"Cheapest" is a slippery word in AI video. A tool can have the lowest monthly price and still be the most expensive per clip, because the monthly price buys credits and the credits buy different amounts of video on different models. We build ReelMint, and the only honest way we have found to compare tools is to cost one specific thing: a roughly 10-second clip at 720p on the cheapest paid plan. Here is how that comes out, and how to keep your own costs down.
The price is on the button
Before any of the numbers, the one design rule that matters: in ReelMint the credit cost of a generation is printed on the Generate button before you press it, and it is derived from the provider's real cost for that model, length and resolution. If a provider rejects a job, the credits come back in full. You are charged for what was produced, nothing else.
What a 10-second clip costs, model by model
Read from the live rate table on the cheapest page, cheapest first:
- Runway Gen, cheap 720p: 15 credits for a finished clip. Fine for drafts and motion tests.
- Hailuo 2.3 and the cheapest Veo tier: 38 credits.
- Seedance 1.5 Pro: 44 credits, the cheapest per second.
- Kling 2.5 Turbo Pro: 53 credits.
- Grok Imagine: 57 credits, and the cheapest model that is good enough to post as-is, which is why the free examples use it.
- Gemini Omni Flash: 79 credits, with 4K available.
- PixVerse V6: 90 credits for up to 15 seconds.
The flagship models (Seedance 2.5 at 1080p, Kling 3.0 Omni with native voices up to 4K, Wan 3.0 with native audio up to 30 seconds, Veo 3.1) cost more per clip, in the low hundreds of credits. The models page prints every one at every resolution.
What that means in dollars
The plans start at Lite, $9.99 a month for 800 credits, then Starter at $29 for 2,600, with larger plans cheaper per credit and yearly billing cheaper again. On Starter, the 15-credit Runway draft is about seventeen cents, Grok Imagine is about sixty-four cents, and a flagship clip is a dollar or two. Every plan runs every model; there is no tier where the good models are locked.
For comparison, the same page lists what one comparable clip costs on Runway, Pika, Kling's own app, HeyGen, Luma and the others, read from their published pricing pages on the date shown. Where a tool does not publish a figure, the table says "not shown" rather than guessing.
Five ways to spend less per video
- Draft cheap, finish expensive. Test the prompt on a 15-credit model. When the motion is right, rerun it once on the flagship.
- Use the shortest length that tells the story. A 6-second loop is cheaper than a 10-second one and often performs better as a Short.
- Stay at 720p for phones. Most views are on a phone screen. Upscale only the clips that earn it.
- Let the image model do the heavy lifting. A still from Nano Banana or Seedream is a few credits; animate the one you like with image-to-video rather than generating five videos blind.
- Start with the free examples. New accounts can claim 27 finished creations at no cost, with no card, and each one shows its prompt and model. That is a free lesson in what each model does before you spend a credit.
Where the money goes on bigger jobs
A 40-second film in four scenes costs four clips plus a few credits of scene writing, subtitles and, if you choose, an upscale pass and a soundtrack. A daily bot that makes a 30-second video with music on a mid-priced model is roughly 900 to 1,400 credits per firing, which is the number to look at before you let anything run every day. The studio shows the whole figure before you commit, and the credits guide walks through the arithmetic.
Cheap only means something per video. Price the video, not the plan.
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