Contents
- Which free plan fits which person
- The four tools side by side
- What we checked ourselves, and how
- Runway: 125 credits, once, and a model question
- Google Flow: 50 credits a day, and one setting that can halve it
- Pika: the vendor's own pages disagree
- Kling: the number everyone repeats has no official page behind it
- Sora is gone, and the other names you will see
- FAQ
- What to watch next
Runway’s free plan is 125 one-time credits. At Runway’s published Gen-4.5 price, that works out to two five-second clips, once, though Runway’s page does not say which models Free can use. Google Flow’s tier buys two Fast clips every day. Pika’s own pricing page now lists zero free credits a month.
My take: if you want to keep testing prompts without paying, Flow is the only plan with a daily refill that we could confirm from the vendor’s own page. Everything else is a sample, a trial, or a paywall.
Which free plan fits which person
- Testing prompts again and again: Google Flow. 50 credits per day, no rollover.
- One look at Runway’s tools: Runway. 125 credits, one time, never refreshed.
- Free clips from Pika: none on the pricing page. Credit packs only.
- Kling’s daily credits: third-party guides say 66 a day. Kling’s own pages we could read do not give the number.
- Free output with no watermark: not confirmed for any tool. Read the sections below before you count on it.
The four tools side by side
Each cell cites the official page it comes from. “Not confirmed” means no official page we could read states it.
| Tool | Free credits | Watermark | Max resolution | Max clip length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runway | 125, one time, no renewal (runway.com/pricing) | Not confirmed for Free; Standard lists “No watermarks” (runway.com/pricing) | Not confirmed | Not confirmed; 5 s is the Gen-4.5 pricing basis (runway.com/pricing) |
| Pika | 0 per month, packs only (pika.art/pricing) | Pages conflict: pricing says “No watermark”, FAQ says watermarked when shared from Pika (pika.art/pricing, pika.art/faq) | 720p (pika.art/faq) | Not confirmed; costs are quoted for 5 s (pika.art/pricing) |
| Kling | Not confirmed. Unofficial: third-party guides say 66 per day | Not confirmed | Not confirmed | Not confirmed |
| Google Flow | 50 per day, no rollover (support.google.com/flow/answer/16526234) | Not confirmed; the credits page does not address it | Not confirmed for free users; page mentions 1080p upscaling for subscribers | Unclear; page mentions 4 to 10 s tied to a Gemini Omni Flash resolution setting |
What we checked ourselves, and how
We checked on 2026-09-21 at 21:50 KST, from one machine in Korea. We opened Runway’s pricing page and Google’s Flow credits help page and copied the free allowance and the per-generation costs. Pika’s costs came from its pricing page. Then we divided.
Nothing was tested by generating a clip on a free account. Watermark and resolution on the free tiers of Runway, Kling and Flow are unconfirmed by us.
| Tool | Free allowance | Cost per clip (official) | Clips the free allowance buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runway | 125 credits, one time, no renewal | Gen-4.5: 60 credits per 5 s (12/s) | 2 clips of 5 s at Gen-4.5 prices (10.4 s total); Free’s model list is not stated |
| Google Flow | 50 credits per day, no rollover | Veo 3.1 Lite 10 / Fast 20 / Quality 100 | 5 Lite or 2 Fast per day; 0 Quality (needs 100 > 50); 150 Lite or 60 Fast in 30 days |
| Pika (pricing page) | 0 credits per month, packs only | Wan 3.0 720p 5 s: 33; Seedance 2.5 720p 5 s: 122 | 0 clips without buying credits |
| Kling | Not confirmed from an official page (unofficial: 66/day per third-party guides) | Not confirmed officially | Not confirmed; unofficial cost estimates conflict, see the Kling section |
The formulas, so you can redo them yourself:
- Runway: floor(125 / 60) = 2 clips. 125 / 12 = 10.4 seconds.
- Flow: floor(50 / cost). Lite 50/10 = 5. Fast 50/20 = 2. Quality 50/100 = 0.
