How Long B2B Video Production Takes in 2026

How we compiled this

This is a review desk, so the method comes before the numbers.

Every figure below is taken from the agency's own published page and is attributed to it in the table. We did not ask agencies for timelines, we did not average anything into an industry benchmark, and we did not include a number that only appears in a sales deck or a quote. If an agency does not publish a schedule, it is listed as not published rather than estimated, because a made-up figure is worse than an absent one.

Three things to know about reading the table.

A turnaround is not a timeline

The single biggest source of confusion in this category. A turnaround figure measures one handoff, usually an edit returned on supplied footage. A timeline measures the whole engagement, from the first call to the delivered files. An agency advertising 24-hour turnaround and an agency advertising eight weeks may be describing the same amount of calendar time differently, because they are measuring different things. The table states what each figure covers.

Business days and calendar weeks are different units

Several agencies publish in business days, which is the more honest unit because it excludes the weekends a client cannot approve anything in anyway. Where a figure is published in business days we have kept it in business days rather than converting, since the conversion is where the error creeps in.

Published figures move

These were checked in November 2026. Pricing and turnaround pages change more often than any other page on an agency site, so treat the table as a map of who commits to what rather than a quote, and check the linked page before you plan around a number.

What we did not do. We did not rank these agencies, because a schedule is not a quality measure and the fastest published figure is not the best answer for every project. We also did not compare an agency's published figure against what any client reported, because we have no like-for-like way to verify that.

What agencies actually publish about schedule

The standard timeline, phase by phase

The shape below is the common denominator across the published templates. Durations are given as the published ranges rather than our estimate, attributed in each case.

Discovery and brief

Lemonlight publishes 3 to 5 business days, and names what the client has to deliver for that to hold: brand guidelines, product access, approved claims and a named approver. That last item is the one that decides the rest of the schedule, and it is the cheapest thing on the list to get right.

Apollo Studio compresses this to day one, with strategy and a storyboard usually back within about 72 hours. The difference is not speed of work so much as how much is settled before the clock starts.

Script and pre-production

Lemonlight publishes 7 to 10 business days for script, shot list, talent and location approvals. Lightswitch publishes 1 to 4 weeks for the same phase and says plainly what the spread depends on: a few decision makers moves quickly, many do not.

This is where a project is won or lost on time. Every change after this point costs more than it would have cost here, and in animation the cost of a late change is steepest of all.

Production

The shortest phase and the one everybody budgets for. Lemonlight publishes 1 to 2 shoot days. Lightswitch says shoots can usually be booked with one week's notice, which is a more useful number than the shoot length, because the booking lead time is the part that collides with other people's calendars.

In animation there is no shoot, which is why animated projects are not automatically faster: the time moves into production and review rather than disappearing.

Post-production and review

The longest phase in every published template. Lemonlight publishes 10 to 15 business days and names the condition attached: consolidated feedback within two rounds. Lightswitch publishes first drafts within 10 business days of the shoot and revisions back within 5 business days of your feedback, which is one of the few published commitments in this market that binds the agency to a response time rather than only the client.

Delivery and versioning

Lemonlight publishes 3 to 5 business days, conditional on having a final list of platforms and specs. Apollo Studio folds this into week three, delivering the final master plus cuts sized for landing page, paid, social and sales.

Versioning is the phase most often discovered rather than planned. If you know you need nine aspect ratios, say so in discovery, because framing for them at the shoot costs nothing and retrofitting them afterwards costs a week.

How long a B2B explainer video takes

Explainers run longer than most other B2B formats, and the published figures agree on it.

Lemonlight publishes 8 to 10 weeks for product and explainer video against 6 to 8 weeks for brand and corporate, and gives the reason: scripting and animation extend both ends, and explainers carry a technical accuracy review where a product or subject expert confirms the claims are right. That review is its own approval round, and it is the one most teams discover rather than schedule.

Epipheo, which has published more than 6,000 explainer videos over fifteen years, bands the schedule by budget rather than by format: 4 to 6 weeks under $25,000, 6 to 10 weeks up to $75,000, and 10 to 16 weeks above that. Read alongside Lemonlight's figure, the two are consistent, since a typical B2B explainer sits in the middle band.

The fastest published explainer figures come from agencies working to a fixed scope. Studio Monday publishes 14 days for an explainer or launch video. Motion The Agency publishes six working days for a 60-second piece and eight for 90 seconds. Content Beta publishes ten-day delivery on its single-video package. In each case the speed comes from the scope being fixed in advance rather than from the work being rushed.

Why the range is three weeks to ten

Apollo Studio's own guide puts the industry range at three to ten weeks and attributes the spread to decision speed rather than production speed. Every other agency that publishes a reason says the same thing in different words: Lightswitch says the days that blow up a schedule are approvals, calendars and permissions, most of which sit on the client's side; Lemonlight says approval rounds rather than filming set the length of a corporate video.

So the variable is not craft. Three things decide where a project lands.

How many people sign off. One named approver with authority is the single largest schedule lever available to you, and it costs nothing. An approval chain assembled as the project goes, with reviewers added at each stage, restarts the discussion every time someone new reads the script.

How fast feedback comes back, and in what form. Lemonlight's template is explicit that its post-production figure assumes consolidated feedback within two rounds. Feedback arriving in pieces over a week is not two rounds, it is five, and it is scheduled as two.

Whether the thing being filmed is ready. On a technical product this is the quiet one. A demo environment with realistic data in it takes longer to prepare than people expect, and nothing downstream can start without it.

What a rush actually requires

Rush work is real and most agencies will quote it. Apollo Studio publishes that its rush projects have shipped in eight working days, and publishes the three conditions: one person with authority to approve, a script signed off as soon as it lands, and the product and a test account ready before production starts.

That list is worth reading as a general rule rather than one agency's terms, because it describes what compression actually does. The production work compresses well. Review time does not, and on a technical product review time is the part worth protecting. Motion The Agency and Shootsta both publish that faster than their standard turnaround is available at additional cost, which is the normal shape of this: you are buying priority in a queue, not a different process.

If a rush is likely, the useful conversation to have at kickoff is which of the three conditions above you cannot meet, since that is the one that will set the real date.

Working backwards from a launch date

The practical method, and the one Lemonlight's own template recommends: set the launch date first, subtract each phase's duration up the table until you reach the kickoff date the schedule requires, then mark the two or three dates that genuinely cannot move and treat everything else as flexible.

For a product launch specifically, Apollo Studio's guide recommends starting about six weeks out, which leaves time to agree the story, write the script and the cut list, freeze the build the video will show, and produce the film and its cutdowns with a week spare for a teaser. A launch video started three weeks out is possible and leaves no room for the product to change, which on a software launch it usually does.

The freeze date is the item most often missed. If the video shows a product that is still being built, someone has to decide when the version on screen stops changing, and that decision belongs in the kickoff rather than in week three.

Final thoughts

The most useful thing in the table above is not the fastest number. It is that eleven of twelve agencies publish something at all, and that the ones publishing the most specific figures are also the ones publishing what has to be true for the figure to hold.

That pairing is the signal worth shortlisting on. A published turnaround with no conditions attached is a marketing number. A published turnaround that names the approver you need, the feedback rounds assumed and the assets that must be ready is a schedule someone intends to keep, and it tells you exactly what the agency will need from you in the first week.

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