teammate or freelancer can be given access to specific projects only. Storybrdr's Studio and Agency plans hold 5 and 10 people, every member can be limited to named projects on any plan, and Boords still scales higher for a bigger crew.

Where the two products separate is what the board is for after the client says yes. On a commercial, a promo or a music video, the approval is the middle of the work rather than 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: 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 does not generate frames at all.

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, we agree.

Where Storybrdr is different

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 and you can still take a PDF. Share links stop working and comments pause until you subscribe again, then everything, including your links, comes back exactly as it was. Nothing is ever deleted.

Built on real jobs. Storybrdr is made by a working filmmaker in Cornwall, on his own productions, and the screenshots on this site are photographs of the product rather than drawings of it. They are taken from a sample project, not from client work, which stays where it belongs.

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 are the one holding the phone at 6am, and 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.

If you have not decided that Boords is the thing you are replacing, the wider field is in the best storyboard software in 2026, and Boords alternatives, sorted by why you are looking takes the other nine tools one at a time.

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