- Any tool: clips = free credits / (credits per second × seconds).
As a sanity check, Standard’s 625 credits / 12 = 52 s of Gen-4.5, and Runway lists “52s”.
Two caveats. Costs change with model version, and these are the models each page listed on the check date. And “Quality is unaffordable on free credits” is our arithmetic, not a Google statement. Google’s help page says free credits work across tiers.
Runway: 125 credits, once, and a model question
Runway’s pricing page describes Free as 125 one-time credits to explore its tools. A third-party write-up, nexodatech, quotes Runway’s docs as saying the credits do not expire and do not renew or refresh once spent.
So the number is a budget, not an allowance. At Gen-4.5 pricing that is two clips.
Here is the catch. Runway’s page does not say which models Free can use. Nexodatech claims Free is limited to Gen-4 Turbo image-to-video, not Gen-4.5. If so, 125 credits stretch further: that source says 25 seconds, at 5 credits a second.
That rate doesn’t reconcile with Runway’s own numbers. The Standard line says 625 credits buys “104s of Gen-4 Turbo”, about 6 credits a second, not 5.
So treat “2 clips” as arithmetic on published Gen-4.5 prices, not a confirmed free-plan capability. Nexodatech’s figures would put it nearer 5 clips of 5 seconds.
Watermark and resolution on Free are missing from Runway’s page too. Standard lists “No watermarks”. Third-party guides say Free clips carry a mark and are capped at 720p, while diyai calls the resolution model-dependent.
My read: Runway’s free plan is a demo. Fine for a look. Not a workflow.
Google Flow: 50 credits a day, and one setting that can halve it
Google’s help page is the plainest of the four. In its words: “With or without a subscription, you receive 50 Google Flow credits per day.” Unused credits don’t roll over.
Costs for non-Ultra users are Veo 3.1 Lite 10, Fast 20 and Quality 100. That gives 5 Lite or 2 Fast clips a day. Over 30 days of daily use, 150 Lite or 60 Fast.
The catch is in the same help page. Some features create multiple generations per request, and in Flow a single request may generate 2 videos. If that setting is left at 2, the clip counts above are cut in half.
Other limits are murkier:
- Resolution: upscaling to 1080p is free for subscribers, and 4K costs 50 credits and is Ultra only. Google does not state the ceiling for free users. Novoads reads the page as 1080p upscaling being unavailable without a subscription.
- Clip length: the page mentions 4 to 10 seconds depending on the Gemini Omni Flash resolution selected. The wording is unclear, so we are not stating it as Veo 3.1 clip length.
- Watermark: Google’s credits page does not address it. Novoads says the mark is SynthID, which is invisible. Other guides split, one saying free output carries a visible “Made with Veo” mark and another saying none.
- Region: plans can differ by country and account. Check your own.
Pika: the vendor’s own pages disagree
Pika’s pricing page shows the Free row as “0 credits / month · packs only”. It also says “No watermark”, “Not included: Commercial license”. Its FAQ says something else.
| Field | Pricing page | FAQ | Third-party |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free credits | 0 / month, packs only | 150 per month on “Basic (free)” | About 80 per month |
| Watermark | “No watermark” | Watermark for all tiers when shared directly from Pika; watermark-free download only on Pro or Fancy | One comparison page: no visible watermark; another guide: watermarked |
| Resolution | Not stated | 720p | One guide: capped at 480p |
The FAQ uses plan names (Basic, Standard, Pro, Fancy) that the pricing page no longer uses. It looks stale, not like a second live plan. Novoads, dated 2026-09-21, says Pika’s free credits changed from 80 a month to 0 on September 9, and diyai, dated a day earlier, agrees on 0. I would trust the pricing page.
Getting past zero means buying a credit pack. One Wan 3.0 clip at 720p, 5 s is 33 credits.
