Most AI video tools advertise a monthly price and bury the per-video cost inside a credit system you only understand after the first bill. This comparison prices 10 tools on what a finished, publishable video actually costs. Two numbers matter more than the headline: the monthly floor you pay whether you produce or not, and whether unused credits survive the billing cycle. Creatify, HeyGen, Synthesia, InVideo AI, Runway, Zeely, Topview and MakeUGC all charge a monthly floor. Arcads publishes no pricing at all. v4v sells credit packs from $7 with no subscription and credits that never expire — about $2.44 per 8-second video. Which model is cheaper for you depends almost entirely on how steady your output is.
What does "real cost" mean for an AI video tool?
Headline pricing and per-video cost are rarely the same number.
Two things decide what you actually pay. The first is the monthly floor: the amount that leaves your account whether you publish 30 videos or none. The second is credit expiry: whether the allocation you paid for survives to the next cycle.
A $39 plan with 100 credits looks cheap at full usage. Make five videos that month and each one cost you $7.80.
Every figure below comes from the vendor's own public pricing page (verified 2026-08-07). Several of these tools discount heavily and change tiers often, so treat the numbers as a snapshot, not a contract.
The 10 tools, ranked by what a finished video really costs
1. v4v
What it is: A product-URL-to-video ad generator built for vertical paid social. Paste a product URL and the brief builds itself. No script, no editing timeline.
Pricing: No subscription — there is no monthly plan to buy, and none to cancel. Credit packs start at $7 for 1,000 credits, and credits never expire. An 8-second video through the URL flow costs about 349 credits, roughly $2.44. In the AI Lab, Gemini Omni runs 180 credits per 10 seconds (about $1.26) for 4-10 second clips in 9:16 or 16:9, up to 4K, at roughly two minutes of render time per 10 seconds. Gemini Omni restricts kids-as-avatars and celebrity likenesses.
Verdict: Monthly floor of $0. The $7 pack is the cheapest way on this list to find out whether generated ads work for your products.
2. Creatify
What it is: Product-URL-to-video with a large AI actor library. The closest direct workflow competitor to v4v.
Pricing: Starter $39/month for 100 credits. Pro $99/month for 300 credits, boostable up to 5,000. Free plan gives 10 credits a month. AI video ads, avatar videos and AI Shorts cost 5 credits per 15 seconds of video, rounded up. Credits are valid for two months, not one — Creatify's help centre is explicit about that, and most roundups get it wrong.
Verdict: At full usage a 15-second ad works out to roughly $1.95 on Starter and $1.65 on Pro. That is genuinely low per unit, and worth saying plainly. What costs you is the floor: produce five ads in a slow month on Starter and the effective cost is $7.80 each. The v4v vs Creatify comparison walks the credit math further.
3. HeyGen
What it is: A multilingual avatar platform. Strong for presenter-style and translated video. Not built for product ad automation.
Pricing: Free plan covers 3 watermarked videos a month, one minute each. Creator is $29/month with 600 credits and 1080p export. Pro is $49/month with 1,000 credits and 4K. Business is $149/month with 1,500 credits, plus $20 per additional seat. Enterprise is custom.
Verdict: Pro is $49 per month as of 7 August 2026 — worth checking against whatever figure you have on file, since HeyGen has revised its tiers more than once. HeyGen is solid for multilingual spokesperson content and over-featured if your goal is product ad volume, as the v4v vs HeyGen comparison sets out.
4. Synthesia
What it is: Corporate training and internal comms video, with a wide avatar library and polished presenter output.
Pricing: Basic is free with 10 minutes a month and 1 personal avatar. Starter is $29/month billed monthly, or $18/month billed yearly. Creator is $89/month billed monthly, or $64/month billed yearly, with 30 minutes a month and 5 personal avatars. Enterprise is custom, and Synthesia publishes no figure for it — treat any specific enterprise number you see quoted elsewhere as a guess. The full tier-by-tier breakdown is in the Synthesia pricing guide.
Verdict: Right tool for onboarding and compliance training. Wrong tool for paid social. Minutes-based billing also punishes exactly the behaviour ad testing depends on, which is making the same 8 seconds six different ways.
5. InVideo AI
What it is: A broad AI video platform with access to 200-plus image, video, audio and music models. Flexible, but generalist.
