Pricing research · Updated 10 September 2026
What five seconds actually costs.
Vendors price in credits, tokens, monthly allocations and per-second API rates, which makes them impossible to compare on their own pricing pages. Here they are normalised to one number: the cost of generating five seconds of video.
This page is not a test result
Every figure below is a published list price, taken from the vendor's own pricing page and normalised. Nothing here was generated, watched or scored. Our benchmark scores live on the comparison and stay empty until the research method has actually been run on each tool.
The headline — general video
Kling and Runway do the same job: generate an open-ended scene from a prompt. At the entry paid tier, 720p, five seconds:
| Tool | Plan | Cost / 5s | Native audio | Versus Kling |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kling | Standard monthly | $0.40 | No — $0.60 with | — |
| Runway | Standard monthly | $1.44 | None natively | 3.6× |
Runway costs three and a half times what Kling does for the same five seconds at the same resolution, and produces no audio, so a separate audio pass has to be budgeted on top. Kling with native audio switched on is still $0.60 — well under half Runway's silent output.
Synthesia is priced here for reference, not for comparison
Synthesia makes a presenter talking to camera. It cannot generate a rain-soaked alley or a spilling wine glass, and neither of the tools above can produce a scripted presenter. Ranking them against each other on price compares two different products doing two different jobs.
It is also billed differently — by the minute of presenter video, not per generation:
| Plan | Per presenter minute | Equivalent per 5s | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter monthly | $2.90 | $0.24 | Presenter speech |
| Starter annual | $1.79 | $0.15 | Presenter speech |
| Creator monthly | $2.97 | $0.25 | Presenter speech |
| Creator annual | $2.09 | $0.17 | Presenter speech |
The per-5-second column exists only so the figure can be read in the same unit as the table below. It is not an invitation to rank Synthesia against Kling or Runway, and we do not publish a cross-category winner.
Runway's own API undercuts its web plan by 58%
The most useful thing in this data. Generating through Runway's API at pay-as-you-go rates costs $0.60 per five seconds. The same output through a Standard web subscription costs $1.44.
If your volume is low or irregular, the subscription is the expensive way to buy Runway. That only becomes visible once the plan allocation and the per-second API rate are put in the same unit — which is the entire reason this page exists.
Runway 5s @ 720p — API $0.60 · Max $0.60 · Pro $0.93 · Standard annual $1.15 · Standard monthly $1.44
Every scenario
32 scenarios across plan tiers, resolutions, audio settings, durations and API rates. Sort by any column.
| Tool / model | Plan basis | Secs | Cost | Resolution | Audio | Commercial use |
|---|
What these numbers assume
Every figure is a nominal allocation cost. Three assumptions sit behind all of them:
- Full use of the plan's credits. If you buy a monthly allocation and use half of it, your real cost per second doubles.
- List price, before tax.
- No retakes. Every generation counted here is assumed to be one you keep.
That last assumption is the big one, and it is why this page is only half the picture. If a tool needs three attempts to produce something usable, its real cost is three times the figure shown. The number that closes that gap is cost per usable clip, and it can only come from generating clips and judging them — which is exactly what the benchmark does and what this page cannot.
Treat these as a floor, not a price
Real spend is this figure divided by your usable rate. A tool at $0.40 that lands two clips in five costs $1.00 per clip you actually keep — more than a $0.60 tool that lands four in five.
Sources
Vendor pricing pages, accessed 10 September 2026. Prices change without notice — check before you subscribe.
Some tools on this page are ones we may earn commission from. Pricing is taken from the vendor's published rates and is not adjusted by that — see the disclosure.