Boords is a browser-based storyboarding and client-approval workspace. Toon Boom Storyboard Pro is the desktop industry standard for drawn boards in animation pipelines. They solve different problems — this page tells you which problem is yours.
Facts checked against public pricing and documentation as of July 13, 2026. Models and pricing in this market change fast — recheck before committing.
The Short Answer
These two tools are rarely a real either/or. Boords is built around collaboration: organizing frames, scripts, versions, and client approvals in the browser, with light AI image generation and one-click animatics. Storyboard Pro is built around craft: professional bitmap/vector drawing, panel timing against dialogue, and animatics with camera moves, made for trained storyboard artists in animation and TV pipelines. Agencies reviewing boards with clients almost always want Boords; animation studios employing board artists almost always want Storyboard Pro.
Your bottleneck is coordination, not drawing. You run an agency or video team, clients need to comment and approve without creating accounts, and frames come from artists' existing tools (Photoshop, Procreate) or AI generation rather than from drawing inside the app.
Your bottleneck is the boards themselves. You employ trained storyboard artists, work in an animation or TV pipeline, and need serious drawing tools, dialogue-timed panels, and animatics with camera moves — and nobody on the team expects AI to draw the frames.
If what you actually want is AI-generated boards from a script — frames you can take on to video, voiceover, and a timed animatic — that is a third category. M Studio generates the storyboard from your screenplay and carries it through motion and audio.
Side By Side
Most 'Boords vs Storyboard Pro' comparisons treat these as competing products. In practice they sit at different stages of maturity of the same craft. Storyboard Pro assumes the drawing happens inside the tool, by someone trained to do it — it is the default in animation and television studios for that reason. Boords assumes the drawing happens elsewhere (or via its AI generation) and that the hard part is everything around the frames: script alignment, versions, comments, and getting a client to actually approve something.
That difference shows up in the details. Boords exports are aimed outward: shareable links that need no login, PDFs in client-friendly layouts, MP4 animatics with subtitles. Storyboard Pro's depth is aimed inward: dialogue-timed panels, camera moves inside the animatic, and Photoshop imports that preserve layer structure for artists who move between tools.
Both vendors publish pricing. Numbers below are from their public pricing pages as of July 13, 2026 — both change plans periodically, so verify before purchasing.
At the entry tier the two cost almost the same — roughly $50–75 per month. The divergence is in what you are paying for: Boords charges for seats, storyboards, and AI image volume; Storyboard Pro charges per artist seat for the drawing and animatic toolset.
| Plan | Boords | Storyboard Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 — 5 users, 5 storyboards, 10 AI images | None (14-day trial) |
| Entry paid | Pro: $75/mo monthly or $50/mo billed yearly (1,000 AI images/mo) | $70/mo billed monthly |
| Annual | Pro yearly: $600/yr ($50/mo) | $602/yr (about 30% off monthly) |
| Team tiers | Team $125/mo ($85/mo yearly, 10 users); Agency $250/mo ($165/mo yearly, 30 users) | Volume licensing for 10+ seats; Student edition $54/yr |
Password-protected share links, no client accounts, frame-level comments, versioning, and sign-off. Reviewers consistently describe Boords as the tool clients actually engage with.
Between AI frame generation and drag-and-drop frame management, a producer or director can assemble a presentable board without a storyboard artist on staff.
Script and frames live in one workspace, and a timed animatic with sound is one click — not an editing session.
Up to 5 users and 5 storyboards free is enough to trial the workflow on a real project before paying.
Full bitmap and vector drawing inside the app — brushes, layers, and Photoshop import that preserves clipping masks and blending modes. Boords' drawing tools are minimal by comparison.
Panel timing against dialogue tracks and camera moves within the animatic — the level of control an animation pipeline expects before layout.
Storyboard Pro is the established standard in animation and TV production. If you hire experienced board artists, they already know it.
At $54/yr for students it is one of the cheapest ways to learn the professional toolset.
Neither tool generates a storyboard from your script. Boords generates individual AI frames from prompts you write, one at a time, with monthly caps. Storyboard Pro has no AI generation at all. If your starting point is a finished screenplay and your goal is a full visual sequence — boards, then motion, then a timed cut with voiceover — you are describing script-to-storyboard AI tools, a different category.
That is the category M Studio is in: it breaks down a script into shots, generates the frames with consistent characters, and continues into AI video, voiceover, sound, and a timeline you can export. Teams that evaluate Boords for AI boards and find the per-frame prompting workflow limiting are usually looking for this instead.
Studio builds a film shot by shot, and you direct every frame — this is the whole path, start to finish.
Start from a one-line brief, or import a screenplay PDF and build straight from the pages you already wrote.
Scenes, action and dialogue laid out shot by shot — editable line by line before anything renders.
Add each character once with a reference image so the same face carries across every shot in the film.
Your script breaks into frames on a canvas. Reorder, reframe and re-prompt any shot until the board reads right.
Turn approved frames into motion one shot at a time, then layer voiceover, music and sound effects.
Take the finished sequence out as an mp4, mov or webm, ready for the edit or the pitch.
There is no length cap in the editor. Because films are assembled shot by shot, how long a piece can run comes down to how many clips your plan includes — not a limit in the tool.
FAQ
Boords. Its share links, frame-level client comments, approvals, and versioning are built for agency review cycles, and clients need no account. Storyboard Pro is built for trained board artists in animation pipelines, not for client-facing review.
No. Toon Boom Storyboard Pro has no AI generation — it is a professional drawing and animatic tool. Boords includes plan-capped AI frame generation; script-to-storyboard AI platforms like M Studio generate entire boards from a screenplay.
As of July 2026, Boords Pro is $75/mo (or $50/mo billed yearly) and Storyboard Pro is $70/mo (or $602/yr annual). Entry pricing is similar; Boords adds Team ($125/mo) and Agency ($250/mo) tiers for more seats and AI volume, while Storyboard Pro offers a $54/yr student edition.
Usually not. Animation pipelines rely on Storyboard Pro's drawing toolset, dialogue-timed panels, and camera-move animatics. Boords replaces the coordination around boards, not the craft of drawing them.
Boords has a free plan (5 users, 5 storyboards, 10 AI images). Storyboard Pro offers only a 14-day trial. The open-source Storyboarder app by Wonder Unit is free but has been effectively unmaintained since 2020.
Neither is built for that. Boords generates single frames from prompts with monthly caps; Storyboard Pro has no AI. For script-to-storyboard generation with consistent characters — continuing into video and audio — use a script-to-film platform like M Studio.
Related Pages
Compare
How M Studio compares to Boords for teams that want AI boards from a script instead of per-frame prompting.
Open pageCompare
How M Studio compares to Storyboard Pro when the goal is previsualization rather than drawn animation boards.
Open pageGuide
The full category comparison: Boords, Storyboard Pro, and AI storyboard generators ranked by workflow.
Open pageFeature
M Studio's script-to-storyboard workflow with character consistency across frames.
Open pageFeature
Turn boards into a timed animatic with voiceover and sound in the same project.
Open pageBlog
What each pre-production artifact answers, and when boards alone are enough.
Open page
Try Both In One Place
M Studio turns a script into a storyboard, then generates video through multiple AI models — so you compare outputs on your actual scenes instead of demo reels.
Plans from $27/mo100% refund within 24hCancel anytime