AI video ad tools start between $9.99 and $100 a month as publicly listed in August 2026, but those numbers do not compare, because a credit buys a finished ad in one product, four seconds of generated footage in another, and a template render in a third. The number that does compare is cost per published ad: total monthly spend divided by the assets you actually put live, including the ones you paid for and rejected. Work that out for two tools at your real volume and the ranking usually inverts. We build Genyad, so the arithmetic below includes us and is set up so you can check it.
What do the tools actually cost?
| Tool | Entry price, publicly listed August 2026 | Billing model | What one unit of spend buys | Unused capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genyad | Free plan, then €29 for 15 credits | Credit pack, no subscription | 1 credit = 1 finished ad variation; AI-generated video costs 2 credits per second | Credits never expire |
| Genyad Growth | €99 for 65 credits | Credit pack, no subscription | Same credit, €1.52 each instead of €1.93 | Credits never expire |
| Creatify | $39/month | Subscription with a credit allowance | Credits toward URL-to-video generations and avatar output | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| Arcads | €100/month for 10 videos | Subscription with a hard video count | 1 unit = 1 AI actor video, so €10 per video at the entry tier | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| Plainly | $69/month | Subscription with a render quota | 1 unit = 1 render of a template you supply | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| AdCreative.ai | $39/month | Subscription with a generation allowance | Generated creatives plus a predicted performance score | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| HeyGen | $29/month | Subscription metered by video length | Minutes of avatar or translated video | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| Runway | $15/month | Subscription with generation credits | Credits priced by seconds of model output | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| InVideo | $28/month | Subscription with generation minutes | Prompt-to-video minutes plus editor access | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| Sovran | $99/month | Subscription | Renders of recombined hook, body and CTA blocks | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| Predis.ai | $32/month | Subscription with a post allowance | Social posts and ads generated from a product feed | Monthly allowance, check rollover |
| VEED | $19/month | Seat subscription | An editor seat, not a quantity of output | Not applicable |
| Canva | Free, $15/month Pro | Seat subscription | An editor seat plus premium assets | Not applicable |
| CapCut | Free, $9.99/month Pro | Seat subscription | An editor seat plus Pro effects | Not applicable |
Prices move. Every figure here is the publicly listed entry tier as of August 2026, and vendors change tier contents more often than they change the headline number, which is the harder thing to track. Verify on the vendor page before you commit a budget.
Why the sticker price is the wrong comparison
Three different things are being sold under the same word.
A seat is unlimited output and limited hands. CapCut Pro at $9.99/month is not cheap because it is efficient; it is cheap because you supply all the labour. The real cost is an editor's afternoon, which is more than any subscription in the table.
A metered unit is priced against compute, not against your output. Seconds of generative video, minutes of avatar, renders of a template. The vendor is selling you machine time, and how many publishable ads that becomes depends entirely on your hit rate.
A finished asset is the rarest model. Arcads is explicit about it: 10 videos for €100 as listed in August 2026, so €10 per video, and you know exactly what you are buying. Our credit is the same shape: one standard variation is one credit, so €1.93 on Starter and €1.52 on Growth, and uploading footage, editing and re-exporting cost nothing so a revision is not a second purchase.
Comparing €1.52 against $15/month is meaningless until you fix a monthly volume. That is why we published a video ad cost calculator rather than a pricing table alone.
How to calculate cost per published ad
Take the monthly fee, add anything you buy on top, then divide by the number of assets that actually reached a live ad set. Not the number generated. The number published.
The rejection rate is what destroys subscription maths. If you accept half of what a tool produces, your effective cost per published ad doubles; if you accept one in four, it quadruples. Metered tools are worst affected, because a rejected generation has already consumed the credit. This is where the "cheap" $15/month tools stop being cheap and where a per-asset model gets easier to forecast, though it cuts both ways: if a tool nails the first attempt every time, its metered pricing wins outright.
Then add the labour line, because most teams forget it. An asset that needs 20 minutes of manual fixing costs more in salary than it did in software, whichever tool made it.
Subscription or credit pack, by output pattern
| Your output pattern | Better model | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Steady weekly testing, 15 to 50 variants a month | Subscription, if the allowance genuinely covers that volume | Predictable spend, and you use what you pay for |
| Bursty: launches, seasonal peaks, client wins | Credit pack | A quiet January does not bill, and unexpired credits carry the peak |
| One campaign, then nothing for a quarter | Credit pack, or a free tier | A subscription you forget to cancel is the most expensive creative in the account |
| One approved layout across a large catalogue | Subscription on a render tool | Plainly at $69/month as listed in August 2026 is built for exactly this, and we are not |
| An agency billing per client | Credit pack | Credits map to a client line item; a seat does not |
| Continuous avatar or spokesperson video | Subscription | HeyGen at $29/month as listed in August 2026 is cheaper than buying that output per asset |
We sell credit packs with no subscription because our customers are mostly in the middle three rows. That is a positioning choice, not a universal truth. If you reliably ship 50 variations every month without fail, a well-sized subscription that includes that volume will beat buying credits, and you should take it.
What the volume needs to be before price matters
Cheap software that produces four ads a month is not cheap. Our 2026 ad fatigue benchmark, a synthesis of published platform and agency figures rather than our own measurement, puts CTR decline at 15 to 20 percent in a creative's first two weeks, with week three landing 45 to 70 percent below the launch baseline, and by week five a creative averages 38 percent below its peak. Food and beverage advertisers reach a 40 percent CTR decline in about 9 days; B2B SaaS gets roughly 28 days.
That sets the denominator before you compare any prices: 8 to 20 live variations per active campaign, and brands shipping 15 to 50 variants a month see 3 to 5 times longer campaign lifespan than quarterly refreshers. Price the tool against that number, not against the number in the demo. Our side-by-side comparisons and the full credit pricing are both built to be read that way.
Frequently asked questions
Which AI video ad tool is cheapest?
CapCut at $9.99/month Pro and Canva at $15/month Pro as publicly listed in August 2026, but both are editor seats where you do the work, so the cost moves into salary. Among tools that generate the ad for you, Runway at $15/month and VEED at $19/month are the lowest entry prices, and Genyad's free plan is €0 with no card. Cheapest per published ad is a different ranking, and it depends on your acceptance rate.
Is credit-based pricing better than a monthly subscription?
It is better when your output is uneven or you bill work to clients, because you pay for assets rather than for calendar months. A subscription is better when you reliably use the full monthly allowance. Genyad credits never expire, which is the specific reason we chose packs over a subscription.
What does one Genyad credit cost and what does it produce?
One credit produces one finished video ad variation, and costs €1.93 on the €29 Starter pack or €1.52 on the €99 Growth pack. AI-generated video is metered separately at 2 credits per second. Uploading footage, editing and re-exporting are free, so revisions do not cost another credit.
Why do vendors make pricing this hard to compare?
Partly because the underlying costs genuinely differ, and partly because a metered unit is easier to price attractively than a finished ad. A vendor quoting credits per second is quoting compute; a vendor quoting videos per month is quoting output and taking the delivery risk. Ask any vendor how many publishable ads their entry tier produces for a team like yours, and treat a vague answer as an answer.