AI Video Credits Explained: What One Credit Actually Buys

An AI video credit is a usage token, not a video. In August 2026 the exchange rate is different at every vendor: Creatify charges 5 credits per 15 seconds of finished video, Arcads charges roughly 800 credits per minute per talking actor, and HeyGen and Captions both vary the credit cost by which AI model you pick. That is why two tools with almost identical plan prices can differ by three times in what a finished ad actually costs you.

The confusion is not accidental. Credit pricing lets a vendor advertise a low monthly number while keeping the real unit cost out of the headline, and it shifts the forecasting work onto you. If you have ever bought a plan advertised as "10 videos a month" and run out in week two, this is why.

What is an AI video credit?

A credit is an internal currency the vendor sells you in monthly blocks. You spend credits when you generate something, and the vendor decides how many each action costs. Nothing standardizes the rate across tools, so a 300 credit plan at one vendor may buy thirty videos and at another may buy two.

The important consequence is that the plan price and the credit allowance together tell you nothing useful. You need a third number, the credit cost per generation, and that is the one vendors publish least consistently. Creatify publishes a precise formula. Arcads publishes per-model costs. HeyGen and Captions publish plan allowances but let the per-render cost float with the model, which makes forecasting genuinely difficult rather than merely annoying.

How many credits does one video cost?

Here is the published rate at each of the main AI UGC tools as of August 2026. Where a vendor does not publish a flat rate, this table says so rather than guessing at one.

Read the Creatify row carefully, because it is the clearest illustration of how duration-metered pricing works. At 5 credits per 15 seconds, a 15 second hook is 5 credits and a 60 second demo is 20. On the same plan, at the same quality, the length you choose swings your cost per video by four times. Creatify's own free tier confirms the math: 10 credits, advertised as up to 2 video ads, which is exactly two 15 second clips.

Arcads works on a different axis. Its meter counts actor minutes, and it counts them per actor. A 90 second spot with two people talking is not 90 seconds of billing, it is three minutes, roughly 2,400 credits. On the 8,000 credit Starter plan at $110, that single ad consumes almost a third of the month. This is the single most common budgeting mistake on that platform, and it is why the widely repeated claim that one Arcads credit equals one video is wrong.

Do AI UGC tools charge per video or per credit?

Most charge per credit. Only a minority price in finished ads. The distinction matters because credits meter generations, and generations include everything you throw away.

This is the cost line that wrecks budgets. Suppose you need 20 finished ads this month and you render four hook variants per product to find one that works. Your finished output is 20 ads. Your billed usage is 80 generations. On credit pricing, the 60 losers cost exactly what the 20 winners cost, so your real cost per usable ad is four times the number you modeled. Nobody plans for this in month one, and almost everybody discovers it in month two.

Zeely deserves its own note because it is not really a credit tool at all. It charges a subscription, currently renewing at $79.95 a month, plus 12 percent of whatever you spend on Meta ads, dropping to 6 percent if you buy the Booster add-on at $39.95 a year. That model has one unusual property: the cost is unrelated to how many videos you make. Spend $500 a month on ads and the fee is $60. Spend $20,000 and it is $2,400. It gets more expensive precisely as your campaigns start working, which is the opposite of how software should behave as you scale. That trade can still make sense if what you actually want is to let the marketing side run on autopilot rather than to buy a video tool, but it should be a deliberate choice, not something you discover on an invoice.

Do AI video credits roll over or expire?

Expiry is the quiet term that turns an apparently generous allowance into a smaller one. Most vendors reset the balance at each billing cycle, which means an unused credit is simply gone.

That last row is worth pausing on. Credits are not a prepaid balance you own. They are an entitlement attached to a live subscription, so if you pause a plan mid-quarter, whatever is sitting in the balance generally goes with it. If your ad testing is seasonal, that detail is worth more attention than a $10 difference in monthly price.

How to forecast credit spend before you buy

Four steps get you a number you can defend to whoever signs off on the budget.

First, count generations, not finished ads. Take your target output and multiply by your realistic variant ratio. If you do not know your ratio yet, three to four variants per winner is a reasonable starting assumption for paid social, and you can tighten it once you have run a proper ad creative testing cycle and know your own hit rate.

Second, fix your ad length before you compare plans. On duration-metered pricing this single decision moves your bill more than the choice of vendor does. Most UGC ads that work on Meta and TikTok run 15 to 30 seconds, so model that, not a 60 second cut you will never publish.

Third, multiply out the credit cost using the published rate, then check it against the plan allowance rather than the plan price. This is where cheap tiers usually fail: 20 finished 30 second ads is 200 Creatify credits, and the $39 Starter plan carries 100, so that volume puts you on the $99 Pro plan regardless of what the pricing page implies.

Fourth, add the expiry and cancellation terms to the comparison. A plan with 20 percent fewer credits that roll over for two months can be worth more than a larger allowance that resets.

One practical footnote once you are past the first tool. Teams testing AI creative rarely end up on one subscription, they end up on four or five running in parallel, and the credit balances stop being the hard part once the sprawl starts. Write the per-tool rates into the same sheet you use for ad spend, and revisit it quarterly, because every vendor on this list has changed its pricing at least once in the past year.

Is credit pricing ever the better deal?

Yes, in two situations. If you make short videos, duration-metered credits are genuinely cheap: Creatify at 5 credits per 15 seconds works out near $1.95 a clip on the Starter plan, which is hard to beat on any model. And if your volume is low and irregular, a credit balance with rollover flexes better than a fixed plan you underuse.

Credit pricing works against you when you test heavily, when your ads run long, or when you need a number that finance can forecast before the month starts. In those cases a plan counted in finished ads removes the arithmetic entirely, which is how UGCGen prices, starting at $49 a month with a free way to test first.

How much do AI video credits cost in dollars?

There is no single dollar figure, because the credit is defined by the vendor and the plans bundle different amounts. The honest way to answer is per finished ad. In August 2026, a 30 second UGC ad costs about $3.90 on Creatify Starter, $3.30 on Creatify Pro, and roughly $5.50 on Arcads Starter for a single actor. HeyGen and Captions cannot be quoted this way because their per-render cost moves with the model.

Which AI tool has the clearest credit pricing?

Creatify, by a clear margin. It is the only tool in this group that publishes an exact, checkable formula covering video generation, revisions, product videos, and text to speech, which lets you calculate your bill before you spend a dollar. Arcads is second, publishing per-model credit costs, though its plan pages describe output in videos in a way that understates real consumption. Publishing the rate is a genuine mark of good faith and it is reasonable to weigh it when choosing.

For the full side by side across all six tools, including the worked example of what 20 finished ads a month costs on each, see the AI UGC pricing comparison. For the per vendor detail, there are dedicated breakdowns of Creatify pricing and Arcads pricing.