A digital storytelling platform is a browser-based tool that turns text, images, video, maps or data into a story people read on a screen, published as a link or an embed without a developer. For a beginner, or a small brand or marketing team, the short pick is Scrollytelling.ai: AI builds the first draft, the free plan publishes one story and the prices are public. Newsrooms with a budget choose Shorthand, teachers and students do well with Genially or Microsoft Sway, data teams should start in Flourish, and map-led projects belong in ArcGIS StoryMaps. Developers who want to own the code have open-source options in Pageflow, Twine and Knight Lab's libraries.
Disclosure: Scrollytelling.ai is our product. Every profile says what the platform does not do, ours included.
Find your row. "Starting price" is the cheapest way to publish, read on each vendor's own site on November 11, 2026.
Swipe sideways to see every column.
| Reader | Pick | Why | Starting price | Needs code? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner with no design skills | Scrollytelling.ai | AI drafts the story from a prompt, a link or a PDF, and the free plan publishes one | Free; paid from $12 a month ($10 billed yearly) | No |
| Small brand or marketing team | Scrollytelling.ai | Public prices, a custom domain on the first paid plan, WordPress and Shopify embeds | Free; $12 a month | No |
| Enterprise brand team with designers | Ceros | Freeform design canvas with creator, editor and reviewer seats | Free Starter seat; larger plans by quote | No, but designer-led |
| Newsroom or university comms team | Shorthand; with no budget, Knight Lab tools | Shorthand: long visual features, unlimited users. Knight Lab: open-source timelines and story maps for an article | Shorthand: no public price, pay to publish. Knight Lab: no price list | No (Knight Lab: minimal) |
| Teacher or student | Genially or Microsoft Sway | Genially: templates, quizzes and games. Sway: class reports with a school account | Genially: free, Pro €6 a month billed yearly. Sway: free | No |
| Data team | Flourish | 50+ chart and map templates, free public publishing with attribution | Free; scrollytelling on the quoted Publisher plan | No |
| Map-led project | ArcGIS StoryMaps | Maps, 3D scenes and media in one narrative | Free public account for personal use; organisation price not shown | No |
| Documentary maker | Pageflow | Full-screen video and audio in chapters, open source | €8.50 a month; own domain from €49 | No |
| Developer | Twine, self-hosted Pageflow, or your own code | Open source, and you host the output. Our developer guide covers the code route | No licence fee | Yes, for anything custom |
Every vendor says "beginner-friendly". These five checks make the claim testable.
Swipe sideways to see every column.
| Platform | No code | Free plan that publishes | Templates | AI first draft | Public pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scrollytelling.ai | Yes | Yes: 1 story on a scrollytelling.ai subdomain, with a small badge | 150+ in 30 categories | Yes: the whole story, with images and a hero video | Yes: $0, $12, $29 and $59 a month |
| Genially | Yes | Yes, with Genially branding | 1,000+ free templates | Yes: drafts a creation from an idea (500 AI credits a year on Free) | Yes: €0, €6, €20 and €40 a month, billed yearly |
| Microsoft Sway | Yes | Yes, with a Microsoft account | Featured templates and styles | None mentioned on Microsoft's help page | Free; more content with Microsoft 365 |
| Flourish | Yes | Yes: public, with attribution | 50+ chart and map templates | AI guidance to refine a chart (Flourish Assistant) | Free plan only; the rest by quote |
| Shorthand | Yes | No: free to create, pay to publish | Yes, a free template library | Yes: AI Creative Companion works from your draft | No: quote by demo |
Scrollytelling.ai and Genially pass all five, and they make different things: Genially makes slides, infographics, quizzes and games, Scrollytelling.ai makes a scrolling web page with video, images and scroll effects. Pick by the thing you need to publish. With a Microsoft account, Sway is the simplest route to a class report. If your first story is a chart, start in Flourish.
Short reviews in one format. Each is an interactive storytelling platform in a different sense. Unless a line says otherwise, plan details were read on the vendor's own site on November 11, 2026. For a deeper price table of the scroll-focused tools, including the code route, see our scrollytelling tools comparison.
Our product: an AI scrollytelling builder. Describe a story, paste a link or upload a PDF, and in a few minutes it builds a scroll-driven page with copy, generated images, a scroll-video hero and scroll widgets. You then edit it in a visual editor.
