Create AI videos: 10 generators compared on price

What does an AI video really cost?

The list price says little with video generators, because almost every provider bills in credits rather than in videos. How many seconds your allowance buys depends on the model you choose and the resolution. At Runway, for example, the 625 credits of the Standard plan cover 52 seconds with the top model Gen-4.5 according to the pricing page – or 104 seconds with the faster Gen-4 Turbo. MiniMax Hailuo is cheapest per second according to its pricing page: from $0.034 at 480p, around $0.06 at 768p.

The three cost traps

First, VAT. Eight of the ten providers compared quote net prices in US dollars. The advertised $12 for Runway Standard becomes roughly $14.30 once 19% German VAT (Umsatzsteuer) is added, plus a one to two per cent foreign-currency fee from your credit card. Only Google (gross) and InVideo bill in euros.

Second, the annual commitment. At Krea, Pro costs $35 a month instead of $21, at MiniMax Hailuo the Standard plan costs $14.99 instead of $8.40, and at InVideo Starter costs €20 instead of €10. The discount of 17 to 50% is tempting, but it ties you for twelve months to a tool in a market where, in 2026, the best-known name of all – OpenAI Sora – has disappeared.

Third, the watermark. Most free tiers burn a logo into the picture – at Runway, HeyGen and Synthesia, for example. Pika does without a watermark, but no longer hands out free credits on its Free account. Synthesia goes further still and does not let you download the video on the free plan at all – you can only watch it in the browser. If you want to test whether a tool is any good, you should factor that in.

Worked example: what does a minute of video cost?

Converting the allowances of the entry plans (annual billing, as of October 2026) into seconds using the providers' credit price lists gives very different per-minute prices:

Two things stand out. First, avatar videos are many times cheaper per minute than freely generated scenes – a talking avatar is technically less demanding. Second, resolution decides: at Luma the same second costs four times as much in 1080p as in 720p. For social media clips the lower setting is often enough, and you can upscale later – Runway offers 4K upscaling even on the Standard plan. All figures are net, plus 19% VAT.

Scene generator or avatar tool?

The “AI video” category covers two fundamentally different types of product that are often lumped together.

Scene generators invent footage that never existed: an astronaut on a horse, a drone flight over a city that does not exist. Runway, Google Veo, Pika, Luma Dream Machine, Krea and MiniMax Hailuo fall into this group. Typical uses are ad clips, music videos, short social media films and mood footage. The clips are usually five to ten seconds long; longer scenes are built by stringing clips together.

Avatar tools have a digital person read out your text. You type a script, choose an avatar and a language, and the video is done. Synthesia, HeyGen and InVideo do this, and Descript does so with reservations. Typical uses are training courses, product explanations, company announcements and multilingual instructions. What counts here is the choice of languages, lip-sync and approval workflows – not visual aesthetics.

The line is blurring, though: from the Pro plan, HeyGen integrates Seedance 2.5 and Veo 3.1 and places avatars in freely described scenes, and InVideo combines presenters with Seedance clips. If you need both, one subscription is enough there.

Descript is the special case: it is primarily an editing program for existing videos; AI video models only come as an add-on from the Creator plan. You edit the automatically generated transcript, and the video follows the text. If you post-process podcasts, interviews or screen recordings, this saves more time than any generator.

A market that turns quickly

The best-known name has disappeared: according to OpenAI, OpenAI Sora was shut down for web and app on 26 April 2026, and the Sora API was limited until 24 September 2026. At the same time, Google has created a new entry class with “AI Plus” at €4.99, InVideo has scrapped its free plan and Pika has switched its Free account to purchase packs. The second big trend: almost all platforms have become collection points for other companies' models. Seedance, Kling and Veo now turn up at Runway, Luma, Krea, Pika, HeyGen and InVideo – so the choice of platform comes down mainly to price per credit, interface and usage rights.

We have not included providers whose prices cannot be read on their own website because they only appear after login. This applies to Kling AI, Higgsfield and Canva. We do not quote prices that we could not check ourselves at the source. The Kling models can, however, be used through several of the services compared: at Runway a 5-second clip with Kling 4.0 at 1080p costs 118 credits (89 when discounted until 30 November 2026), Luma charges 79 credits per second, and Krea also lists Kling in its model selection.

What we do not rate

We do not rank picture quality, because there is no verifiable yardstick for it – the result depends heavily on the subject, the prompt and chance. Nor do we make statements on GDPR (DSGVO) compliance as long as providers give no reliable information on server location and data processing agreements. For MiniMax Hailuo and Kling AI such information is missing entirely; if you process recordings of people with them, you should clarify this within your company beforehand.