Allcock, Carlson and Toledo defined a period map for cubic threefolds which takes values in a ball quotient of dimension 10. A theorem of Voisin implies that this is an open embedding. We determine its image and show that on the algebraic level this amounts to identification of the algebra of $\operatorname{SL}(5,\mathbb{C})$-invariant polynomials on the representation space $\operatorname{Sym}^3(\mathbb{C}^5)^*$ with an explicitly described algebra of meromorphic automorphic forms on the complex 10-ball.