Runway sells AI video by the second. Its newest model, Gen-4.5, costs 12 credits for every second it generates, and every plan is a bucket of credits. Once you know that one number, the whole price list starts to make sense.
Runway at a Glance: What the AI Video Generator Makes and Who It Is For
The Runway AI video generator turns a text prompt or an image into a clip of 2 to 10 seconds with Gen-4.5, at 720p, for 12 credits per second, and it needs the Standard plan or higher (Runway Help Center, Creating with Gen-4.5). That is the short version. The longer one is that Runway is now less a single model and more a studio of tools around one credit balance.
Runway’s pricing page says the company is “Trusted by 60M+ creators and leading enterprises” (Runway pricing). That is the vendor’s own figure, so read it as a sign of reach, not as an independent count. The bigger trend behind it is real, though: 63% of video marketers say they have used AI to create or edit video, up from 51% a year earlier (Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2026).
Who is it for? Runway fits people who want control over a shot: filmmakers, motion designers, agencies and ad teams. It is a weaker fit if you want a narrated explainer from a script, or a presenter reading your slides. Those are different jobs, and other tools do them better.
How we put this guide together: every number below comes from Runway’s own pricing page, help center, developer docs and terms, read on October 24, 2026, from a US English browser with prices in US dollars. We did not generate videos with Runway, so this guide does not judge output quality. It explains what you buy and how far your credits go.
Key Takeaways
With 63% of video marketers already using AI for video (Wyzowl), Runway’s pitch is control per second. Gen-4.5 costs 12 credits per second and needs a paid plan. Standard is $12/month billed yearly for 625 credits, about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5. The free plan gives 125 one-time credits, a watermark and no Gen-4.5.
Runway’s Video Models in 2026: Gen-4.5, Gen-4 and Gen-4 Turbo
Runway’s current lineup is Gen-4.5 for the best results, plus the older Gen-4 at 12 credits per second and Gen-4 Turbo at 5 credits per second for cheaper drafts (Runway Help Center, Creating with Gen-4 Video). The help center calls Gen-4.5 “our most advanced model” in its getting-started guide (Getting Started with Generative Video).
Here is how the three compare on paper:
| Gen-4.5 | Gen-4 | Gen-4 Turbo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credits per second | 12 | 12 | 5 |
| Clip length | 2 to 10 seconds | 5 or 10 seconds | 5 or 10 seconds |
| Inputs | Text, or text and image | Image required, plus text | Image required, plus text |
| Output | 720p, 24 or 25 FPS | 1280×720 and five other sizes, 24 FPS | 1280×720 and five other sizes, 24 FPS |
| Where it runs | Web | Web and iOS app | Web and iOS app |
| Plan needed | Standard and higher | Not listed on its spec page | Not listed on its spec page |
So why would anyone still pick Gen-4? The help center’s own advice is to test ideas in Turbo first, because it is cheaper and faster, then switch to Gen-4 if the draft falls short. Gen-4.5 is the model Runway points new users to. The help center says it can follow “detailed camera choreography” and “precise timing of events” inside a single prompt.
What happened to Gen-3 and Gen-2
If you searched for the Runway Gen-3 AI video generator, you are looking for a retired model. The help center says “Gen-3 Alpha was retired on July 8, 2026, and Gen-3 Alpha Turbo was retired on July 30, 2026” (Creating with Gen-3 Alpha and Gen-3 Alpha Turbo). Gen-2 went earlier: Runway began removing access in mid-March 2025 and fully deprecated it on May 11, 2025 (Gen-2 Deprecation).
Two practical effects follow. Motion Brush, a Gen-2 feature, is gone; Runway says prompting on newer models now does that job. And old tutorials that walk you through Gen-3 settings no longer match the app. When a guide mentions Gen-3 Alpha, check its date.
