Runway pricing in 2026: plans, credits and seconds of video per plan

Runway's cheapest paid plan is Standard at $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly, with 625 credits: about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 video. The Free plan costs $0 and gives 125 one-time credits that never expire but never refresh. Every generation is paid in credits, so what you really get depends on the model and the length of each clip, which is what the tables below work out.

Runway pricing at a glance

From runway.com/pricing and Runway's help center, in US dollars. Yearly prices are per month, billed once a year. Runway's Pro plan article lists 500GB of storage; the pricing page lists 100GB.

Runway, still widely called Runway ML, now sells its plans at runway.com. The plan cards convert credits into video for you: 625 credits make 52 seconds of Gen-4.5, 2,250 make 187 seconds, and 9,500 make 791 seconds. Plan changes work both ways: upgrades take effect at once, prorated, with the extra credits added straight away; on a downgrade the unused balance is credited to your next billing cycle and your current plan stays active until then.

What a Runway credit buys

Every model has a set credit rate, usually per second of output. Runway's own example: Gen-4.5 uses 12 credits a second, so a 5-second clip costs 60 credits and a 10-second clip 120. These are the video models most people ask about.

Per-second rates from Runway's model price list (academy.runwayml.com/models-pricing) and per-clip costs from the "Compare models across plans" table on runway.com/pricing. The pricing table lists 24 video models in all. Images cost 2 credits on Gen-4 Image Turbo, 8 on Gen-4 Image at 1080p and 20 on Nano Banana Pro at 2K.

One number to budget around: Runway's Standard and Pro plan cards say 625 credits make 104 seconds of Gen-4 Turbo and 2,250 make 375 seconds, which works out to 6 credits a second, while the Max card's 1,900 seconds from 9,500 credits works out to 5. Its model table, its model price list and its API docs all price Gen-4 Turbo at 5 credits a second, which would give 125 and 450 seconds. Check the cost Runway shows before you generate.

Seconds of video on each Runway plan

Runway's plan cards give seconds only for its own models, and its model table counts clips per year. This table converts every popular model into seconds a month: each plan's monthly credits divided by the model's credits per second, rounded down, before any retakes.

Our arithmetic on Runway's published rates. The pricing page shows Seedance 2.5 on the Pro and Max plan cards but not on Standard's. Team credits go into one pool, so a team of three has 20,700 credits a month.

The pattern is clear: budget models stretch furthest, and premium models with sound use credits fast. On Standard, the 625 monthly credits cover a single 8-second Veo 3.1 clip with audio. If you mainly want Veo, Kling or Seedance, compare the price of using them directly: see our breakdowns of Veo 3 pricing, Kling AI pricing and Seedance pricing.

Runway Gen-4.5 cost in dollars

Divide a plan's price by its credits and you get the price of one credit. The bigger the plan, the cheaper each credit, but only if you use them all before they reset.

Our arithmetic on Runway's plan prices and credit rates, assuming every credit is used. Team works out the same as Max: $0.010 per credit monthly, $0.008 yearly.

Two things follow. First, Standard is the most expensive plan per credit, at more than twice Max's rate on monthly billing. Second, Max on monthly billing costs the same per credit as the pay-as-you-go API, so it only matches the API's price if you use every credit; it comes out cheaper per credit only on yearly billing, at $0.008.

Do Runway credits roll over?

Only on the top plans. According to Runway's help center:

• Standard and Pro: monthly credits expire on your billing date. The pricing page says they reset within 24 hours of it.
• Max and Team: up to one month of unused credits can roll over to the following month.
• Credits you buy: never expire. Every paid plan can buy them from the Plans and Billing page, with a minimum of 1,000 credits per purchase. The pricing page does not list the price of a top-up.
• Free plan: the one-time 125 credits do not expire, and Free users cannot buy more.

Credits are spent in a set order: the current month's plan credits first, then rollover credits, then purchased credits. That order protects the credits you paid extra for.

Is there an unlimited Runway plan?

Not any more for new subscribers. Runway's old Unlimited plan was $95 a month with 2,250 credits plus Explore Mode, which allowed unlimited generations at a relaxed speed. Runway says those relaxed speeds often led to queuing, so it rolled out Max on June 1, 2026, and Unlimited has not been offered since.

• Existing Unlimited subscribers on eligible plans keep unlimited access through November 30, 2026, according to an update to the article dated August 27.
• Monthly Unlimited plans switch automatically to Max on November 30, at the same $95 a month, unless you cancel.
• Annual Unlimited plans can, in November, either cancel for a refund of the remaining months or take a credits bonus to move to Max.
• Max has no Explore Mode. It has 9,500 credits a month, which Runway notes is about four times Unlimited's 2,250, generated on demand without a queue.

