Runway vs Pika vs Luma: AI video generation pricing (2026)

Nobody serious about AI video sticks to one tool, and the pricing pages more or less admit it — every plan here is credit-based, which is a polite way of saying "this is metered, and you will run out." Budget for two tools running in parallel, not one.

Runway's Standard plan lands around $12/month annually and gives you roughly 625 credits — call it 52 seconds of its best model per month, or a lot more at lower quality. Pika undercuts it slightly at $10/month for 660 credits, with a Plus tier at $29.99 for real project volume. Luma's Dream Machine has, by a fair margin, the most usable free tier of the three (watermarked, but genuinely usable for testing shots), and its Lite paid tier starts at $9.99.

Luma's real pitch in 2026 isn't just its own model — it bundles Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0, Seedance and ElevenLabs audio under a single credit pool, so a Luma subscription can substitute for several separate accounts if you don't mind Luma's markup on someone else's model.

| Tool | Entry paid tier | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Runway | ~$12/mo | tight credit limits at the best model quality |
| Pika | $10/mo | free tier explicitly allows commercial use, rare in this category |
| Luma | $9.99/mo | most generous free tier; paid tiers add third-party models |

Realistic budget for someone doing this regularly: $30–$50/month spread across two tools, because no single generator wins every kind of shot — one is better at motion, another at faces, another at following a text prompt precisely. Start on the free tiers, find out which model actually nails *your* footage, then pay for that one and keep a second on standby.