Every AI video tool invents its own currency, and no two credits are worth the same. Convert any plan into dollars per second — the only number that lets you compare tools honestly.
| Metric | Value | Notes |
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Credit costs per clip vary by resolution and mode inside the same tool — check the tool's own pricing panel and enter the figure for the mode you actually use.
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A "1,000 credit" plan sounds generous until you learn a single 5-second 1080p clip costs 40 of them — that's 25 clips, or barely two minutes of raw footage before retries. Credit systems exist because they make comparison hard: one tool's credit is another tool's tenth of a credit, and the same credit buys different amounts depending on resolution, duration and mode.
The fix is to convert everything to dollars per second of usable output, retries included. Do that and the rankings often invert — a "cheap" credit plan can cost more per finished minute than a pay-per-second API. Compare published API rates in the cost calculator, and see how many clips your project actually needs in the specs calculator.
The converter above does the arithmetic, but the reasoning is worth seeing once in plain numbers, because the same pattern shows up in almost every credit plan on the market.
Plan A — the generous-looking pack. $20 a month for 2,000 credits, 1080p clips cost 40 credits each. That is 50 clips, or $0.40 per clip. At 5 seconds a clip, list price is $0.08 per second. With the usual three takes per usable shot, real cost is $0.24 per second — and the pack yields about 16 finished clips, a little over a minute of video.
Plan B — the small pack. $10 for 500 credits at 25 credits per clip. Twenty clips at $0.50 each, $0.10 per second list, $0.30 real. Fewer credits, but a better per-credit rate than it first appears; whether it wins depends entirely on whether you use all of Plan A.
Plan C — pay-per-second API. No pack, $0.08 per second billed on output. Same list price as Plan A, but nothing expires and there is no 60% utilisation trap. For anyone generating less than the full pack each month, C is cheaper than A despite the identical headline rate.
Start from the finished output you actually need — say four Shorts and one long-form video a month. Convert that to clips: four Shorts at three clips each, plus perhaps twelve clips for the long-form, is 24 clips. Multiply by your real take rate (three is a fair default, two if you are experienced and prompt carefully) for about 72 generations. Multiply by seconds per clip and by the real per-second rate from the converter, and you have a number you can defend.
Then add a 20% buffer. Not because the maths is wrong, but because there is always one shot that needs eight attempts. Plans that leave you exactly at the edge of your credits produce the worst outcome of all: a video that is 90% finished when the pack runs out.
Before buying, run one final check: does a flat-rate tool make the entire comparison moot? For creators publishing on a schedule, a monthly plan with no per-second billing often costs less than any credit pack once retries are counted, and it removes the mental overhead of rationing shots.
There's no standard — it depends entirely on the tool's plan price and how many credits a clip consumes. A credit might be worth $0.001 or $0.05. That's exactly why you have to convert to dollars-per-second before comparing anything.
Sometimes, but not reliably. Credit plans win when you use the full allowance every month; they lose when credits expire unused or when retries burn through the pack early. Run your real monthly volume through this converter and compare against the API rates.
On most consumer plans, no — they reset monthly. That's a hidden cost: if you only use 60% of a pack, your effective price per second is 1.7× what the plan advertises.