Video tool pricing is almost impossible to compare. One tool sells minutes, another sells credits, a third sells hours of recorded footage. Until you convert those numbers into one common unit, you’re choosing by the monthly price, and that tells you almost nothing about what a video costs.
I see this all the time with clients whose content I set up. A company picks a tool because it costs $29 a month, then finds out that buys them one longer video. So they give up and decide AI video is expensive. All they actually missed was converting the price into a per-minute rate.
The only unit you can compare is a minute of finished video
A monthly price means nothing until you know how much video is in it. So I do the same thing for every tool: I take the plan price and divide it by what I get for it. The result is a number you can line up next to the others.
For two of the six tools, that doesn’t work, and that’s a useful finding in itself. A vendor that sells credits instead of minutes can’t tell you the per-minute cost up front. You find out only after rendering, which is when you’ve already paid.
I took the prices below from the official pricing pages on September 19, 2026. Generative video tools changed their prices several times in 2026, so open the pricing page again before you buy.
Six video tools and their cost per minute
| Tool | What it’s for | Price as of Sept. 19, 2026 | What you get | Cost per minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synthesia | an avatar that reads your script | Starter $29, or $18 a month billed annually | 10 min a month; 120 min a year on annual billing | $2.90; $1.80 on annual billing |
| HeyGen | face and voice cloning, dubbing | Creator $29, Pro $49 | 600 and 1,000 credits respectively | can’t be calculated up front |
| Runway | cinematic shots from text | Standard $12 billed annually, Pro $28 | 625 and 2,250 credits a month respectively | can’t be calculated up front |
| Descript | editing video by editing text | Hobbyist $16, Creator $24 | 10 and 30 hours of footage respectively | $0.80 per hour of footage |
| CapCut | quick edits of short videos | not verified | not verified | not listed |
| OpenAI Sora | text-to-video inside ChatGPT | part of a ChatGPT plan | not verified | not listed |
Cost per minute of finished video
The monthly price divided by how much video you get for it. It’s the only unit that lets you compare these tools, because one sells minutes, another credits, and a third hours of footage. Without it, you’re comparing $29 with $29 and learning nothing at all.
I don’t care what a tool costs per month. I care what it costs to make the one video I need on Thursday.
It sounds like splitting hairs, but the gap between those two questions is often several times over. And you only notice it on the third video, after you’ve already paid for the annual plan.
Synthesia: an avatar that reads your script
Synthesia makes a video in which a digital presenter reads your text. There’s no filming at all, so a finished script becomes a video in a few minutes.
Best for: training and how-to videos that change often and that nobody wants to reshoot.
In practice, you get a series of short videos for a course or an internal handbook. The pricing page lists more than 160 languages, so you can release the same video for clients abroad. It isn’t meant for acted ads, though. Those take a different route: an ad spot made without a film crew.
Where it falls short: $29 gets you ten minutes a month, which is one longer video. If you need more, you have to jump straight to a higher plan.
Price as of September 19, 2026: there’s a free Basic plan, and Starter costs $29 a month for ten minutes. Billed annually, it’s $18 a month and 120 minutes a year, which comes to $1.80 per minute. Creator comes to $89 a month for thirty minutes.
HeyGen: a clone of your face, plus dubbing into other languages
HeyGen does what Synthesia does, and it can also build an avatar from your own face. Its strongest feature is dubbing, where it re-voices a finished video in another language.
Best for: a personal brand that wants to speak with its own face and expand into other languages.
In practice, you record one video in Czech and publish it in English and Polish as well. As with narrating text in your own voice, you’ll throw out the first few attempts before it clicks.
Where it falls short: it bills in credits, and you only find out how many a video used after it renders. That makes a monthly budget hard to plan. On top of that, lip sync quality varies with the quality of the original footage.
Price as of September 19, 2026: the free plan gives you three videos a month, each up to one minute long. Creator costs $29 a month for 600 credits, and Pro costs $49 for 1,000 credits.
