All four tools sell "credits", but a credit is worth something different in each one — and the cheapest plan is rarely the cheapest way to ship a finished clip. This guide converts every plan into cost per finished second, and reads the fine print that decides whether you may use the output in an ad at all.
Standard, billed annually ($15/mo monthly). 625 credits/month.
Standard list price; first month is discounted and renewals are $8.80/mo. 660 credits/month.
Plus, billed annually ($30/mo monthly, $300/year). 10,000 credits/month. No free plan is currently listed.
Starter, billed annually ($10/mo monthly). 900 credits/month — but commercial use starts higher, on Creator at $28/mo billed annually.
| Runway | Kling AI | Luma Dream Machine | Pika | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Ad and client work where rights clarity matters most | Creators who need many clips at the lowest per-clip cost | Creators who want several top models under one subscription | Social creators making effects-heavy short clips |
| Free option | 125 credits, one time only (not monthly). Watermarked, older Turbo model | $0 Basic tier; no fixed monthly credit pool is published. Watermarked, older model, lower resolution | No free plan listed on the current pricing page; trial credits are mentioned but the amount and terms are not published | $0, but zero monthly credits — you generate only by buying credit packs. No commercial license |
| Entry paid plan | Standard $15/mo ($12 billed annually), 625 credits/mo | Standard $10/mo list (renews at $8.80/mo), 660 credits/mo | Plus $30/mo ($25 billed annually), 10,000 credits/mo | Starter $10/mo ($8 billed annually), 900 credits/mo |
| Commercial use from | Not restricted by the terms on any plan — but free output is watermarked, so Standard is the practical entry | Standard (the cheapest paid tier) | Paid plans (Plus and up); output made outside a paid term is not covered | Creator, $35/mo ($28 billed annually) — Starter does not include it |
| Watermark | Free plan only; removed from Standard up | Free tier only; removed on paid plans | Paid plans are watermark-free; trial terms are not published clearly enough to rely on | Pricing table says no watermark on any plan, but the help pages do not list the Free plan — treat free output as unverified |
| What a 5-second clip costs in credits | Gen-4.5: 60 credits (12/sec). Gen-4 Turbo: 25 credits (5/sec) | Standard 720p video: roughly 20 credits per the vendor's own guide | Ray models, 720p: 100 credits. 1080p: 400 credits | Seedance 2.5 at 720p: 122 credits. Wan 3.0 at 720p: 33 credits |
| Credit rollover | Standard / Pro credits expire each cycle; Max rolls one month over. Purchased top-ups (1,000+) never expire | Plan credits expire about 31 days after issue | Unused credits expire each billing cycle; the pricing page sells no top-up packs, so more volume means a bigger plan | Plan credits do not roll over; separately bought packs (60 credits per $1) last 365 days |
| Trade-off to know | Flagship seconds are expensive: Standard buys only about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 a month | Three prices per plan (list / first month / renewal) make the real rate easy to misread; free-tier "66 credits a day" guides are outdated | Old Dream Machine plan names and prices (Lite $9.99, Unlimited $94.99) still circulate but are no longer the current ladder — and there is no free tier to learn on | The cheapest paid plan is not a business plan: no commercial license until Creator |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. Kling AI shows three numbers per plan — a list price, a discounted first month, and a renewal price — and this guide uses the list price as the headline and the renewal price in cost math, labelled each time. Luma prices are web prices; app-store pricing has historically run higher. Plans, models and credit rates change frequently in this category — always confirm the current price and terms on the vendor's site before you buy.
Plan pages advertise how many seconds you can generate. Creators ship finished seconds, and the gap between the two is retries: generations you discard because the motion broke, a hand warped, or the product looked wrong. The table below prices a concrete workload using only published prices and credit rates, plus one clearly-labelled assumption.