Text-to-Video vs Image-to-Video in Runway
Text-to-video in Gen-4.5 outputs only 16:9 at 1280×720, while image-to-video adds five more shapes: 9:16, 1:1, 4:3, 3:4 and 21:9 (Creating with Gen-4.5). That one detail decides a lot. Need a vertical clip for Shorts or Reels? Start from an image.
The two modes also want different prompts. Runway’s guidance is simple:
- Image-to-video: describe the motion. The image already carries the subject, colors, lighting and style, so you don’t need to describe its contents.
- Text-to-video: describe both what is in the scene and how it moves.
Gen-4 and Gen-4 Turbo don’t offer pure text-to-video at all. The help center says an input image is required on both, and it becomes the first frame of the output. The text prompt has a 1,000-character limit there.
What about clip length? Gen-4.5 lets you pick any duration from 2 to 10 seconds. Runway suggests longer durations for prompts with several actions in a row, so the model has time to finish each one. A 5-second Gen-4.5 clip costs 60 credits; a 10-second clip costs 120.
Want more on the photo-first approach across other tools? Our guide to how image-to-video generators animate a single photo covers that mode beyond Runway.
Beyond Generation: Edit Studio, References, Act-Two and Agent
Runway’s editing tools work on footage you already have: Edit Studio, powered by the Aleph 2.0 model, edits single shots or multi-shot sequences up to 30 seconds (Runway Help Center, Creating with Edit Studio). This is where Runway differs most from a plain clip generator. Is that worth paying for? It depends on whether you edit real footage.
Edit Studio and Aleph 2.0
The help center describes Aleph 2.0 as Runway’s “in-context video editing model.” You edit one frame, and it carries the change through the rest of the clip while keeping everything else in place (Aleph 2.0 Prompting Guide). Typical jobs: swap a background, change an outfit, relight a scene, change the weather or restyle the footage.
Uploads have rules. Videos must be longer than 2 seconds and shorter than 30, between 480p and 1080p, between 24 and 30 FPS, and contain 10 cuts or fewer. Clips over 30 seconds are trimmed automatically. On the pricing page, Aleph 2.0 costs 140 credits per 5 seconds, which is 28 credits per second.
References
References let you pull your own images, video and audio into a prompt. Type @ in the prompt box and pick a file, for example “The product in @[Image 1] rotating slowly with the music from @[Audio 1],” per the help center (Using reference media). Uploaded references last for one session unless you name and save them. Saved ones can be shared with your workspace, which helps keep a brand character consistent.
Act-Two for performance capture
Act-Two moves a character using a video of a real person acting out the scene. It costs 5 credits per second with a 3-second minimum, runs up to 30 seconds, and is available on the Standard plan or higher (Performance Capture with Act-Two). With a character image, your hand and body gestures carry over too.
Agent and third-party models
Runway Agent is a chat-based helper that plans and produces multi-shot videos and picks a model for each step (Creating with Runway Agent). It can also write scripts, build storyboards and cut clips on a timeline. Runway adds a fair warning: “Agent’s plan describes its intent, not a guaranteed outcome.”
Agent matters because Runway now hosts other companies’ models. The pricing page lists Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.5 and Nano Banana Pro next to Gen-4.5. The Seedance 2.5 help page lists a single video “up to 30 seconds long,” at 30 credits per second for 720p and 68 for 1080p (Creating with Seedance 2.5). So a Runway plan can buy longer clips than Gen-4.5 makes, just at a higher rate.
How Runway Credits Work: Credits per Second by Model
Runway prices each model per second, and its pricing FAQ gives the anchor: “Gen-4.5 uses 12 credits per second of generated video” (Runway pricing). Multiply by your clip length and you have the cost of one try. How many tries will you need? That is the number nobody prints.
