I watched 15 explainer video examples worth stealing from, from Dollar Shave Club to live SaaS demos, with one technique to copy from each. See them here.
15 Best Explainer Video Examples to Learn From (2026)
I have sat through a lot of explainer videos that explained nothing. A spinning logo, a calm voice promising to "transform your workflow," ninety seconds gone, and I still could not tell you what the product did. So when I went looking for explainer video examples worth copying, I set one rule: I had to be able to watch each one, point to a moment that made it work, and name one thing you could steal.
That is what this list is. Fifteen real videos you can watch right now, grouped by the job they do, with a technique to lift from each and an honest note on where each one falls short. Some are famous brand films. Most are working teams solving a real problem on a real budget. If you are about to brief, script, or build an explainer and want to see good ones before you start, this is for you.
What Makes a Great Explainer Video?
It wins the first ten seconds
Almost every example below opens on the viewer's problem, not the brand name. The weak ones open with "Welcome to" and a logo. The strong ones make you feel seen before they sell anything. If your first sentence could be deleted with no loss, delete it.
It explains one idea, not five
A good explainer picks a single message and protects it. Trying to cover every feature is the fastest way to make a viewer remember none of them. The clearest videos here say one thing well and trust a follow-up video to say the next thing.
It shows the product in motion
Telling me a tool is easy to use means nothing. Showing a cursor click three times and finish the task means everything. The best demos and how-tos put the actual interface on screen and let the motion carry the argument.
It respects length
Sixty to ninety seconds is the homepage sweet spot, and drop-off climbs sharply past 90 seconds. A few examples here run longer on purpose, but they earn it. If your script does not earn the runtime, cut the runtime.
It works on mute and ends with a next step
Most people scroll with the sound off, so the strongest videos read through captions and visuals alone. And every one finishes by telling the viewer exactly what to do next. That discipline is part of why landing pages with an explainer can convert noticeably better than pages without one.
It survives a second watch
The videos I kept coming back to had one small choice (a deadpan line, a paper cutout, a forklift gag) that made them worth replaying. A clip you only watch once teaches once. A clip you replay gets shared.
Quick Picks: The Best Explainer Video for Each Goal
- Best live-action brand explainer: Dollar Shave Club (one deadpan founder, one clear offer)
- Best animated educational explainer: TED-Ed (one question, paper-craft visuals, real curiosity)
- Best problem-first SaaS explainer: Slack (shows the chaos before the cure)
- Best origin-of-the-format explainer: Common Craft (paper cutouts that still teach)
- Best interactive product demo: Pyne AI (the explainer that lets the viewer choose the path)
- Best technical how-to at scale: Stratasys (one script, many languages, no studio)
15 Explainer Video Examples, Reviewed in Detail
I have grouped these by the job they do, not by a ranking. Five are well-known external videos you can watch on YouTube; the other ten are real teams building explainer-style videos at scale. Each entry names one on-screen moment that makes it work and one thing to steal.
- Dollar Shave Club: The Live-Action Explainer Video Everyone Copies
Dollar Shave Club: The Live-Action Explainer Video Everyone Copies
Start with the one most people picture when they hear "explainer video": Our Blades Are Great. It is a single founder, Michael Dubin, walking and talking through a warehouse for about a minute and a half.
The whole video is one mostly continuous deadpan tour. Dubin strolls past the shelves making the case that a good razor does not need ten blades or a vibrating handle, while gags pile up around him (a bear, a toddler, a leaf blower spraying confetti at the end). The comedy never gets between you and the offer: a dollar a month, blades at your door.
Posted in 2012, it pulled roughly 12,000 orders in two days and has since passed 27 million views.
What to steal: lead with the value, not the production. The script does the selling; the visuals just keep you watching.
Where it falls short: the tone is a one-time trick. The brand spent years trying to top it, and most companies that imitate the irreverence without a real offer underneath end up with noise.
- TED-Ed: An Animated Explainer Video Built on One Question
TED-Ed: An Animated Explainer Video Built on One Question
For animation, Why do we dream? by Amy Adkins is a clean benchmark. It takes a question everyone has and answers it without a single talking head.
The video opens on Mesopotamian kings recording dreams on wax tablets, then walks through seven theories one by one, each illustrated with paper-craft-style animation that hands your eye a new image exactly when the narration introduces it. There is no presenter and no hard sell, only structure and curiosity.
What to steal: frame the whole video around one question the viewer already wants answered, then resolve it in tidy, numbered beats. Curiosity is the cheapest retention tool there is.
Where it falls short: this format teaches concepts beautifully but cannot show a product in use. Nobody books a demo off a TED-Ed video, and that is fine, because selling was never the job.