Workload: ten 15-second ad videos a month, each assembled from three 5-second clips — 30 finished clips. Assumption (ours, not a measurement): 3 generations per finished clip, so 90 generations a month. Your real retry rate depends on your prompts and standards; halve it and the costs roughly halve.
| Tool (model & setting) | Credits for 90 generations | Plan that covers it | Effective cost per finished 15s ad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kling AI (standard 720p, ~20 credits each) | 1,800 | Pro, 3,000 credits — $32.56/mo at renewal | about $3.26 |
| Luma (Ray, 720p, 100 credits each) | 9,000 | Plus, 10,000 credits — $30/mo monthly billing | $3.00 |
| Luma (Ray, 1080p, 400 credits each) | 36,000 | Pro, 40,000 credits — $90/mo monthly billing | $9.00 |
| Pika (Wan 3.0, 720p, 33 credits each) | 2,970 | Creator, 3,150 credits — $28/mo billed annually | $2.80 |
| Pika (Seedance 2.5, 720p, 122 credits each) | 10,980 | Above Fancy's entry tier (8,550 credits) — from $95/mo | over $9.50 |
| Runway (Gen-4.5, 60 credits each) | 5,400 | Max, 9,500 credits — $76/mo billed annually (Pro's 2,250 credits cover only ~37 generations) | $7.60 |
Three lessons from the arithmetic. First, per-credit prices mislead: Luma has the cheapest credit here (about $0.003 on Plus) but burns 100 per 5-second 720p clip, landing at roughly the same per-clip cost as Kling AI. Second, resolution is a plan decision on Luma — moving from 720p to 1080p quadruples credit burn and pushes this workload from the $30 plan to the $90 plan. Third, on Pika the model you pick matters more than the plan you pick: the same workload fits Creator on Wan 3.0 but overflows Fancy's entry tier on Seedance 2.5.
Runway is the most complete package of the four: its own Gen-4.5 model (2–10 second clips), a full editing environment, 4K upscaling, and third-party models such as Kling 3.0 and Veo available inside the same credit pool. Standard ($15/mo, or $12/mo billed annually) includes 625 credits a month — about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 at the published rate of 12 credits per second. Pro ($35 / $28) includes 2,250 credits (about 187 seconds) and Max ($95 / $76) includes 9,500 credits (about 791 seconds) plus one month of credit rollover. The free plan's 125 credits are a one-time deposit, not a monthly allowance, and every free video carries a watermark. On rights, Runway's terms are the clearest here: the company does not claim ownership of your outputs and does not restrict their commercial use on any plan — one less tier gate to track, though the same terms let Runway use inputs and outputs to improve its models, which matters if you generate unreleased client material.
Kling AI, built by Kuaishou, is the volume play. Its own credit guide frames a standard 720p video at roughly 20 credits, so Standard (list $10/mo, renewing at $8.80/mo after a discounted first month) with 660 credits works out to about 33 such videos a month — and Standard is already the tier where commercial use and watermark removal begin. Pro (list $37, renewing at $32.56) raises the pool to 3,000 credits, Premier (list $92) to 8,000, and Ultra (list $180) to 26,000. The free Basic tier publishes no fixed monthly credit pool, is watermarked, cannot be used commercially, and is limited to an older model at lower resolution — ignore older guides promising "66 free credits a day"; multiple current sources report that policy has been retired and daily credits are now a paid-member perk. Plan credits expire roughly 31 days after issue, so this is a use-it-monthly tool.
Luma restructured in 2026 around "Luma Agents", and its current pricing page lists paid plans only: Plus ($30/mo, or $25/mo billed annually) with 10,000 credits, Pro ($90 / $75) with 40,000, and Ultra ($300 / $250) with 150,000 — Team and Enterprise are quote-only. The draw is the pool: credits spend across Luma's own Ray models and third-party video, image and audio models in one workspace. The burn rate is the catch. A 5-second Ray clip costs 100 credits at 720p and 400 at 1080p, so Plus buys 100 draft-resolution clips or 25 at 1080p — and there are no top-up packs on the pricing page, so outgrowing a plan means upgrading it. Commercial use is included on paid plans for output generated during the paid term; legal indemnification is reserved for Enterprise. Ignore older pages quoting a free tier or Lite/Plus/Unlimited pricing ($9.99 / $29.99 / $94.99): that ladder no longer matches Luma's own pricing page.