Rates for the main video tools, from Runway’s help center and pricing page:
| Tool | Credits | What one 5-second clip costs | What one 10-second clip costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gen-4.5 | 12 per second | 60 credits | 120 credits |
| Gen-4 | 12 per second | 60 credits | 120 credits |
| Gen-4 Turbo | 5 per second | 25 credits | 50 credits |
| Aleph 2.0 (Edit Studio) | 140 per 5 seconds | 140 credits | 280 credits |
| Act-Two | 5 per second, 3-second minimum | 25 credits | 50 credits |
| Seedance 2.5, 720p | 30 per second | 150 credits | 300 credits |
A few rules sit around those rates:
- Failed runs come back, bad results don’t. Credits are “only automatically returned when a generation ends in a generation error,” per the help center. A clip that misses your prompt still costs full price (Can I have credits refunded?).
- Spending order is fixed. This month’s plan credits go first, then rollover credits, then purchased credits (How do credits work?). You can’t choose.
- Pro formats cost extra. On Max, Unlimited (Legacy) and Enterprise, ProRes or a PNG sequence adds 5 credits per second to Gen-4.5.
- Upscaling is separate. Generations come out at 720p and can be upscaled to 4K afterward (Can I generate videos in 4K?).
One number doesn’t line up. The Gen-4 help page lists Turbo at 5 credits per second, but the pricing page says Standard’s 625 credits equal “104s of Gen-4 Turbo,” which works out to about 6 credits per second. Budget with the higher figure until the two pages agree.
Here’s the catch with any per-second price: retries. Runway’s own Standard plan guide says video “can take multiple attempts before achieving the best result.” If a usable shot takes three tries, a 120-credit clip really costs 360. Plan your month around that, not around the list rate.
Runway Plans and Prices
Runway has four individual plans in 2026, from Free at $0 to Max at $95 a month, and yearly billing cuts each paid plan by about 20% (Runway pricing). Every plan is mainly a credit allowance. The table below uses the pricing page’s own second-by-second equivalents for Gen-4.5.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Yearly billing | Credits | Gen-4.5 seconds per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 125 one-time | Not available |
| Standard | $15/month | $12/month ($144/year) | 625 per month | 52 |
| Pro | $35/month | $28/month ($336/year) | 2,250 per month | 187 |
| Max | $95/month | $76/month ($912/year) | 9,500 per month | 791 |
What else changes as you move up? From the pricing page:
- Standard adds no watermarks, music, voice and sound effects generation, 4K upscaling, up to 3 projects, 5 parallel generations and 20GB of storage.
- Pro adds 15 parallel generations, up to 5 projects, 1 Brand Kit, 1 custom voice clone, Runway MCP, unlimited 4K video upscaling and 100GB of storage.
- Max adds 20 parallel generations, up to 10 projects, 3 Brand Kits, 3 custom voice clones, HDR, ProRes and image sequence exports, early access to new models, 500GB of storage, and a one-month credit rollover.
Model access is the fuzzy part. The pricing page lists “Access to all AI video & image models” on Standard, while the help center’s plan guide says “Pro and higher plans include access to every model” (Which plan is right for me?). If one third-party model is the reason you are paying, check its upgrade prompt before you pick Standard.
Rollover, extra credits and the end of Unlimited
On Standard and Pro, monthly credits don’t roll over; they reset within 24 hours of your billing date. Max carries up to one month of unused credits forward. Extra credits come from the Plans & Billing page, with a 1,000-credit minimum, and never expire. The help center prices them at “$10 ($0.01 = 1 credit)” (Will unused credits carry over after my billing day?).
Older reviews mention an Unlimited plan with a relaxed “Explore Mode.” Runway stopped offering it to new subscribers and says legacy Unlimited plans “remain unchanged through November 30th, 2026,” after which monthly subscribers move to Max at the same $95/month (Unlimited plan is switching to Max). Max has no Explore Mode.
Teams get a separate plan: 2 to 9 people, with each seat adding 6,900 credits a month to a shared pool, per the Standard plan guide (Standard plan details).
What You Can Make With Runway’s Free Credits
Runway’s free plan gives you 125 credits once; they never expire, and the deposit “does not renew or refresh once spent,” per the help center (Free plan details). So is the Runway AI video generator free? You can try it for free, but not keep using it for free.