Pricing: Four tiers, all shown on annual billing by default. Plus is displayed at $17/month, billed $200 annually, with 75 credits a month. Max is displayed at $85/month, billed $1,000 annually, with 390 credits. Generative is displayed at $170/month, billed $2,000 annually, with 800 credits. Elite is displayed at $900/month, billed $10,800 annually, with 4,250 credits. The first three cards are marked "Annual 15% off" and Elite "Annual 10% off". Note that the displayed monthly figure and the annual total do not always divide evenly — $1,000 over 12 months is $83.33, not the $85 on the card — which is InVideo's own rounding, not a discount you receive. InVideo's FAQ states plainly that unused credits do not roll over to the next month. The tier detail is in the InVideo pricing breakdown.
Verdict: Wide model access is genuinely useful for experimentation. There is no product-specific workflow — every video starts from a blank canvas — and the no-rollover rule hurts anyone whose output is uneven: on Plus, an unused month is 75 credits gone and roughly $17 spent on nothing.
6. Runway
What it is: A professional-grade generative video tool aimed at filmmakers and technical users.
Pricing: Free tier includes 125 one-time credits. Standard is $15/month, or $12/month billed annually, with 625 credits. Pro is $35/month, or $28 annually, with 2,250 credits. Max is $95/month, or $76 annually, with 9,500 credits and credit rollover. Enterprise is custom. The top consumer tier is called Max, not "Unlimited".
Verdict: Powerful for creative direction and visual effects. Per-second credit consumption varies sharply by model and resolution, so Runway is a tool you budget by experiment rather than by spreadsheet. That is a poor fit for DTC ad volume.
7. Zeely
What it is: A mobile-first AI video and ad app aimed at small business owners.
Pricing: Zeely sells fixed-length paid trials rather than a free one: $19.95 for 2 weeks, $29.95 for 4 weeks, or $49.95 for 8 weeks, all marked as promotional. After the first term the subscription renews at $79.95 per month. A free tier with 10,000 credits and limited features also exists.
Verdict: $79.95 a month is the real price. The trial figures are acquisition pricing, and the structure means the number you agreed to is not the number you keep paying.
8. Topview
What it is: A product-to-video tool with API access on paid plans, aimed at ecommerce sellers and agencies.
Pricing: Pro lists at $29/month and was discounted to $16 at time of checking, with 960 credits allocated annually upfront. Business lists at $75, discounted to $44, with 3,000 credits a year. Ultra lists at $150, discounted to $50, with 500 credits a month that expire monthly. Team is $56 per seat per month billed annually.
Verdict: Cheap entry for ecommerce video, and API access is a real advantage for agency workflows. The annual upfront allocation on Pro and Business turns unused credits into a planning problem, and discounts this deep mean the list price is largely theoretical.
9. MakeUGC
What it is: An AI UGC-style video platform using synthetic creators for ad content.
Pricing: Startup is $59/month with 500 credits. Growth is $79/month with 1,000 credits. Pro is $149/month, listed down from $224, with 2,000 credits. API plans run $99 and $299.
Verdict: Entry is $59, not the $49 that circulates in most comparison posts. MakeUGC does not publish a credits-per-video rate on its pricing page, so no honest per-video figure exists for it — including in the roundups that confidently give one.
10. Arcads
What it is: An AI actor platform for UGC-style ad content.
Pricing: None published. The arcads.ai pricing URL returns a 404 and the homepage carries no figures. You learn what you will pay after creating an account or taking a call.
Verdict: Opaque pricing is friction before you have generated anything. Workable for agencies with an approved budget, awkward for a solo operator comparing options on a Tuesday afternoon.
When is v4v not the right pick?
The URL-to-video flow currently outputs 720p at 9:16. If a campaign needs 4K vertical straight out of an automated flow, that means the AI Lab with Gemini Omni instead, which supports up to 4K but takes more manual setup than the one-click URL path.
v4v is built for product ads. Corporate training, multilingual presenter content at scale, and long-form explainers are what Synthesia and HeyGen are purpose-built for, and they will do those jobs better.
If you want the largest possible AI actor library with minimal configuration, Creatify's is larger than v4v's.