Pika relaunched in September 2026 as a combined video, image and audio studio, and its current lineup is Free ($0, no monthly credits — packs only), Starter ($10/mo, or $8 billed annually, 900 credits), Creator ($35 / $28, 3,150 credits) and Fancy (from $95 / $76, 8,550 credits and up). Every plan unlocks every model and the per-credit price is flat — about $0.011 on monthly billing and $0.009 on annual billing at every tier — so plans differ by volume and parallel generations, not by credit value. What changes everything is which model you run: Pika's own table prices a 5-second 720p clip at 122 credits on Seedance 2.5 versus 33 credits on Wan 3.0. And note the line that matters for business use: the Free and Starter plans carry no commercial license, so client or ad work starts at Creator. (Older guides call these tiers Standard and Pro, and say commercial use starts at "Pro" — that is the same boundary under the old names.)
Before comparing prices, find the cheapest tier you may legally publish from. Kling AI: Standard. Runway: any paid plan in practice (free output is watermarked). Luma: Plus. Pika: Creator — not Starter. If you monetize or run ads, a cheaper tier without the license is not cheaper; it is unusable.
Take the model and resolution you will actually use, find its credit cost, and convert: (plan price ÷ plan credits) × credits per clip. A $30 plan with a $0.003 credit can cost more per clip than a $10 plan, as the Luma vs Kling AI math above shows.
Count how many generations you typically discard per keeper — two or three is a common planning figure, but use your own. That multiplier, not the plan's headline seconds, decides which tier you need and whether credits will expire unused.
Free tiers here run older models, lower resolutions or no credits at all, so they judge the wrong product. Run one real brief — a product clip you would actually post — on the cheapest publishable tier of two finalists, and keep the one whose discards you can live with.
Generally no, and each tool blocks it differently. Kling AI's free tier forbids commercial use outright and watermarks output. Pika's Free and Starter plans carry no commercial license. Luma's trial output is for internal evaluation only under its terms. Runway is the exception on paper — its terms do not restrict commercial use on any plan — but every free video is watermarked and the 125 credits are a one-time allowance, so it is a testing budget, not a production route.
It depends on which Runway cost is hurting. For raw cost per finished clip, Kling AI's standard 720p generation works out cheapest in our published-price math (about $0.27 per generation at Standard's renewal price), and its commercial license starts on its cheapest tier. For keeping access to several frontier models in one place, Luma's pool includes Kling and Veo alongside its own Ray models. Note that Runway itself also hosts third-party models in its suite, so "switching" sometimes just means changing which model your existing credits burn on.
Because each vendor sets both the price of a credit and how many credits a generation burns, and the second number varies more. Luma sells the cheapest credit here (about $0.003 on Plus) but charges 100 credits for a 5-second 720p Ray clip. Pika charges one flat credit price but bills 122 credits for a Seedance 2.5 clip and 33 for a Wan 3.0 clip at the same length and resolution. Always convert to cost per finished clip at your model, resolution and retry rate.
Mostly no. Runway's Standard and Pro credits expire each cycle (Max rolls one month; purchased top-ups of 1,000+ credits never expire). Kling AI plan credits expire about 31 days after issue. Luma credits expire each billing cycle and the pricing page offers no top-up packs. Pika plan credits do not roll over, but separately purchased packs stay valid for 365 days.
On published terms, any paid tier of Kling AI, Runway or Luma includes the commercial use a monetized channel needs, and on Pika you need Creator or above. Beyond the license, match the tool to your volume: our worked example (ten 15-second ads a month, 3 generations per finished clip) lands between $2.80 and $9.00 per finished ad depending on tool, model and resolution — the spread comes from credit math, not from a quality ranking, which this guide does not make.
Because this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing: we did not generate comparison videos, and we will not pretend otherwise. Vendors publish performance claims for their models, and those claims change with every model release — which is why this page sticks to what can be verified from the outside: prices, credit tables, watermark rules and license terms, checked in November 2026.