Runway

At a glance

Official website

https://runway.com

Category

AI Video Generators

Free plan

$0; 125 one-time credits (never expire, never refresh); 3 video projects; 5 GB storage.

Free plan limits

125 credits are ONE-TIME, not monthly — no ongoing free usage. At 12 credits/sec for Gen-4.5, that is ~10 seconds of video in total, ever. All free output watermarked. Free users cannot buy extra credits. Commercial use not granted on Free.

Paid plans from

From $15/month billed monthly ($12/month billed annually) — Standard plan (625 credits/month).

Best for

Creators comparing AI video tools who want one high-quality test clip before choosing a paid plan.

Runway review: what the free plan really gives you

Runway is one of the best-known names in AI video, and its studio is the most polished in this hub. It offers a full set of generative tools — video generation, image generation, text-to-speech, and editing features — built for creators who want more than a single clip from a prompt. The models on the free plan include Gen-4 Turbo for video, Gen-4 for images, and text-to-speech, which is enough to judge the quality properly. If you have seen a striking AI video clip online in the past year, there is a fair chance it was made with Runway, and the free plan exists so you can find out whether that quality is worth paying for.

The most important fact about the free plan is that it is a trial, not a subscription. You get 125 credits, once. They never expire, but they never refresh either, and there is no ongoing free usage after they are gone. At 12 credits a second for Gen-4.5, those 125 credits buy roughly ten seconds of video in total, ever. Free users also get three video projects and 5 GB of storage, but the credit limit is the real boundary: ten seconds is enough to test the tool and make one short clip, and then the free plan is effectively finished. Free users cannot even buy extra credits; the only way forward is a paid plan.

All free-plan output is watermarked, and commercial use is not granted on the free plan, so treat anything you make as a trial or personal experiment. Those limits are consistent with a trial design — Runway is showing you the product, not giving you a free tier to rely on — but they catch out anyone who reads "free plan" and assumes a monthly allowance like the other tools here. This is why Runway is labelled Freemium and why this page repeats the point: 125 credits once, not per month.

Against the rest of the hub, Runway wins on quality and loses on longevity. Kling and Dreamina give you something fresh to try each day or each login; PixVerse gives a small daily ration; Runway gives you the best ten seconds and then asks you to pay. For a creator deciding which video tool to invest in, that is actually a fair deal — ten seconds is enough to compare Runway's motion and detail against its rivals. For someone who needs free video every week, it is the wrong choice. The Standard plan starts at $15 a month, or $12 a month billed annually, with 625 credits a month, all AI video and image models, no watermark, and 4K upscaling.

Pros and cons

Alternatives to Runway

If Runway does not fit, these tools in the same category are also listed on AI Free List:

• Kling AI
• Dreamina
• PixVerse

Frequently asked questions