Is it cheaper to make playable ads in-house or with an agency?

At low volume, an agency is usually cheaper because you avoid fixed costs. At five or more playables a month, in-house tends to win, with AppAgent reporting 60% to 80% savings after setup.

How much does a freelancer charge for a playable ad?

Entry Fiverr packages we start at $100 to $300 for simple one-level playables. Builds with real gameplay, multiple levels or several network exports cost more.

How long does an agency take to make a playable?

Two to four weeks is the common quote (AppAgent). Game-Ace lists two to six weeks for a first build and three to seven days per variant.

Do I need a developer to make playables in-house?

Not with every setup. Engine and framework routes need one. Some tools, including Genie Playable, let UA and creative teams build and iterate without a developer.

When should I use an agency for playables?

For custom 3D, mechanics your game does not have, one-off brand campaigns, or when you have no internal creative team.

What should I ask a playable agency before signing?

Price per variant, days per variant, which networks are included in packaging and QA, who owns the source files, and how many revision rounds are included.

In-house vs agency vs freelancer for playable ads

If you need fewer than three or four new playables a month and have no creative team, an agency or studio is usually the better call. Once you test five or more a month, most of the cost sits in variants, and the team that owns the iteration loop in-house (with or without a developer, depending on the tool) wins on cost per variant and speed. Freelancers fit one-off simple builds and overflow work. The rest of this page shows how to decide with your own numbers.

Key takeaways

Published studio prices sit around $3,000 to $8,000 per playable (AppAgent, June 2026) and €4,000 to €15,000 (Game-Ace, updated Sep 2026), with two to six weeks to a first build.

Entry freelance packages on Fiverr start at $100 to $300 for simple end card style playables. Expect more for anything with real gameplay.

Price per variant matters more than price per playable. Most of a testing program is variants of winners, not new concepts.

Agencies are the right call for custom 3D, a one-off brand campaign, or a team with no internal creative capacity.

In-house wins on knowledge retention and iteration speed, but only if a developer is not the bottleneck.

Genie Playable is a tool for the in-house route: your UA and creative team build and iterate playables from your game without a developer. Self-serve starts at $490/month ($249 for startups), with a free sign-up that covers your first two playables.

What are your options, really?

Most teams frame this as two choices. It is four.

·Agency or specialist studio. You send a brief and assets, they build, you review. Includes network-owned creative studios such as AppLovin SparkLabs, which build for campaigns on their own network.

·Freelancer. One HTML5 developer, usually found on Fiverr, Upwork or through referrals. Cheap per build, variable quality, and the knowledge leaves with them.

·In-house with developers. HTML5 developers or technical artists on payroll, building in Cocos, Phaser, Unity Playworks or custom frameworks.

·In-house with a tool. Your UA manager, creative lead and artist build and iterate in a playable tool, without a developer writing code for each version.

The last two get lumped together, but they behave very differently on cost and speed. A developer-led in-house team has a salary floor. A tool-led team has a subscription floor and depends on what the tool can build.

What does each option cost per playable and per variant?

These are published price points, labeled with where they came from and when we checked them. None of them are audited. Use them to sanity-check quotes, not to replace one.

Option	Cost per new playable	Cost per variant	Time to first playable	Source (checked)
Specialist studio	$3,000 to $8,000	Not published	Two to four weeks	AppAgent, published June 2026
Specialist studio, custom 3D with two or three variants	€4,000 to €15,000 per playable; €10,000 to €25,000 for bespoke 3D with variants	Price not published; three to seven days per variant	Two to six weeks	Game-Ace blog, updated 9 Sep 2026
Freelancer (marketplace)	Entry packages $100 to $300 for simple tap or drag playables; hourly offers from $20 to $30	Usually quoted per change or hourly	Three to seven days for entry packages	Three Fiverr gig listings
In-house with developers	Roughly $600 to $2,000 per playable after setup (vendor summary of AppAgent data)	Developer time per change	Days, once the pipeline exists	Segwise blog, June 2026, citing AppAgent; salary from ZipRecruiter
In-house with a tool	Subscription plus team time	Team time, no extra build fee	Depends on the tool and your assets	Vendor pricing pages (see below)

Two notes on reading this. AppAgent's own 2025 review quoted $3,000 to $5,000 per creative; its June 2026 guide quotes $3,000 to $8,000. The range has moved up, not down. And the freelance entry prices are for the simplest builds: one level, one interaction, an end card. A real slice of your core loop costs more.

