AI Video Pricing Is a Mess. Here's How to Actually Calculate It.

Short summary

AI video platforms (Runway, Kling, Luma) each use different pricing models—credits, tokens, generations per day—making it hard to predict actual costs for your workflow. A free calculator breaks down pricing: 30 short videos/month at standard quality runs $30–67 depending on platform; 4K upscaling doubles those costs. At 1000+ videos/month, self-hosted GPU inference (2x cheaper than SaaS markup) becomes financially sensible.

• •Runway ($30/mo for 30 videos), Kling ($67), and Luma ($43) use incompatible credit/token systems
• •4K upscaling doubles costs; unlimited plans make sense around 100+ videos/month
• •Self-hosted GPU costs ~45% of SaaS pricing, justifying infrastructure investment at scale

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.