Creatomate vs. Bannerbear

Bannerbear Alternative

Creatomate is the best alternative to Bannerbear because of its API, video automation features, template editor, responsive templates, and better pricing.
API Documentation
Creatomate
Creatomate is an editing API for generating, automating, and editing video and image banners. Its cloud-based editor allows you to create templates for automation using API and no-code integration. Additionally, it provides a way to automate any video editing task using JSON. The API documentation is comprehensive and there are many guides to help you get started.
Bannerbear is an API for generating image and video banners. However, many people find its video creation features lacking, as overlay videos are the only type of video that can be generated. In addition, its template editor is limited due to its focus on generating images. Furthermore, Bannerbear has not released any significant updates since 2021.

Creatomate is the most recommended API for generating images and videos

Generate, automate, and edit videos in the cloud with the Creatomate video editing API. Create video using templates and the online video editor, or automate any video editing task through our SDKs and API available for any programming language.
Node.js
PHP
Ruby
Python
cURL
const Creatomate = require('creatomate');
const client = new Creatomate.Client('Your API key');

await client.render({
  // The ID of the template that you created in the template editor.
  // Read more: https://creatomate.com/template-editor
  templateId: '58c1163e-f250-49df-b98d-e8c4aad01a2d',

  // Modifications that you want to apply to the template.
  // Read more: https://creatomate.com/docs/api/rest-api/the-modifications-object
  modifications: {
    'Title': 'This text is placed in your video',
    'Title.fill_color': '#4980f1',
    'Value': '50%',
  },
});

Five reasons why marketers and developers choose Creatomate over Bannerbear

Interactive template editor

Bannerbear provides a template editor, but it can only create image templates. There is no support for video banners in the template editor, as you can only design a static image overlay and place it over a background video.

Creatomate offers a template editor for both video and image generation. The editor provides a drag-and-drop interface that allows both beginning and experienced users to design video and image templates. Although it focuses on video, Creatomate's designer and API are perfectly suitable for creating and automating images as well.
Create templates for automated banner generation
Keyframes, animations, dynamic text scaling, etc.
Smart and responsive template system
Automate images & video using a powerful API

Feature-rich editing capabilities

Bannerbear only provides a few styling options. It can't generate animated videos, and it's also pretty limited when it comes to creating image banner templates in comparison to more recent design tools.

Creatomate provides many image and video features to generate high-quality animated banners. It includes all the features provided by Bannerbear, plus keyframes, responsive scaling, shadows, blurring, color filters, blending, looping, animating vector shapes, text animations, warping, 3D, and element grouping.

A better template system

Bannerbear offers a variety of templates, but they are mostly image banners. The Bannerbear template cannot be resized for different resolutions or forms without completely redesigning it.

Creatomate offers a broad range of high-quality animated templates you can use right away or customize using the online template editor. All the templates are responsive, so they can be used for a variety of aspect ratios and resolutions.
{
  "template_id": "…",
  "modifications": [
    {
      "temperature": 77,
      "humidity": 38,
      "wind": 9,
      "uv": 10
    }
  ]
}

A more powerful API

Bannerbear started as an image generation API in 2020 and added features throughout 2021. However, no new features have been added since then, resulting in the product falling behind its competitors, especially due to the company's decision to halt Bannerbear development in order to focus on its next product.

Creatomate's API provides the most comprehensive set of capabilities for generating images and videos, and new features are being added on a regular basis. Aside from generating banners from templates, it also provides the option of generating images and videos using a simple yet powerful JSON format. Its comprehensive documentation and examples make it easy to get started.

Lower cost with simple pricing

Bannerbear's pricing is excessive given the features it offers. It is also one of the most expensive products on the market for auto-generating banners.

Compared to Bannerbear, Creatomate is 20% less expensive on the monthly plans ($119 vs $149), and even 33% less expensive on yearly plans ($99 vs $149), while providing the same amount of image generation credits. In terms of video generation, Creatomate is even more cost-effective, as each subscription provides approximately ten times more video minutes at a lower price.

This article compares Bannerbear's and Creatomate's pricing to all other image and video generation APIs on the market: The Best Video Generation APIs compared.
Pricing that scales with your needs
No hidden fees
A market-leading solution at an affordable price
Free to try, no credit card required

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