For salary context, ZipRecruiter puts the average US HTML5 game developer at $108,471 a year (data as of 30 Sep 2026). That is about $9,000 a month before benefits, tools and management time.

The variant is the unit that matters. Genie Playable builds a playable from your APK or HTML build plus the assets in Genie, from a format that's already working, or from a brief. The next version starts from the last one, so a new hook or difficulty curve is a change, not a new project.

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How do they compare beyond price?

Cost per playable is the number in the quote. The numbers that decide your ROAS are time to a live variant and how much of what you learn stays with you.

Criterion	Agency or studio	Freelancer	In-house with developers	In-house with a tool
Cost per new playable	High	Low to medium	Medium after setup	Low marginal cost
Cost per variant	Medium to high, often billed as a new job	Low to medium	Low, but uses scarce dev time	Low
Time to first playable	Two to six weeks	Days to weeks	Weeks to set up, then days	Days, depending on assets
Iteration speed	Slow: brief, queue, review	Varies with availability	Fast if devs are free; slow if they are on the game	Fast, the team that reads the data makes the change
Control and brand fit	Good with a strong brief	Variable	High	High if built from your own game and assets
Knowledge retention	Low, learnings sit with the vendor	Low	High	High
Network QA and packaging	Usually included	Often your problem	Your team, per network	Depends on the tool's exports
Scale	Scales with budget	Hard past one person	Scales with headcount	Scales with team time
Custom 3D and unusual mechanics	Strong	Depends on the person	Strong	Depends on the tool

The pattern teams we talk to describe is the same. The first playable is rarely the problem. The problem is the third week, when the winner starts to fatigue and the fix waits in someone else's queue while spend keeps running.

When is an agency or studio the right call?

Honestly, more often than tool vendors admit. Pick an agency or specialist studio when:

·You need custom 3D or a mechanic your game does not have. A bespoke mini-game with fresh art is studio work. Game-Ace prices this at €10,000 to €25,000 with four to six weeks of production.

·You have no internal creative team. If nobody on staff can write a brief, judge a hook and review a build, an in-house tool just moves the bottleneck.

·It is a one-off brand campaign. A launch moment or IP collaboration that runs once does not justify building a pipeline.

·You test fewer than three or four new playables a month. AppAgent's rule of thumb is to go external below that volume.

·You want a second creative perspective. A good studio has seen hundreds of concepts across genres. That pattern library is worth paying for, at least for new concepts.

A hybrid is common: an agency for new concepts and hero builds, an in-house team for the variant loop.

When does a freelancer make sense?

For a simple playable you want to test once, or overflow work on a clear spec. Freelancers are cheap and fast to start. The trade-offs are real: quality varies by person, network QA and packaging are often left to you, and every lesson about what worked in your game leaves when the contract ends. If you go this route, ask for the source files and confirm in writing which networks the build is packaged for.

When should you bring playables in-house?

When your testing volume is high enough that waiting costs more than building. AppAgent suggests in-house starts to make sense at five or more playables a month, and its 2025 review reports 60% to 80% cost reduction after the setup investment, citing Socialpoint at five to eight playables a month across three games.

The catch is the developer. In most studios, the people who can write HTML5 also build the game, and the game wins every priority call. So the honest in-house question is not "do we have developers?" It is "will they be free on Tuesday when the playable fatigues?" If the answer is no, an in-house team with a tool that does not need a developer for each version is the more realistic setup. Our guide to setting up an in-house playable workflow covers roles, briefs and the weekly rhythm.

How do I work out which option is cheaper for my team?

Fill in this model with your own quotes. It takes ten minutes and usually settles the debate.

Line	What to enter
A. New concepts per month	Fresh ideas you want to test
B. Variants per month	New hooks, difficulty, end cards, skins of existing playables
C. Cost per concept	Quote, or team hours times loaded hourly cost
D. Cost per variant	Ask every provider for this number separately
E. Fixed monthly cost	Salaries share, tool subscription, retainer
F. Days to ship a variant	From "this is fatiguing" to "new version live"
G. Daily spend on the fatiguing creative	From your network dashboard
Monthly production cost	(A × C) + (B × D) + E
Monthly waiting cost (rough)	B × F × G × the share of that spend you think is wasted

A worked example, with assumptions you should replace. Say you need two new concepts and six variants a month. An agency at the low end of AppAgent's range that bills every variant as a $3,000 playable comes to 8 × $3,000 = $24,000 a month. One HTML5 developer at the ZipRecruiter average is about $9,000 a month, plus artist time, and covers the volume only if the game does not pull them away. A self-serve tool such as Genie Playable at $490 a month is the smallest fixed cost, but you still pay in team hours, and it only fits if it can build what you need. The waiting line is where the gap usually opens: six variants that each take ten days instead of two add up to 48 extra creative days a month on versions you already know are slipping.

