The best Doodly alternatives in 2026, free and paid

Doodly is a desktop app for making whiteboard videos: you drag pre-drawn images onto a white, black or glass board, and a hand draws them in on screen. It does that one job well. People look for a Doodly alternative for three common reasons — there is no free plan, commercial use sits on the more expensive tier, and every scene still has to be assembled by hand from a stock library. Here are the alternatives worth trying, depending on which of those is your problem.

A note before we start: we publish the cartoon video creator listed below, so weigh that entry accordingly. Doodly's prices are not listed in one consistent place — review sites in 2026 show a Standard plan at roughly $39–49 a month and an Enterprise plan at roughly $69–79 a month — so check the vendor's checkout for current figures.

Doodly alternatives at a glance

1. VideoScribe — the closest like-for-like replacement

If you like the way Doodly works and only want a different vendor, VideoScribe is the obvious move. It has been making hand-drawn whiteboard videos for longer than almost anyone, the workflow is the same — place an image, set the draw time, add a voice-over — and it runs in the browser as well as on desktop. Its image library is large and the hand styles are convincing.

Choose it if: you want classic whiteboard and nothing else. Watch out for: you are still building each scene by hand, so long videos take long to make.

2. Powtoon — whiteboard plus everything else

Powtoon is a general animated-presentation tool with a whiteboard style built in. That is its strength: one project can mix whiteboard sections with coloured character scenes and slides. It has a limited free tier, which makes it the easiest place to test whether the doodle look suits your audience at all.

Choose it if: you make classroom, sales or internal videos that need more than one look. Watch out for: the free tier carries branding, and the full template library sits on paid plans.

3. Vyond — for teams producing training at volume

Vyond is the enterprise option. It has a whiteboard mode alongside its contemporary and business-character styles, with team features, brand kits and an AI script assistant. It is priced per user and sits well above Doodly — our Vyond pricing breakdown covers every plan.

Choose it if: a training or HR team needs consistent output and collaboration. Watch out for: the cost for a single creator.

4. Animaker — the budget all-rounder

Animaker offers a large set of templates and a character builder, with a whiteboard style among the options. It is cheaper than Vyond and has a limited free plan, which makes it a sensible default for small businesses that need occasional explainers.

Choose it if: price matters more than polish. Watch out for: export resolution and length are limited on the lower plans.

5. Renderforest — when you only need a template filled in

Renderforest is template-first: choose a whiteboard explainer template, replace the text and icons, render. It is the fastest route to a finished video if your message fits one of its structures, and the slowest if it does not.

Choose it if: speed beats originality. Watch out for: free exports are watermarked and low resolution.

6. Cartoon Video Creator — describe it instead of building it

Every tool above shares Doodly's core workflow: you pick images from a library and arrange them on a timeline. An AI cartoon maker removes that step. You write what should happen — "black marker line drawings appear one by one on a clean whiteboard: a small house, an arrow, then a stack of coins; one orange accent colour" — and the scene is drawn and animated for you, with sound, as a finished MP4.

The whiteboard look works well with a few habits, which we cover in our whiteboard animation guide: ask for elements to appear one at a time, keep to one accent colour, and let the drawings carry the meaning rather than written labels — rendered text in AI video is still unreliable, so captions go on afterwards in any editor. Videos run from a few seconds up to 5 minutes (20 minutes on Pro), there is no watermark, and new accounts start with free credits.

Choose it if: you want custom scenes without searching a stock library, or you want to try coloured cartoon styles as well. Watch out for: if you need exact on-screen text or frame-perfect sync with a recorded voice-over, a timeline tool like VideoScribe still gives you more control.

Is there a free Doodly alternative?

Yes, with caveats. Powtoon, Animaker and Renderforest all have free tiers, but they add branding or limit export quality. Free credits on an AI cartoon maker let you make finished, watermark-free videos, but only as many as the credits cover. If you want something genuinely free with no limits, open-source animation software can produce a whiteboard look — our list of the best free animation software explains which — but you will be drawing every frame yourself.

How to choose

• You like Doodly and only dislike the vendor: VideoScribe.
• You want to mix whiteboard with other styles: Powtoon or Animaker.
• You run a training team: Vyond.
• Your message fits a template: Renderforest.
• You are tired of assembling scenes by hand: an AI cartoon maker.

Whichever you pick, the craft is the same: one idea per scene, short sentences in the voice-over, and drawings that explain themselves without labels. Try a whiteboard scene free and compare it with what you would have built by hand.