AI Video Cost per Second: Which Platform for What Budget (November 2026)

AI video is sold in credits, and every platform prices its credits differently, so the sticker price of a plan tells you very little. This guide turns each platform's published credit costs into a cost per clip, then shows how retries change the real figure. Everything below comes from the vendors' own pricing and help pages as of November 2026. Prices are the US dollar list prices those pages show; local prices, tax and promotions differ, and credit costs change often, so check the page before you budget.

Credit costs at a glance

What that means in money

Divide the plan price by its credits to get a price per credit, then multiply by the clip's cost. This is our arithmetic, assuming you use every credit in the month at the monthly list price:

• Runway Gen-4.5, 10 seconds: 120 credits. That is about $2.88 on Standard and about $1.87 on Pro. Gen-4 Turbo for the same length is 50 credits, about $1.20 on Standard.
• Luma Ray3.2, 10 seconds: 1080p is 1,200 credits, about $3.60 on Plus. 720p is about $0.90 and 360p about $0.18.
• Kling 4.0 at 1080p inside Luma, 10 seconds: 790 credits, about $2.37 on Plus.
• Pika, 5 seconds at 720p on Starter: Seedance 2.5 about $1.36, Wan 3.0 about $0.37.
• Midjourney, 5 seconds: Standard's 15 fast hours cover about 450 single SD clips or about 128 HD clips. That works out at roughly $0.07 or $0.23 a clip. Extra fast time is $4 an hour, so an extra SD clip costs about $0.13.
• Google Flow: one Veo 3.1 Quality clip (100 credits) costs more than the 50 free daily credits, and unused daily credits don't roll over. Omni Flash at 360p costs 4 to 7 credits, so the free allowance covers several drafts a day.

Two patterns stand out. Resolution is the biggest lever: on Luma, 1080p costs 20 times as much as 360p for the same 10 seconds. The same model also costs different amounts in different places, because Kling 4.0 and Seedance 2.5 are sold by their makers and by hosts such as Luma, Pika and Runway.

The real number: cost per usable clip

None of these prices include the takes you throw away. AI video rarely gets a shot right first time: hands go wrong, the camera ignores you, the product changes shape. Runway's help centre puts the rule plainly: credits come back only if a generation ends in an error. A clip that finishes but misses your prompt still costs the full price.

The working formula is simple:

cost per usable clip = cost per take x takes per keeper

If you keep one take in four, a $2.88 Gen-4.5 clip really costs about $11.50, and a $0.18 Luma draft costs about $0.72. A cheaper model you have to run eight times can cost more than an expensive one that lands in two. The only way to know your own ratio is to count, per tool and per type of shot.

Which platform for what budget

Almost nothing

Google Flow's 50 daily credits are the most generous ongoing free allowance among the tools here: enough for Omni Flash drafts and a Veo 3.1 Lite or Fast clip most days. Our free AI video generators guide covers the other free tiers.

Lots of cheap iterations

Midjourney video is the cheapest per clip if you already make your stills there, though it is silent and starts from an image. Luma's 360p Ray3.2 and Flow's 360p Omni Flash are cheap ways to test motion before paying for resolution.

Client-grade 1080p and above

Budget per finished second, not per plan. Kling 4.0, Runway Gen-4.5, Veo 3.1 Quality and Ray3.2 at 1080p all cost a few dollars per 10-second take before retries. For which model suits which shot, see image to video: which platform for what.

Long pieces

Length multiplies everything. Midjourney and Flow charge each extension like a new clip, and per-second pricing scales directly. Our longer AI videos guide compares the routes to 30 seconds and beyond.

Try it: work out your own cost per keeper

1. Pick one real shot from a current job.
2. Run it in two tools at the resolution you would deliver, and count every take until you have one you would send to a client.
3. Multiply each tool's cost per take by the number of takes it needed.
4. Repeat for a different kind of shot, such as a person talking or a product turning. Ratios differ a lot by subject.

Counting takes by hand across several sites is tedious. Dreamdrive, a free Chrome extension, saves every clip automatically as you make it, with its prompt, model and settings, into one searchable library. You can see how many attempts each keeper took in each tool, and organise them by client project.

Related: how to waste fewer credits and commercial rights by plan.