For the full price list across studios, freelancers and tools, see how much a playable ad costs. To set your volume, start with how many playables to test.

Which should you pick?

If this is you	Pick
No creative team, fewer than three playables a month	Agency or studio
Custom 3D, new mechanic, or one-off brand campaign	Agency or studio
One simple test, tight budget	Freelancer, with source files in the contract
Five or more playables a month, developers with spare capacity	In-house with developers
Five or more a month, UA and creative team in place, developers busy with the game	In-house with a tool
Mix of hero concepts and a weekly variant loop	Hybrid: agency for concepts, in-house for variants

In-house without a developer. Genie Playable exports optimized builds for Meta, AppLovin, Unity Ads, Liftoff, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, Pangle and Mintegral, with Moloco coming soon. Your team picks the networks; the packaging is handled in the export.

Book a demo

Where does Genie Playable fit?

Genie Playable is a tool for the in-house route. Your UA manager, creative lead and artist build playables from your game's build and assets, from a format that's already working, or from a brief to Genie Agent, then iterate from the last version without a developer. Self-serve starts at $490/month, or $249/month for startups, with a free sign-up that covers your first two playables before you pay. Larger teams usually start on a custom plan: a one-month pilot where the Genie team onboards you and helps you build the playables you want.

Who it is not for. If you need a fully custom 3D mini-game built from scratch, a one-off brand piece, or you have nobody in-house to own creative decisions, a studio is the better fit. If you run one playable a quarter, a subscription is hard to justify. And if you prefer a fully managed service where someone else makes the calls, Genie Playable is not that.

Decide with your own numbers. If the model points in-house, see what your team can build from your game.

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FAQ

Sources

A playable ad from your own game is a 30 to 90 second interactive slice of your game: your characters, your art and one clear mechanic, packaged as a small HTML5 file an ad network can run. You can't ship your game build as it is. Networks cap playables at about 5 MB in a single HTML file or ZIP, with strict rules on code and clicks. So you have three options: export a stripped-down scene from your engine, rebuild the moment in an HTML5 framework, or use a tool that builds the playable from your game's build and assets. This guide walks through all three.

Key takeaways

What does "a playable ad from your own game" actually mean?

It means the player sees your game, not a generic template with your logo on top. Studios that do this well keep three things fixed and treat the rest as open.

Keep fixed	Open to change
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This matches what UA and creative leads tell us. Brand fidelity is non-negotiable. Gameplay is often borrowed from whatever is trending. The catch is policy. The UK ASA now treats even a genuine but non-core mechanic as potentially misleading, and Google Play bans ads that don't represent the app. The closer your playable is to what players actually get, the safer it is, and the better it tends to retain.

Why can't I just ship my game build as a playable?

Ad networks run playables inside their own ad containers, not as apps. Every playable has to fit this box:

SizeAbout 5 MB on every major network (AppLovin, Meta, Google, TikTok, Unity, Mintegral, Moloco, Snapchat). A WebGL export of a real game is usually far bigger. An empty Godot export is already over the limit.

FormatOne self-contained HTML file with every asset inlined (AppLovin, Unity, Moloco), or a ZIP with an index.html (Google, TikTok, Mintegral, Snapchat). Meta accepts both.

No external callsNothing loads from your servers at runtime.

Click-out callmraid.open() on AppLovin and Unity, FbPlayableAd.onCTAClick() on Meta and Moloco, ExitApi.exit() on Google, window.openAppStore() on TikTok, window.install() on Mintegral.

Behavior rulesMuted until the first interaction, no store redirect on the first tap, no auto-redirects, works in portrait and landscape.

The full list lives in our Playable ad specs by network (2026).

What are the three ways to turn my game into a playable?

	1. Engine export	2. HTML5 rebuild	3. Build from your APK or HTML and assets
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Most studios mix routes: a hand-built hero playable for a launch, and faster tooling for the weekly variations that keep a campaign alive.

What buyers expect to pay and wait: roughly $3,000 to $8,000 and two to four weeks per new playable from an external studio, and roughly $600 to $2,000 in-house once the setup exists. Nobody has a clean source for these numbers, so treat them as market expectations. One mid-size studio we spoke to put it simply: the market norm is "two weeks onwards", and their target is under a week.

Your game is already the brief.

Upload your APK or HTML build. Genie Playable turns it into a playable ad with your own art, characters and live events, ready for 10 ad networks.

Try it free on your game

How do I make a playable ad from my game, step by step?

01\Pick the moment worth playing

Choose one mechanic a stranger understands in three seconds. Good sources: your core loop at its most satisfying, the live event running now, or a format already converting in your genre. If you can't explain the moment in one sentence, it's too complex. One mechanic beats two.

“Merge plus puzzle looks clever and almost always tests worse.”

Segwise

02\Script the arc

Almost every playable follows the same shape:

03\Prepare your assets

Export characters, backgrounds, UI and sounds from your game, then cut hard. Compress images, use sprite sheets, trim audio to short loops and subset fonts. Base64 inlining adds about a third to file size, so aim for 2 to 3 MB in total and treat 5 MB as the ceiling.

04\Build it

Whatever route you use, keep the logic in plain HTML and JavaScript, make the layout work in 9:16 and 16:9, and keep sound off until the first tap.

05\Package it for each network

This is where engineer time quietly disappears. "A unit that passes on AppLovin can bounce on Unity," as Segwise puts it. Each network needs the right file format, the right click-out call and any required hooks. Mintegral, for example, expects gameReady() and gameEnd() calls. Build once and generate network variants from one source. Hand-editing copies is how bugs creep in.

06\Test before you upload

Then test on a real low-end Android phone. A desktop browser hides most of the problems.

07\Launch and measure

Give each playable enough data before you judge it. A common rule of thumb is about 50 conversions in four days, or 100 in seven. Judge on D7 ROAS and retention, not CPI alone. If you can, add events inside the playable (start, first interaction, win or lose, CTA tap, drop-off point), because network dashboards only show the last step.

08\Plan the next version before this one fatigues

Top-grossing games ship dozens of new playables a month, and most of that volume is variations of a winner. Leading teams put roughly 70% of output into variations and 30% into new concepts. Decide now which single thing you'll change next: the hook, the fail state, the character, the event skin or the end card.

What should I keep from my game, and what can I borrow?

Keep everything that helps a player recognise your game after install: art, characters, UI language, sound. Borrow structure freely, whether that's a proven hook, a pacing pattern or a format working in another genre. Racing and narrative studios often tell us their game "isn't playable". The honest read: a playable doesn't need your full core loop. It needs one true moment from your world.

What are the most common mistakes?

Mistake	What happens	Fix
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The next version, not a new brief.

When a playable fatigues, Genie Playable lets your UA or creative team change the hook, the character or the event skin on the last version and ship it again. No dev queue.

Book a demo

Where does Genie fit?

Genie Playable takes the third route, and adds two more ways in. You can build from your game: your APK or HTML build together with the assets, narrative, mechanics and live events already in Genie. You can start from a format that's already working and rebuild it with your game inside. Or you can start from scratch and describe the playable to Genie Agent.

Genie Core keeps every version on brand, and Genie Playable exports network-ready variants for Meta, AppLovin, Unity Ads, Liftoff, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, Pangle and Mintegral from one source, with Moloco coming soon. No developer is needed at any step, and your team makes the final call on every version. Sign-up is free and covers your first two playables. Try it on your game.

Where to go next

First playable? Follow how to make a playable ad step by step, then run it through the playable ad best practices checklist. Once it's live, read how to know if your playable ad is working and how to A/B test playable ads.

What are your options, really?

What does each option cost per playable and per variant?

How do they compare beyond price?

When is an agency or studio the right call?

When does a freelancer make sense?

When should you bring playables in-house?

How do I work out which option is cheaper for my team?

Which should you pick?

Where does Genie Playable fit?

FAQ

Sources

Keep reading

How do you set up an in-house playable ad workflow?

How much does a playable ad cost in 2026?

Best playable ad tools in 2026: every approach, compared honestly

Ready to ship playables from your game?

What does "a playable ad from your own game" actually mean?

Why can't I just ship my game build as a playable?

What are the three ways to turn my game into a playable?

How do I make a playable ad from my game, step by step?

01\Pick the moment worth playing

02\Script the arc

03\Prepare your assets

04\Build it

05\Package it for each network

06\Test before you upload

07\Launch and measure

08\Plan the next version before this one fatigues

What should I keep from my game, and what can I borrow?

What are the most common mistakes?

Where does Genie fit?

Where to go next

FAQ

Sources

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FAQ

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Ready to ship playables from your game?