An interactive planner for building an AI-assisted YouTube production pipeline. Pick your niche, monthly budget, output volume and hourly rate — the app returns a tailored tool stack across four production stages, what it costs, how many hours it gives back, and where the next dollar of budget earns the most.
Live: https://stackroom-avikumar175s-projects.vercel.app/
- Niche-weighted recommendations across 8 channel formats (faceless documentary, finance explainer, tech reviews, education, shorts, UGC ads, gaming, wellness). Each niche weights the four stages differently — a gaming channel barely needs generated B-roll, a finance channel lives or dies on research quality.
- Budget optimiser — brute-forces every valid combination of tool tiers (8 × 5 × 12 × 6) and returns the stack that maximises niche-weighted hours saved within budget.
- Time-saved impact score (0–100) per stage — the share of that stage's manual workload the chosen tier automates, against a 14-hour baseline per 10-minute video.
- ROI ladder — every available upgrade ranked by minutes saved per dollar added, with a verdict on whether it pays for itself at your stated hourly rate.
- Comparison table — all 34 pricing tiers with monthly vs. annual rates, quotas, video coverage and impact scores, linked to official pricing pages.
- Quota coverage warnings — flags when a tier's credit allowance can't cover your planned output volume.
- Light and dark themes, fully responsive, no build step, no external state.
| Stage | Tools |
|---|---|
| Script & research | ChatGPT, NotebookLM |
| Voice & narration | ElevenLabs, PlayHT/PlayAI (retired) |
| Video generation | Runway, Pika, HeyGen |
| Edit & assembly | Canva, Shotstack |
Pricing was gathered from official vendor pages on 30 July 2026. Notable changes that invalidate older guides:
- PlayHT / PlayAI is shut down. Meta acquired it in July 2025 and the standalone service has been discontinued. It is retained in the comparison table marked as retired, and is excluded from all recommendations.
- HeyGen retired its Team plan in January 2026, replaced by Business ($149 + $20/seat).
- Canva retired Teams in favour of Business ($250/year/person).
- NotebookLM paid tiers were restructured at Google I/O 2026 across Google AI Plus / Pro / Ultra. It is still not sold standalone.
- Runway renamed Unlimited to Max ($95/mo, $76/mo annual).
Tiers where the vendor's page did not show a clean monthly sticker price are flagged
unconfirmed in the UI rather than silently guessed. Always verify on the vendor's own page
before purchasing.
No dependencies and no build step. app.js and data.js are ES modules, so the files must be
served over HTTP rather than opened directly from disk:
python3 -m http.server 4173
# then open http://localhost:4173index.html markup and section scaffolding
styles.css design tokens, light/dark themes, layout
data.js tool catalogue, tiers, quotas, niche weights, baselines
app.js optimiser, scoring model, rendering, interactions
Baseline manual effort for one ~10-minute long-form video is 14 hours: 3h script, 2h voice, 5h visuals, 4h editing.
For a given tier, hours saved per month is:
min(tier.saves, BASELINE[stage]) × min(volume, tier.capacity)
capacity is the number of videos a tier's monthly quota realistically supports, derived from
published credit allowances. The optimiser scores each candidate as hours saved, scaled by the
niche's stage weight and the tool's niche affinity, then selects the highest-scoring
combination whose total price fits the budget, breaking ties toward lower cost.
Capacity and hours-saved figures are modelling estimates, not vendor guarantees.
An independent planning tool, not affiliated with any vendor listed. AI tool pricing changes frequently — confirm current rates on the vendor's own page before making purchase decisions.