What is still unlimited: 4K video upscaling on Pro, Max and Team, and the Topaz AI Upscale tool, which the pricing page marks as unlimited on Pro and Max. Generation itself is always metered in credits.

Runway API pricing

The Runway API, sold as Runway Dev, is pay as you go. Credits cost $0.01 each, bought per project in the developer portal, and sales tax may apply. They are completely separate from app plan credits: a Standard, Pro or Max subscription does not pay for API calls, and API credits never show up in the app. Runway says you can sign up for the API without a card.

From docs.dev.runwayml.com/guides/pricing. Minimums are per generation. ProRes and HDR output add 5 to 40 credits a second on Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0.

The API also has recipes that return a finished asset in one request, including three product video recipes. Product Ad turns 1 to 10 product photos into a 4 to 15 second product video: 200 credits ($2.00) for 4 seconds at 720p, plus 36 credits for each extra second, so a 10-second ad costs $4.16 and a 15-second one $5.96. Product UGC makes a vertical creator-style promo from a character image and a product image, from 192 credits ($1.92) for 4 seconds at 720p. Product Swap starts at 212 credits. These recipes are documented for the API.

Is Runway free?

Yes, to try. The Free plan gives 125 credits once. They never expire, but they never refresh either. Runway says the Free plan covers a limited set of models that changes over time, videos made on it carry a Runway watermark, and Free users cannot buy extra credits. At Gen-4.5's rate, 125 credits would cover about 10 seconds of video if that model is in the Free selection when you sign up. Removing the watermark and unlocking every model starts at Standard.

For other ways to animate a photo at no cost, see our guide to free image to video AI.

Which Runway plan fits which use

• Trying it out: Free. Enough for a few short test clips on the models the Free plan includes.
• A few clips a month: Standard. About 10 five-second Gen-4.5 clips, or 48 seconds of Kling 3.0 Std with audio.
• Creating a few times a week: Pro. 3.6 times Standard's credits for a little over twice the price, plus unlimited 4K video upscaling.
• Daily production: Max. The cheapest credits of the individual plans, a month of rollover, and HDR and ProRes output.
• A small team: Team, from two seats. Pooled credits and a shared workspace; Runway suggests Enterprise from about 10 people.
• Building an app: the API, at $0.01 a credit with no subscription.

Is Runway worth it? For creative work it is strong value: dozens of video, image and audio models behind one login, Aleph 2.0 to edit footage you already have, and studio formats on Max. It is a weaker fit if all you need is short videos and ads of products you sell, because you still write every prompt, plan every shot and build the ad yourself. That is where the next section comes in.

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Runway alternatives for product videos

If your videos are of products you sell, an image to video tool built around the product photo can save steps and be simpler to budget. These are the options that come up most often next to Runway in the current search results and reviews, with prices from each vendor's own page. Sora, which older roundups still list, has closed; see our Sora alternatives for product videos.

How the entry plans compare with Runway and the other tools that rank next to it:

From each vendor's pricing page, in US dollars, billed monthly unless marked. Kling's entry price is a first-purchase offer. Adobe's plan page showed prices for another region, so we could not confirm a US dollar price.

• Kling sells its own models directly. Standard is $6.99 for the first month, then $8.80 a month (list price $10), with 660 credits, commercial use and 1080p or 4K output. Kling 4.0 Flash is listed as annual early access on the Ultra plan.
• Pika gives every plan all its models, including Seedance 2.5. Starter is $10 a month with 900 credits, but a commercial license starts on Creator at $35 a month with 3,150 credits. Extra credits cost 60 per $1 on every plan.
• Adobe Firefly plans start with Firefly Standard (2,000 credits a month, up to 20 five-second videos) and mix Adobe's own video model with partner models. Without a plan, you still get free daily generations across image, video and audio.

For a wider comparison of tools that animate product photos, see our roundup of the best AI image to video tools for ecommerce, or, for finished ads, the best AI video ad generators.

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How we checked

We read runway.com/pricing on both the Monthly and Yearly toggles, on the Individual, Team and Enterprise, and API tabs, and expanded the full "Compare models across plans" table. We read Runway's model price list at academy.runwayml.com, eight help center articles (how credits work, the Free, Standard, Pro, Max and Team plan articles, the Unlimited to Max article and the plan guide) and the Runway Dev API pricing and recipe docs.

Seconds per plan and prices per second are our own arithmetic: monthly credits divided by credits per second, and plan price divided by monthly credits. They assume every credit is used and do not count retakes, so treat them as a ceiling. Where Runway's own pages disagree (Gen-4 Turbo's rate on the plan cards, and Pro storage), we say so. Kling and Pika prices come from their own pricing pages; Adobe's page showed another currency from our location, so we did not quote a price.

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