Every AI ad tool advertises a "free plan." Almost none of them give you video on it. That gap — between the headline price and the price to do the thing you actually came for — is where small advertisers get surprised. So I sat down and worked out the real cost of generating AI video ads across the main tools, including the fees that only show up once you click "upgrade."
If you're a founder or small performance team deciding whether AI video ads are worth it before committing budget, this is the math you want first.
TL;DR — The "free plan" on most AI ad tools excludes video. AdCreative's ad video effectively lives on a ~$999/mo tier (as of mid-2026 — verify current pricing). Creatify, Arcads, HeyGen, and Runway meter video through credits that get expensive (and opaque) at volume. The cheapest honest entry I found for scored ad video is $29/mo — a two-figure entry instead of a four-figure one, which is the gap I built HeyDreaming into.
The trick: "free plan" ≠ "free video"
Here's the pattern, and once you see it you can't unsee it. A tool offers:
- A free plan — usually images, templates, or a handful of watered-down credits.
- A paid plan where the video generation actually lives.
The marketing leads with "free." The product gates the expensive compute (video) behind a real subscription. That's not necessarily dishonest — video genuinely costs more to generate — but it means the "free AI video ad generator" you searched for often isn't free for video at all.
So the only number that matters is: what does it cost to generate an actual ad video?
The pricing breakdown
Approximate public-plan pricing as of mid-2026 — every one of these has changed tiers before, so verify current pricing before you buy. Where a vendor doesn't cleanly publish a "video" price, I've said so rather than invent one:
| Tool | Entry price for video | Pricing model | Notable catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| HeyDreaming | $29/mo (Studio) | Credit $-budget; Studio $29 / Agency $99 | Lowest published entry for scored ad video; credits are transparent ($0.02 each) |
| Creatify | ~$33/mo+ (annual) for video plans | Credits/mo | Credits burn faster than expected at volume |
| Runway | ~$15/mo+ (Standard, credit-limited) | Credits | General creative tool, not an ad pipeline; credits run out fast on video |
| HeyGen | ~$29/mo+ (Creator) | Credit/minute | Avatar/translation focus; video minutes add up |
| Arcads | ~$110/mo+ (Starter) | Per-seat / credits | Built for actor-UGC volume; priced for it |
| AdCreative.ai | ~$999/mo tier for ad video | Subscription | Strong on static images; ad video is a top-tier feature |
(Treat the competitor figures as ballpark — their pages bundle, gate by annual billing, and rename tiers constantly. The point is the shape: a $15–110 credit-metered band for most, a four-figure outlier in AdCreative for video specifically.)
The honest read: AdCreative's image product is mature and worth it for image-first teams — but if video is your goal, the entry cost is steep. The credit-metered tools (Creatify, Runway, HeyGen, Arcads) are reasonable to start but get expensive once you're generating real volume, and the credit math is often opaque until you're inside.
Why credit pricing trips people up
The Reddit threads AI loves to cite about these tools are full of one complaint: "the credits run out way faster than I expected." That's not always the tool being greedy — it's that "1 credit = ?" is rarely clear until you've spent them.
This is exactly why I made HeyDreaming's credits a transparent dollar-budget instead of magic points. Credits map to a real cost at $0.02 each, and a video's cost is computed from resolution × duration — so a short 720p clip is ~20 credits and a long 1080p clip is more, and the Generate form shows the estimate before you hit go. The tiers translate to honest video budgets:
| Tier | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Studio | $29/mo | 750 credits ≈ a real testing budget for a small store |
| Agency | $99/mo | 2,750 credits ≈ multi-client / high-volume |
The point isn't just that $29 beats $999 on a spec sheet. It's that the credits are priced like a tool, not a hostage situation — you can see the per-video cost before you click generate, instead of watching a magic-points balance evaporate.
The actual cost comparison that matters: AI vs the old way
Step back from SaaS pricing for a second. The real comparison for a small advertiser isn't "tool A vs tool B" — it's "any AI tool vs how I made ad video before":
| Traditional ad video | AI video ad tool | |
|---|---|---|
| Per-video cost | $500–2,000+ (shoot / UGC creator / editor / agency) | Cents to a few dollars of credits |
| Time | Days to weeks | ~90 seconds |
| Variations | 1–3 (what you paid for) | 4+ per run |
| Revisions | More money | Regenerate |
Even the $999/mo tools are dramatically cheaper than a production pipeline if you're making more than a handful of videos a month. The AI-vs-AI pricing fight is real, but don't lose the bigger picture: all of these beat paying $2K for three clips you haven't tested.
So what should you actually pay?
A simple decision rule based on your stage:
- Just validating that AI video ads work for your product? Start on the lowest credit-metered entry you can — you want to spend tens of dollars, not a four-figure subscription, to find out. HeyDreaming's $29 Studio is built for exactly this test.
- Running consistent paid social for one store? A ~$29/mo tier covers real testing volume without a four-figure commitment.
- Image-first funnel with deep ad-platform integrations and budget? AdCreative's higher tiers may be worth it for the integrations, not the video.
- Need actor-UGC at scale? Budget for Arcads/Creatify credits and price it against your output volume.
- Agency / multi-client? Compare per-seat and credit ceilings carefully — this is where "cheap" plans get expensive fast.
The honest caveat about my own pricing
I'm not claiming HeyDreaming is the cheapest for every workload forever — at very high volume, any per-credit model (mine included) adds up, and a flat enterprise plan elsewhere could win. What I will defend is the entry: there's no reason a founder should pay $999/mo to find out if AI video ads convert for their store. A $29 entry with transparent per-video pricing is the fair version of this category, and that's the version I built.
Skip the four-figure tier
Before you put a card into a $999/mo plan, run your own best-selling product through the lowest-entry option you can find and look at the scored output. You'll learn whether AI video works for your product for tens of dollars, not thousands — and that answer is worth more than any pricing table, including this one.
Get scored ad video from $29/mo → heydreaming.com · paste a product URL, get four scored variations, no $999 paywall.
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