- Slack: A SaaS Explainer Video That Shows the Problem First
Slack: A SaaS Explainer Video That Shows the Problem First
So Yeah, We Tried Slack is a mockumentary made by Sandwich for Slack in 2014, and it is still the template for B2B explainers that do not feel like B2B explainers.
It opens with Adam Lisagor admitting, in flat deadpan, that his company ran fine on email and a shared drive. From there it shows a real team drowning in scattered messages, then quietly demonstrates how the product pulls the mess into one place. You watch the problem before you ever watch the software. It racked up around 1.3 million views on YouTube.
What to steal: dramatize the pain first. A viewer who recognizes their own chaos in your opening will sit through the solution.
Where it falls short: the humor needs real comedic talent and budget. A flat read of the same script lands like a corporate skit, and plenty of imitators have proven it.
- Common Craft: The Paper-Cutout Explainer Video That Started the Genre
Common Craft: The Paper-Cutout Explainer Video That Started the Genre
Before slick motion graphics, there was Twitter in Plain English. Common Craft shot it in 2008, and it more or less invented the modern explainer.
A hand slides paper cutouts across a whiteboard while Lee LeFever narrates: a little paper person posts an update, and the hand physically moves it out to the friends who follow them. That is the entire trick, and it is genius. There is exactly one place to look, and the motion of the hand is the explanation. The video has passed 10 million views, and the same studio's Dropbox video reportedly reached 25 million.
What to steal: when a concept is abstract, make it physical. Showing one object move through a system beats any list of features.
Where it falls short: the handmade look now reads as dated to some audiences, and the style cannot carry an emotional or premium brand story.
- Crazy Egg: An Animated Homepage Explainer Video With Proven ROI
Crazy Egg: An Animated Homepage Explainer Video With Proven ROI
Most explainer videos cannot prove they paid off. The Crazy Egg explainer can. Produced by Demo Duck for founder Neil Patel, the animated homepage video runs about two and a half minutes and walks a non-technical visitor through what the analytics tool does.
The clearest stretch is the heatmap reveal: the video shows a webpage, then layers warm and cool colors over it to make "where your visitors click" visible in a way a paragraph never could. After the video went on the homepage, Crazy Egg reported a 64% lift in conversions and around $21,000 in extra monthly revenue.
What to steal: visualize the invisible. If your product surfaces something users cannot normally see, animating that exact reveal is your strongest 15 seconds.
Where it falls short: at over two minutes it runs long for a homepage, and the founder himself later argued the script, not the animation budget, did the heavy lifting.
- Pyne AI: An Interactive Product Demo Explainer Video
Pyne AI: An Interactive Product Demo Explainer Video
Here the format starts to change. Pyne builds interactive demo agents with HeyGen that guide a user through a product and let them choose their own onboarding route, rather than sitting through a fixed clip.
What struck me is the completion data. Pyne's CEO Roman Geugelin says classic product tours and recorded walkthroughs lose people who click away before the end, while demos built this way reach roughly 10x higher completion than comparable onboarding tools, and help double trial conversion for product-led SaaS teams. Because it runs on an API, a customer can rewrite a script and update the demo in seconds instead of re-recording.
What to steal: for a complex product, let the viewer steer. An explainer that branches to the use case someone cares about beats a linear video that covers all of them. Start from a product demo video and add interactivity once the script works.
Where it falls short: interactive demos need a real product and setup behind them. For a 60-second brand story, this is overkill.
- getitAI: An Interactive E-Commerce Explainer Video
getitAI: An Interactive E-Commerce Explainer Video
getitAI turns avatars into conversational shopping assistants, so a product page can answer questions out loud instead of waiting for the visitor to read.
In a public demo, co-founder Michael Greenberg built a live assistant for apparel brand True Classic, blending a branded avatar talking to camera (A-roll) with product footage cut in behind it (B-roll). The avatar recommends items in real time, so the "explainer" and the "salesperson" are the same thing. CEO Alain Denzler frames it as turning a passive page into a conversation.
What to steal: pair a talking presenter with product B-roll so the viewer sees the thing while they hear about it. That A-roll plus B-roll rhythm holds attention better than either alone.
Where it falls short: a conversational layer is more than a simple awareness clip needs. If you only want a one-way 90-second intro, this is more machinery than the job requires.
- Stratasys: A Multilingual Technical How-To Explainer Video
Stratasys: A Multilingual Technical How-To Explainer Video
Stratasys uses HeyGen to localize technical training videos across its global teams, and the numbers are the point.
The team writes a training video once, then localizes it with batch translation, brand glossaries, and forced pronunciation rules so specialized 3D-printing terms stay correct in every language. Instructional designers import a PowerPoint, add a script, and let an avatar deliver it. Stratasys reported a 120% jump in YouTube viewership from localized content and over $1 million in avoided translation and production cost.