For the wider picture, the v4v alternatives page covers the tradeoffs without the sales spin.
Subscription or pay-per-use: which is actually cheaper?
Here is the honest version, because the verified numbers do not all point one way.
At full usage, a subscription can beat pay-per-use on raw unit price. Creatify Pro consuming all 300 credits produces 15-second ads at about $1.65 each. That is less per finished video than v4v's ~$2.44 per 8 seconds. If your output is genuinely steady and high every single month, say so and buy the plan.
The problem is the word "steady". Campaign pauses, gaps between launches, seasonal slowdowns and one bad month of ad account trouble all leave the floor untouched. Divide that same $99 by the four videos you actually made in August and the real cost is $24.75 each. Divide $39 by two and it is $19.50. The subscription unit price only exists at full consumption, and full consumption is the part nobody hits twelve months in a row.
Pay-per-use has no cliff. $2.44 is $2.44 whether you make one video or two hundred, and credits that never expire mean unspent budget is still there next quarter instead of evaporating on a renewal date. Of the tools here that publish pricing, v4v is the only one you can use with no monthly plan at all.
So: high and consistent volume favours a plan. Lumpy volume — which describes most DTC operators — favours credits. The pay-per-use versus subscription breakdown works through both cases at different production rates.
Which tool is best for UGC-style product ads?
For UGC-style product ads meant to go straight to paid social, the shortlist is v4v, Creatify, MakeUGC and Arcads.
Arcads cannot be compared on cost, because it does not publish any. MakeUGC starts at a $59 floor with no published per-video rate. Creatify automates a lot of the production and is cheap per unit at full usage, with a two-month credit window and a $39 to $99 floor to keep filled.
v4v starts from a product URL, skips the scripting step, and charges nothing until you generate. If your priority is speed from product link to publishable vertical ad with no plan to manage, that is the shortest path.
Where to start
Work out your real monthly output first, not your optimistic one. Multiply it by each tool's per-video rate, then compare that against the floor you would be paying anyway. For most operators the two numbers are further apart than expected.
Testing costs $7. There is no subscription to cancel afterwards — see the v4v pricing guide for the full credit breakdown.
Paste a product link. The brief builds itself.
Generate product videos, UGC-style ads and hooks in about 5 minutes.
Try v4vFrom $7 · no subscription, ever · credits never expire
FAQs
What is the cheapest AI video tool in 2026?
The cheapest way to start is v4v's $7 credit pack, because there is no monthly plan attached to it — what $7 actually buys is about two 8-second videos. The cheapest per finished video at full usage is different: Creatify Pro at $99 for 300 credits produces 15-second ads at roughly $1.65. That only holds if you consume the whole allocation every month, which most brands do not.
Do AI video tool credits expire?
Most expire. Creatify credits are valid for two months. InVideo AI states unused credits do not roll over. Topview allocates Pro and Business credits annually upfront, while its Ultra tier expires credits monthly. Runway offers rollover only on the Max tier. v4v credits never expire, which is the main structural difference between it and everything else here.
Does v4v have a subscription or a free trial?
No to both. v4v has no subscription and never has — there is no monthly plan, no seat pricing and nothing to cancel — and there is no free trial. The cheapest way to test it is the $7 entry pack, which is 1,000 credits, or about two 8-second videos through the URL-to-video flow.
How much does HeyGen Pro cost?
HeyGen Pro is $49 per month with 1,000 credits and 4K export (verified 7 August 2026). Creator is $29 with 600 credits at 1080p, Business is $149 with 1,500 credits plus $20 per extra seat, and the free plan allows 3 watermarked one-minute videos a month.
Why is there no price listed for Arcads?
Arcads publishes no pricing. Its pricing URL returns a 404 and the homepage shows no figures, so cost only becomes visible after you create an account or speak to sales. Any specific Arcads price you see in a comparison article is an unverified third-party estimate, which is why no figure is quoted for it here.
Is a subscription ever cheaper than pay-per-use for video ads?
Yes, when your output is high and genuinely consistent. If you reliably consume most of a plan's monthly credits, the per-video unit price on a subscription can undercut pay-per-use. The break happens in idle months: the floor is charged regardless, so four videos on a $99 plan cost $24.75 each rather than the advertised rate.