Price: Free gives 60 credits a month (about one AI story), 1 published story on a scrollytelling.ai subdomain and a small badge. Starter is $12 a month or $120 a year: 250 credits, 10 published stories, a custom domain, no badge. Pro is $29, Pro+ $59. See our plans.
What it does not do: it is not a freeform design canvas, a flipbook, a print layout tool, a charting library, a multi-page website CMS or a shop checkout, and it has no editorial review workflow like Shorthand's.
A publishing platform for long, image-rich features, built for newsrooms, universities and non-profits. The site lists an AI Creative Companion that goes "from rough draft to designed story".
Price: no dollar figure on shorthand.com/pricing: Core (12 new stories a year), Unlimited and Enterprise are sold by demo. The page says "Free to create. Pay when you publish." The last public list we recorded (December 2025, noted on our Shorthand page on October 17, 2026) started at $60 a month billed yearly.
What it does not do: show a price, or publish anything for free.
A template-based tool for interactive presentations, infographics, interactive images, escape rooms, quizzes and games. Its AI can draft a complete creation from an idea.
Price: Free includes 500 AI credits a year and 1,000+ templates. Pro is €6 a month, Master €20 and Author €40 per member, all billed annually (genially.com/plans).
What it does not do: scroll-driven web pages. It makes slides and canvases, and removing Genially branding needs the brand kit, which starts on Master.
A data visualisation platform, owned by Canva since 2022, for charts, maps and interactive content, with 50+ templates and no coding.
Price: Free includes public publishing and embedding, with attribution. No prices are shown for the rest: Presenter comes with a Canva Business or Enterprise plan, and Publisher (the first plan that lists scrollytelling) and Enterprise use custom contracts (flourish.studio/pricing).
What it does not do: design the article around the chart. It makes charts and chart-led stories, not a page of prose, photography and video.
Esri's builder for "digital storytelling with maps": maps, 3D scenes, embedded content and multimedia in one interactive narrative. Best when the place is the story, or when your organisation already runs ArcGIS.
Price: Esri's StoryMaps pages show no price. It is "included with ArcGIS user types", annual licences sold through ArcGIS Online or Esri sales. Esri's help says an ArcGIS public account is free "for personal, noncommercial use", with limitations, and can sign in to StoryMaps (esri.com, doc.esri.com).
What it does not do: allow commercial work on the free account, or show a price for a team.
Northwestern University's Knight Lab publishes "open-source, adaptable, and lightweight tools for media makers": TimelineJS for timelines, StoryMapJS for "maps that tell stories", JuxtaposeJS for frame comparisons and SoundciteJS for inline audio. TimelineJS can be fed from a Google Sheet.
Price: none. The tools are open source (TimelineJS carries an MPL-2.0 licence) and the site lists no plans (knightlab.northwestern.edu and the lab's GitHub).
What it does not do: build the page. Each tool makes one component, and you still need an article or a site to put it in.
Microsoft's app for interactive reports, presentations, newsletters and personal stories. It runs in any browser: sign in with a Microsoft, work or school account, start from a featured template and pick a style.
Price: Microsoft's help page says Sway is "free to use for anyone with a Microsoft Account". Sways "with more content" need a Microsoft 365 subscription; no figure is given (support.microsoft.com).
What it does not do: act as a design canvas. It is a document tool with styles, and the help page mentions no AI.
Twine calls itself "an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories": the reader makes choices and the story branches. A simple story needs no code; variables, CSS and JavaScript are there when you want them. It runs in the browser or as a desktop app.
Price: none. Twine is open source, and what you create is free to use any way you like, including commercially (twinery.org).
What it does not do: host your story. It is text-first and publishes an HTML file that you post yourself.
An "open source software and publishing platform for multimedia storytelling", hosted in Germany. You drag photos, audio and video into an inline editor to build full-screen, chaptered stories.
Price: testing is free for an unlimited time. Publishing: Personal €8.50 a month (1 user, 3 published stories, Pageflow branding), Standard €49 with your own domain, Business €149, Premium €399. Self-hosting needs Ruby on Rails experience (pageflow.io/en/pricing).
What it does not do: generate anything with AI (none is mentioned on its site), or include your own domain on the cheapest plan.
A freeform design canvas for interactive marketing content: landing pages, product demos and interactive reports, placed and animated by hand.
Price: Starter is free to try with 1 Creator, 3 Editors and unlimited publishing. Growth and Enterprise say "Talk to sales" (ceros.com/pricing). Vendr buyer data (February 2026, recorded on our Ceros page on October 17, 2026) puts the median contract at $45,000 a year.