What to steal: if your product is technical, lock terminology before you scale. A glossary that controls pronunciation and translation is what keeps a how-to credible in ten languages. Building from a deck? Use ppt to video.
Where it falls short: an avatar reading dense technical content is efficient, not cinematic, and a subject expert still needs to proof the script before it goes wide.
- HubSpot: A Product Explainer Video That Blends Into the Work
HubSpot: A Product Explainer Video That Blends Into the Work
HubSpot's team adopted HeyGen to keep up with frequently updated products and the multi-week translation waits that used to stall every video.
My favorite detail is what one team member noticed about audience reaction: the best response was no reaction at all, because the avatar-led video blended in so well that viewers did not stop to question it. For a fast-moving SaaS company, that invisibility is the win. Translation timelines that once ran a week or two collapsed, so updates ship while the product is still current.
What to steal: for product explainers, "did not notice anything off" is a higher bar than "looked impressive." Aim for content that blends into the experience rather than interrupting it.
Where it falls short: blending in is the goal, so this style will never win a creative award. If you need a flagship brand film, this is not that lane.
- Miro: A How-To Explainer Video That Updates Instantly
Miro: A How-To Explainer Video That Updates Instantly
Miro's education team scaled its product videos with HeyGen to support feature adoption across 90 million users.
Learning media designer Steve Sowrey described the old trap perfectly: by the time a video hit post-production, the product team had often changed a button, an icon, or a logo, and the footage was already outdated, sometimes delaying a release by weeks. After testing more than ten AI video tools, his team landed on a workflow that produces how-to and onboarding videos around 10x faster, and lets them re-render the moment a button changes instead of booking another shoot.
What to steal: treat explainers as living documents. If your product changes weekly, pick a production method you can update in an afternoon, not one that forces a reshoot.
Where it falls short: rapid-update content favors utility over polish. These are clear and current, not showpieces.
- Copient.ai: An Interactive Role-Play Explainer Video
Copient.ai: An Interactive Role-Play Explainer Video
The most unusual entry is a sales-training platform. Copient.ai built its training experience on HeyGen's interactive avatars, so a rep does not watch a video about objection handling, they argue with the avatar in real time.
A salesperson runs an unscripted role-play against a lifelike buyer persona, refines a pitch, and practices handling pushback, with the scenario tuned to the company's own product and methodology. Since launch, the platform has run more than 15,000 role-plays across 30-plus clients, and top university sales teams have used it to prepare for national competitions.
What to steal: the highest-retention explainer is one the viewer participates in. Where the goal is a skill, not awareness, a conversation beats a clip.
Where it falls short: interactive role-play is a specialist format. It is the wrong tool for a passive, one-to-many message.
- Sibelco: A Fast-Turnaround Safety Explainer Video
Sibelco: A Fast-Turnaround Safety Explainer Video
Sibelco, a 150-year-old materials company, rebuilt its internal training videos with HeyGen, and the driver was speed plus safety.
Digital Learning Manager Jean-Marie Petit said the traditional process of producing internal training videos used to take months. His team now produces studio-quality safety and process videos without actors or a studio, compressing months into days and saving roughly 1,000 euros for every minute of finished training content. For a workforce handling industrial minerals, clear and current instructions matter more than gloss.
What to steal: for safety and process content, prioritize speed of updates. A slightly plainer video that is always accurate beats a polished one that is six months out of date.
Where it falls short: a video can teach a procedure, but it cannot replace hands-on practice for high-risk tasks. It is one layer of training, not the whole program.
- Anton Voroniuk: Avatar-Led Educational Explainer Videos at Scale
Anton Voroniuk: Avatar-Led Educational Explainer Videos at Scale
Educator Anton Voroniuk reached more than a million students using avatars to deliver courses on Udemy and Coursera without filming every lesson.
He used to spend hours, sometimes days, scripting, recording, and editing each video. Avatar-led delivery cut that to a fraction, and he reports that students applying the same approach produce content roughly 40x cheaper and 8x faster, in multiple languages. The result is a steady stream of clear educational explainers that one person can keep current.
What to steal: if you teach for a living, separate your face from your throughput. Scripting and an avatar presenter let a solo creator publish like a studio.
Where it falls short: avatar-led teaching can feel less personal than a real instructor on emotionally heavy or relationship-driven material, where presence matters as much as information.
- Reply.io: A Founder-Led Short-Form Explainer Video
Reply.io: A Founder-Led Short-Form Explainer Video
Reply.io scaled its CEO's short-form presence with a HeyGen avatar of founder Oleg Campbell, who had no time to sit in front of a camera every week.
His social manager Anastasiia Nak now scripts thought-leadership and product explainer clips that an avatar of Oleg delivers, which grew his TikTok to roughly a quarter of a million followers in under a year and saved the team around 40 hours of production a week. The founder's voice keeps explaining the product even when the founder is busy running it.