Know the limits before you start:
- No Gen-4.5. Gen-4.5 requires Standard and higher.
- Watermarked video. “All videos generated on a Free plan feature a Runway watermark.”
- No top-ups. Free users can’t buy credits; you have to subscribe first.
- A changing model list. Runway says the free selection “can change,” and the only way to see it is to log in.
- 5GB of asset storage.
What could 125 credits buy? Here is the arithmetic, based on the published rates. If Gen-4 Turbo is in the free selection when you log in, 125 credits cover five 5-second clips at 25 credits each. On images, Gen-4 Image Turbo costs 2 credits per image, so the same balance covers 62 images. Gen-4 Image at 1080p costs 8 credits, or 15 images.
What surprised us in the help center was a fraud rule: if your account or network “has previously been associated with fraudulent activity,” free credits are not issued at all (Where are my Free Credits?). A shared office network could, in theory, be one reason a new account shows zero.
Looking for a free tool you can keep using? Our roundup of which AI video generators still have useful free plans compares the free tiers side by side.
Runway on the Web, iPhone, Android and the API
Runway recommends Chrome for its web app at app.runwayml.com (Getting Started with Generative Video), and it also has iPhone and Android apps; the iOS app does not support iPad (Mobile device compatibility). That answers most “Runway AI video generator app” searches. The details below matter more.
Web vs mobile
Not every model is on every screen. The Gen-4.5 spec table lists “Web” only, while Gen-4 and Gen-4 Turbo list “Web, iOS App.” The help center’s mobile page says the app gives “quick access to key platform features” and invites you to download it to see what is available (Mobile features). In plain terms: draft on the phone, do your serious Gen-4.5 work on a computer.
Plans bought in the iOS or Android app “are billed by Apple or Google,” so you cancel them in your device’s subscription settings, not on Runway’s site (How do I cancel my App Store or Google Play subscription?). That matters on the day you want to cancel.
For other phone-first tools, see our list of AI video generator apps for phones.
The Runway API
Developers buy API credits at “$0.01 per credit” in the developer portal, and those credits are separate from app credits (Runway API pricing). The help center puts it bluntly: “Web app credits will never appear in your API credits, and vice versa” (Runway API FAQs).
At API rates, Gen-4.5 costs 12 credits per second, or $0.12 a second, so a 10-second clip is $1.20 before retries. Gen-4 Turbo is 5 credits a second. The API also routes to other models: Veo 3.1 with audio costs 40 credits a second, and Kling 3.0 Pro with audio costs 17.
Building an app on top of it? Runway’s terms say apps built with its APIs “must prominently display ‘Powered by Runway’ and link to runway.com” (Runway Terms of Use).
Runway vs Kling, Luma, Pika and Other AI Video Generators
Runway’s clearest difference is billing by the second on its own models, while Kling, Luma and Pika sell monthly credit plans of their own, and Runway also resells Kling 3.0 inside its plans (Runway pricing). Which one wins on quality is a question for your own prompts. On paper, here is how they differ.
- Kling. Kling’s plan page lists Kling 4.0 with “native 30s-generation,” three times Gen-4.5’s 10-second ceiling (Kling AI membership plans). Standard includes 660 credits a month. Every paid price on that page carried a first-month discount and a countdown, so we left the dollar figures out.
- Luma. Luma’s plans start with Plus at $30/month billed monthly for 10,000 credits, with commercial use included (Luma pricing). Its own Ray3.2 model costs 100 credits per 5 seconds at 720p.
- Pika. Pika’s Free plan shows 0 credits a month and “packs only,” while Starter is $10/month for 900 credits with a commercial license (Pika pricing). Like Runway, Pika now lists other companies’ models in its plans.
- Google Veo. Runway’s API lists Veo 3.1 at 40 credits per second with audio, more than three times Gen-4.5. If native sound is the point, our guide to what Google Veo 3.1 offers and how to get access covers Google’s own route.