Kling: the number everyone repeats has no official page behind it
Third-party guides from whichoneisreal and aitoolcurator say Kling gives 66 credits a day, reset at midnight. Kling’s own credit policy says login credits are issued on the first login each day and reset at 24:00. It gives no amount. Kling’s membership page is rendered by script, so no free-credit figure could be read from it.
Also, the guides don’t agree with each other. Diyai says no fixed monthly allowance is published. Novoads says no monthly credits.
Cost per clip is soft too. Aitoolcurator estimates Standard at roughly 10 to 20 credits per 5 seconds, so 3 to 6 videos a day, and Professional at about 35, so 1 to 2. That is why the tables above give no Kling clip count.
Third-party guides also say free output is watermarked, mostly 720p (one says 360p to 540p), and personal use only. None of that is confirmed on a page we could read.
Sora is gone, and the other names you will see
We requested each vendor’s page with curl at 21:48 KST, following redirects.
| URL requested | Status | Ended up at |
|---|---|---|
| runwayml.com/pricing | 200 | runway.com/pricing |
| pika.art/pricing | 200 | same |
| klingai.com | 200 | kling.ai |
| klingai.com/global/dev/pricing | 200 | kling.ai/dev/pricing |
| labs.google/flow/about | 200 | flow.google.com |
| lumalabs.ai/pricing | 200 | same |
| hailuoai.video | 200 | same |
| openai.com/sora | 403 | same (blocked to our request; not proof the page is down) |
A 200 only shows that a page loads. It does not show that a free account can still generate.
Sora is the exception that matters. OpenAI’s help center reportedly says the app and web were discontinued on 26 April 2026 and the API ends on 24 September 2026, three days after our check. The OpenAI page wouldn’t open for us, so those dates are second-hand. Novoads and whichoneisreal both say the app shut down in April and the API ends in September. No official free plan remains.
Luma is a conflict. The pricing page we opened listed only paid tiers. Novoads says a free plan exists with draft resolution, 720p and a watermark. For Meta’s Vibes, Grok Imagine and InVideo I have no reliable free-tier numbers, so I’m not quoting any.
On commercial use: Pika’s pricing page says the commercial license is not included on Free. Runway, Kling and Flow have no official statement we could read. Third-party guides conflict on Runway, so don’t assume you can ship free output.
FAQ
How many free videos does Runway give? 125 credits, one time. At Gen-4.5’s 60 credits per 5 seconds that is 2 clips. Which models Free can use is not stated on Runway’s page, so the real count may be higher.
Which free plan refreshes every day? Google Flow, at 50 credits a day per Google’s help page. Kling is reported at 66 a day by third-party guides only.
Does Pika still have a free plan? Pika’s pricing page lists 0 credits a month, packs only. Its FAQ still says 150, but the FAQ appears out of date.
Are free videos watermarked? Unconfirmed for Runway, Kling and Flow from official pages. Third-party guides say Runway and Kling are watermarked. Guides split on Flow. Pika’s pricing page says no watermark and its FAQ says otherwise.
Can I use Sora for free? No. OpenAI’s help center reportedly says the app and web were discontinued in April 2026 and the API ends on 24 September 2026.
What to watch next
Pika changed its free tier on September 9 by one guide’s account, and Sora’s API is scheduled to end on the 24th. This market moves in weeks, so I expect these numbers to shift again. Before you commit to any plan, open the vendor’s pricing page and run the formula above.
The open questions are watermark and resolution on free Flow, Kling and Runway output. Only generating a clip on a free account will settle them.
Sources
- Runway pricing
- Google Flow credits help
- Pika pricing
- Pika FAQ
- whichoneisreal, Free AI Video Limits 2026
- diyai.io, Best Free AI Video Generators
- Novoads, What 9 Plans Actually Give You
- aitoolcurator, Kling AI Free Plan
- nexodatech, Runway AI Free Plan 2026
- Our own check, 2026-09-21 21:50 KST (curl, page reads, arithmetic)
Image credits
- Photo by Peter Stumpf on Unsplash
- Photo by photoGraph on Pexels
- Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash