Hot Budget and Storiara rarely compete for the same job. Hot Budget, from the Burbank production supply company Hot Bricks, is what a lot of commercial and music video producers open when an agency sends boards and asks for a bid. Storiara is what a narrative producer opens when a screenplay lands. The overlap is that both produce a budget, and both can be used on a short-form shoot.
Who each is for
Hot Budget's own description is direct: it was developed for budgeting commercials, promos, and music videos. Hot Bricks lists bidders, executive producers, producers, production managers, coordinators, post staff, and accountants as users. Its templates include AICP commercial layouts (a 9-page, 16-section, 459-line version and an older 7-page one), a unified commercial and post template, a post production template, and two animation templates.
Storiara is for scripted work where the schedule drives the cost: shorts, features, web series, vertical dramas, student films. The budget is one module among several, and it's built from what the script and board already say.
What Hot Budget handles better
For an agency job, format matters as much as the total. Agency producers expect the AICP cost summary, and Hot Budget produces it. Storiara's budget uses film account numbers (1400 Cast, 3300 Camera, 4500 Editorial) that an agency producer won't recognize on a bid.
Hot Budget also tracks the life of a job after the bid is awarded. You can view the original bid, the running budget, and actual costs side by side without toggling, so when the client adds a second location on the tech scout you can see the change against what they approved. It keeps a purchase order log, a petty cash log, and a payroll log, and those logs can be moved from one Hot Budget file into another. If your timecards come from a digital system that exports CSV, the batch imports straight into the payroll log. Storiara has no actuals, running budget, or logs.
Smaller tools cover everyday bidding problems. An overtime calculator estimates the cost of going long from the bid or running budget, a travel budget handles flights, hotels, and per diem, a currency converter lets you send a client a bid in their currency, and contingencies such as a weather day can print on the cost summary. You can also move fringe allocations to set up a below-the-line P&W layout without unprotecting sheets.
The price is simple: $100 per computer for the calendar year. For a freelancer bidding a dozen jobs, that's a small line in their own overhead.
The license calendar
Hot Budget licenses run by calendar year, and each file carries an expiration date. Version 3.0.10, the 2026 release, expires January 1, 2027. The license agreement says that after expiry you can't start a new budget or change the bid section in a way that moves the grand total, and the shooting budget functions shut off. Basic actualization keeps working.
That matters for jobs that straddle New Year. If you bid a spot on December 15, 2026 and the client revises the scope on January 6, 2027, you need a 2027 license on that computer before you can change the total. Buy the new license before the holiday break, or plan to port the budget into a current copy (Hot Budget has a porting feature for this). Storiara is billed monthly and its projects don't carry a per-file expiry date.
What Storiara does that Hot Budget doesn't
Hot Budget starts with blank lines. It doesn't read a script, count pages, or know how many days an actor works. Storiara does all three. It extracts scenes with page eighths, the cast list, locations, props, wardrobe, and music and effects; gives you a drag-and-drop stripboard; fills the cast Day Out of Days from it; and uses those paid days in the budget. It also produces the call sheets once you shoot, which Hot Budget doesn't touch.
Storiara runs in a browser on any computer, and collaborators with the right role can open the same project at once. Hot Budget is an Excel workbook with macros, recommended on specific Excel for Mac builds, and Hot Bricks' download page carries a compatibility list by macOS version plus advice to run Excel under Rosetta on Apple silicon Macs.
One job, both ways: a two-day music video with a narrative story
A label sends a treatment and a 6-page script for a music video: a performance setup on a stage, plus four story scenes at a diner and a parking garage. Two shoot days.
In Hot Budget, the producer opens the commercial and music video template, fills crew by section with day rates and the number of days, adds stage rental, the diner location fee, and the garage permit, and uses the overtime calculator to price a 14-hour day on Day 2 in case the night exterior runs long. They add a weather day contingency and output a PDF from the cost summary for the label. After the shoot, receipts go into the petty cash log and the payroll log fills from the timecard CSV, and the actual column shows where they landed against the bid.
In Storiara, the producer uploads the script, and the four story scenes and the performance scene come out with eighths, locations, cast, and props. They board Day 1 as the stage performance and Day 2 as the diner, then a company move to the garage at night. The DOOD shows the two story actors both work only Day 2, so no holds. Budget setup creates a film-format top sheet from crew and location rates, which they export to Excel. They then email call sheets for each day. When the label asks for an AICP-format bid, Storiara can't produce it.
Switching or using both
Nothing imports between them. Storiara's budget exports to Excel, which you can use as a reference while filling a Hot Budget template, but account numbers don't map to AICP sections, so it's a retyping job. Crew lists and rates can move the other way through Storiara's CSV and Excel import on Cast & Crew.
A practical split on short-form work with a real script: plan the breakdown, board, and call sheets in Storiara, and bid and actualize in Hot Budget. The commercial production budget template and the guide on how to budget a commercial shoot cover the bid side.
How to choose
If you bid commercials or music videos to agencies and labels, need AICP formatting, and want actuals against the bid, use Hot Budget, and make sure your Excel for Mac version is on its compatibility list. If you're planning a scripted production where page counts and cast days drive the budget, use Storiara. See the compare hub for other budgeting tools and the commercials solutions page for how Storiara handles short-form shoots.