What to steal: if your best explainer is your founder and your founder has no time, clone the delivery, not the message. Consistency beats sporadic perfect takes.
Where it falls short: an avatar of a real, recognizable person can feel slightly off on raw, personal content, so keep it to clear explanation rather than emotional storytelling.
- Lattice: A Personalized Onboarding Explainer Video
Lattice: A Personalized Onboarding Explainer Video
The last one is the smallest in length and the most personal in feel. Lattice generates onboarding videos with HeyGen that greet each new hire by name.
Instead of the generic first-day video everyone skips, teams produce welcome explainers that swap in the new hire's name and adjust variables like department or region, then ship hundreds of them in minutes. A new employee sees a video that was, in effect, made for them, which is a warmer start than a static slide deck.
What to steal: personalization is a retention lever, not a gimmick. Even one named detail makes a viewer feel a video was meant for them.
Where it falls short: personalization at scale only works if the script is good. Swap a name into a lazy template and it still feels like a template.
All 15 Explainer Video Examples Compared
How to Make an Explainer Video Like These Examples
Look across the list and one pattern repeats: format follows function, and the cheapest version that actually teaches or sells tends to win. Dollar Shave Club needed a face and a joke. Crazy Egg needed an animated heatmap. Miro needed something it could re-render the day a button changed. Nobody over-built.
A second pattern is that most of these formats are now buildable from a script in a browser. The avatar explainers, the localized how-tos, the personalized welcome videos, and the interactive demos above were all made by named teams using HeyGen, which is why I keep pointing to it. Across its customer base, HeyGen reports up to 70% lower production costs and around 62% faster training video creation, which is the math that lets a team like Sibelco turn months into days.
If you are starting from something you already have, the route is short. Turn a finished script into video with script to video. Animate a faceless concept clip with an ai video explainer. Convert an existing manual or whitepaper using pdf to video. When the video works in one language, push it into others with the ai video translator so you are not re-shooting per market.
Here is the honest caveat. AI avatars still feel slightly uncanny on long, emotionally heavy storytelling, so the cinematic comedy of a Dollar Shave Club, or a brand film built on a real human performance, is better shot for real. For demos, how-tos, training, onboarding, and localized product content, the speed and update-ability win. For a once-a-year hero film, hire the crew.
Which Explainer Video Example Should You Copy?
Treat this as a menu, not a ranking. Match the example to the job, then build the smallest version that does it: a deadpan founder for a launch, an animated reveal for an invisible feature, an interactive demo for a complex product, a personalized clip for onboarding. The teams above did not out-spend anyone.
They picked the right format and shipped. If you want to try the avatar and how-to approach yourself, HeyGen's free plan lets you turn a script into a finished explainer with its ai video generator. Start with one video and one clear idea.
FAQs
What is an explainer video?
An explainer video is a short video, usually 60 to 90 seconds, that makes a product, service, or concept easy to understand fast. It typically opens on a problem, shows a solution in plain terms, and ends with a clear next step. Styles range from live-action and 2D animation to avatar-led demos and interactive walkthroughs.
How long should an explainer video be?
For a homepage or ad, aim for 60 to 90 seconds, since viewer drop-off rises sharply after that. Educational and how-to videos can run longer because the audience arrived wanting depth. The real test is not a number: cut any second the script does not earn, and split anything over two minutes into a series.
How much does an explainer video cost?
A custom 60-second animated explainer commonly runs from about $2,500 to $7,500, with premium 3D work reaching $15,000 or more, and the market average sits near $8,700. AI-generated explainers cost roughly 50 to 80% less, often from under $100 to around $1,500, which is why many teams now mix both.
How long does it take to make an explainer video?
A professionally produced 60 to 90-second animated explainer usually takes four to six weeks through scripting, storyboarding, voiceover, animation, and revisions. AI-based workflows compress that to days or even hours, which is the gap Sibelco and Miro described when they switched. Either way, the script eats most of the timeline, so start there.
What makes a good explainer video?
A strong opening that names the viewer's problem, one core message, the product shown in motion, disciplined length, captions for sound-off viewing, and a single clear call to action. The videos people replay also have one memorable choice, a deadpan line or a clever visual, that survives a second watch.
Are animated or live-action explainers better?
Neither wins outright. Animation suits abstract concepts and invisible features, like Crazy Egg's heatmap reveal. Live-action suits brand personality and trust, like Dollar Shave Club. Avatar-led and interactive formats sit in between, fast to update and easy to localize, which is why so many product teams now use them for demos and training.
Can I make an explainer video with AI?
Yes. Most demo, how-to, training, onboarding, and localized product explainers above were made with AI avatars and a script, no camera or crew. You can start free and turn text, a deck, or a PDF into a finished video with ai avatars. Save the live shoot for cinematic brand films where a real performance matters.