What it does not do: show a price beyond the free seat, or work without a designer's hours.
A design-first web builder with a freeform canvas and scroll-driven components, aimed at publishers and enterprise marketing teams.
Price: no figures. Every plan on vev.design/pricing ends in "Get a Demo", and the page mentions no free tier. Basic covers 2 users, 10 projects at most and 1 vanity domain, with no ZIP export.
What it does not do: sell self-serve. The canvas also expects someone who designs.
Interactive documents for B2B marketing: white papers, reports and digital magazines, with brand kits, reviewer workflows and monthly AI credits.
Price: Spark (5 users, 7,500 AI credits a month, up to 2 custom domains), Team and Enterprise all say "Request a quote"; no free plan is mentioned (foleon.com/pricing). Vendr buyer data (February 2026, recorded on our Foleon page on October 17, 2026) puts the median contract at $21,000 a year.
What it does not do: scroll-driven narrative. The output is document-shaped pages.
A Dutch platform for digital magazines, interactive annual reports and presentations, built around multi-page publications.
Price: Advanced is €400 a month ($450) with 5 users and 5 domains, and Enterprise €1,100 ($1,250), both excluding VAT. Basic is marked "Available soon" with no price. A trial is mentioned (maglr.com/en/pricing).
What it does not do: offer a free plan or a cheap entry tier today.
A brand story is one page with a point of view: where the company came from, what it stands for and the proof. Scrollytelling.ai drafts it from your About page link or a short brief in the free brand story maker. A brand team with designers and an enterprise budget gets more control from Ceros.
Shorthand suits editorial teams, Pageflow video-led documentaries, and Knight Lab's open-source tools add a timeline or a map to an article. A freelancer or small newsroom that needs a published feature this week, at a public price, fits Scrollytelling.ai. See our 27 reviewed scrollytelling websites.
Genially covers classroom presentations, quizzes and games. Sway handles a class report, Twine a branching story and TimelineJS a history timeline. For a student project that should read like a published feature, the Scrollytelling.ai free plan publishes one story. Start from the free templates.
Build the charts in Flourish and the maps in ArcGIS StoryMaps or StoryMapJS. For a full page around them, Scrollytelling.ai has chart and interactive map widgets and can embed charts made elsewhere. Start with the data storytelling maker.
Paste a product URL and Scrollytelling.ai builds the page from your own photos and text, then publishes to a link, a custom domain, WordPress or Shopify. The microsite builder covers one-off campaigns. Ceros and Vev suit campaign pages built by a design team.
Foleon and Maglr are built for paged reports with reviewers and several seats. For a scroll-driven report made from the PDF you already have, read our guide to interactive annual report software.
A digital storytelling platform is a browser-based tool for building a story out of text, images, video, maps or data and publishing it as a web link or an embed, without writing code. The 13 on this page cover scrolling story pages, interactive presentations, data and map stories, documents and branching fiction.
Scrollytelling.ai and Genially pass all five beginner checks on this page: no code, a free plan that publishes, templates, an AI first draft and public prices. Choose Scrollytelling.ai for a scrolling web page and Genially for slides, quizzes and classroom material. Microsoft Sway is the simplest if you already have a Microsoft account.
Yes. Twine and Knight Lab's tools are open source, and Microsoft Sway is free with a Microsoft account. Scrollytelling.ai, Genially and Flourish have free plans that publish with the vendor's badge, branding or attribution. Shorthand and Pageflow let you build for free but charge to publish.
Every platform on this page works in a browser. For animation tied to scrolling, look at Scrollytelling.ai (scroll video, stacking cards, split scroll, step wipe), Shorthand, Vev and Ceros. For animated charts and maps use Flourish, and for animated slides and interactive images use Genially.
Yes. Scrollytelling.ai generates a whole scroll-driven story from a prompt, a link or a PDF: copy, generated images, a scroll-video hero and scroll widgets, which you then edit. Shorthand lists an AI Creative Companion that turns a rough draft into a designed story, and Genially can draft a creation from an idea. Treat any AI output as a first draft.
A website builder makes a whole site: many pages, navigation, a blog, often a shop. A storytelling platform makes one narrative at a time, such as a feature, a report, a lesson or a campaign page, with media and interactions built in, and you publish it as a link or embed it in the site you already have.
Build one story on the free plan and publish it. No card, no demo call. If it does not fit, the quick picks say where to go instead.