Credit
The tool’s internal currency, which you spend to render a video. How many credits one video eats up depends on its length, its resolution, and which model runs under the hood. That’s why a credit-based plan can’t tell you the cost per minute in advance. You can only work it out afterward, from your usage statement.
Runway: a cinematic shot from a single sentence
Runway generates shots you never filmed. It’s the closest thing to what people picture when they hear “AI video.” It’s also the hardest one to budget for.
Best for: short visual inserts, transitions, and atmospheric shots for an ad or an intro sequence.
In practice, you get a few seconds of footage you’d otherwise buy from a stock library or shoot yourself. It won’t carry a whole video, but it works as a supplement.
Where it falls short: the 125 free credits are a one-time allowance, not a monthly one. Once you’ve tried a few generations, you’re done, and everything after that is paid.
Price as of September 19, 2026: Standard costs $12 a month billed annually, for 625 credits a month, and Pro costs $28 for 2,250 credits.
How I choose
I sketch the budget on paper before I open any pricing page. I split the video work into two piles: spoken word, and footage that has to be created from nothing. For the companies whose content I set up, the vast majority lands in the spoken-word pile, and generated footage is minimal. That leads to a completely different choice from the one most roundups recommend.
Descript: editing video by rewriting text
Descript turns video editing inside out. The video gets transcribed, and you delete sentences instead of cutting the timeline, so even someone who can’t edit video can do it.
Best for: talking-head videos, podcasts, and recordings where you need to cut dead air and flubbed lines.
In practice, you turn an hour-long recording into a usable video in one afternoon. It’s the closest relative of the workflow that turns a recording session into a finished video without any editing. Czech is on its list of twenty-five transcription languages.
Where it falls short: unused hours of footage don’t roll over to the next month. If you only edit now and then, you pay for the empty months too.
Price as of September 19, 2026: 60 minutes of media a month for free, Hobbyist at $16 for 10 hours, and Creator at $24 for 30 hours. That works out to 80 cents per hour of processed footage, not per minute of finished video.
CapCut: quick edits for short videos
CapCut is the most widely used tool for quickly editing short vertical videos. For social media, it’s usually the first choice, and plenty of people never need anything else.
Best for: short social videos where pace and captions matter more than cinematic quality.
In practice, you get an edited video with captions in a few minutes, even on your phone.
Where it falls short: it’s owned by ByteDance. For business content, get clear up front on where the data goes and what can be done with it later.
Price as of September 19, 2026: not listed. I didn’t get the pricing from an official source, and an estimate would be useless here.
OpenAI Sora: text-to-video inside ChatGPT
Sora generates video from a text prompt, and it comes as part of ChatGPT plans rather than as a standalone product. For a company that already pays for ChatGPT, it’s the easiest way to try video generation.
Best for: a quick experiment or a short visual idea without yet another subscription.
In practice, you type a description in Czech and get a short clip. In an everyday content operation, where content is supposed to go out regularly on its own, it’s still more of an add-on.
Where it falls short: availability varies by country and by plan, so check first what’s available where you are.
Price as of September 19, 2026: I don’t list a separate price, because Sora sits inside the ChatGPT package and has no pricing of its own.
Who none of these tools will help
This math doesn’t pay off for everyone. If you make two videos a year, you won’t get anything out of any subscription. A phone, a tripod, and half an hour of work cost less than an annual plan.
The second group is companies that want video to stand in for a message they don’t have. The tool produces the picture, but nobody writes the script for you. If you don’t know what the video should say, you just get a mess faster. The same rule applies to images in your own style: the technology is the easy half.
The whole choice in a nutshell
- Work out how many minutes of video you really need each month.
- Split them into spoken word and footage that has to be created from nothing.
- For spoken word, pick a tool that sells minutes, not credits.
- For editing an existing recording, reach for a tool that edits from the transcript.
- Keep credit-based tools for supplementary shots, and expect to find out the price afterward.
Let’s go back to the company from the start, the one that bought the $29 plan. It didn’t buy an expensive tool. It bought ten minutes and thought it was buying a whole month of video. The most expensive video isn’t the one that costs the most. It’s the one whose price you only find out afterward.