Smaller names come up in the same searches: Vidu, Leonardo, Flux, Haiper and Kaiber. Their plans change often, so check each one’s own pricing page on the day you compare. Don’t trust a table, ours included, that is more than a month old.
So where does Runway fit? It is the pick when you want one account for generating, editing real footage with Aleph, performance capture and a few third-party models. Want the wider field first? Our ranking of AI video generators sorted by the job each one does best puts Runway next to avatar and script-to-video tools.
Commercial Use, Ownership and Content Rules
Runway says the content you create “is yours to use without any non-commercial restrictions from us,” and you keep ownership of what you upload and generate (Runway Help Center, Usage rights). That covers monetized YouTube videos, Reels and TikTok, film festival entries and product ads, per the same page.
Do you have to credit Runway? No. The help center says “you are not required to credit Runway” where you upload your work (Can I use the content I made in Runway for commercial purposes?). Free plan videos still carry the watermark, so for client work you need a paid plan anyway.
The rules worth knowing from the Terms of Use (Runway Terms of Use):
- Age. You must be at least 13, and users under 18 need a parent’s or guardian’s permission.
- Banned content. Content may not contain nudity, violence, sexually explicit, hateful, harassing, fraudulent or misleading material, or break the Usage Policy.
- Other people’s faces. You may not post a photograph of another person without that person’s permission.
- No model training. You may not use the services, outputs included, to build or improve competing products.
- One account. The terms allow one account per platform at a time.
Moderation is automatic and strict. Runway scans both inputs and outputs, and support “cannot” disable it for an account, project or topic (Why is my input getting content moderated?). A blocked prompt is something you rewrite, not something you appeal your way past.
Cancelling follows the usual pattern: you keep the plan until the end of the paid term and get no prorated refund unless the terms or the law say otherwise.
Who Should Use Runway, and Who Should Pick Something Else
Runway is the right AI video generator if you buy shots, not videos: at 12 credits a second, Standard’s 625 credits cover about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 a month (Runway pricing). That is enough for a few ad concepts. It is not enough for a weekly channel.
Pick Runway if:
- You make short shots for ads, music videos or concept reels and want camera control in the prompt.
- You edit real footage and want Aleph-style changes: new backgrounds, relighting, restyling.
- You want one bill for Runway’s models plus a few third-party ones like Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.5.
Pick something else if:
- You want a narrated video from a script. A script-to-video agent fits better; see what happened when InVideo AI’s free plan priced a 20-second video for how those credits add up.
- You need clips longer than 10 seconds from one prompt. Kling 4.0 lists 30 seconds.
- You want a free plan you can keep using. Runway’s 125 credits are a one-time sample.
Still new to the category? Our explainer on how AI video generators work and how they bill covers the basics behind credits and models.
A short checklist before you pay:
- How many seconds of finished video do you need each month? Multiply by 12 for Gen-4.5.
- How many tries does a usable shot take you? Multiply again.
- Do you need vertical video? Plan on image-to-video.
- Will you edit real footage? Budget 28 credits a second for Aleph 2.0.
- Do you need rollover? Only Max has it.
Then try the cheapest plan that covers that math for one month. A month of real projects will tell you more than any price table, this one included. When the clips are done, our list of editors for finishing and publishing your clips covers the next step.
References
- Runway: Pricing
- Runway Help Center: Creating with Gen-4.5
- Runway Help Center: Creating with Gen-4 Video
- Runway Help Center: Getting Started with Generative Video
- Runway Help Center: How do credits work?
- Runway Help Center: Free plan details
- Runway Help Center: Standard plan details
- Runway Help Center: Which plan is right for me?
- Runway Help Center: Unlimited plan is switching to Max
- Runway Help Center: Creating with Edit Studio
- Runway Help Center: Performance Capture with Act-Two
- Runway Help Center: Usage rights
- Runway API: Pricing and costs
- Runway: Terms of Use
- Kling AI: Membership plans
- Luma: Plans and pricing
- Pika: Pricing
- Wyzowl: Video Marketing Statistics 2026