AI ad generator pricing runs from free to about $149 a month for published self-serve tiers, and nearly every tool charges in credits rather than seats. The plan price tells you little on its own. What decides your bill is the credit cost per asset, because one short video clip can consume more credits than a hundred static images.
That gap is the whole story, and almost nobody prices for it. You compare two plans at $35, pick one, then discover the month’s four video ads emptied the allocation in an afternoon.
This covers the three pricing models in the category, what four tools charge as of July 2026 with every figure taken from the vendor’s own page, and a five step method for working out your real number before you buy.
Key Takeaways
- Credits are the default. Runway, HeyGen, Creatify and DesignerBox all meter generation, not seats. Per-seat charges appear as add-ons at the top tiers, not as the main model.
- The plan price is not the unit price. On DesignerBox an image is 5 credits and 8 seconds of Veo 3.1 with audio is 6,400. One clip costs the credits of 1,280 images.
- Video breaks the plan you sized for images. A 6,400 credit clip exceeds the entire 2,500 credit monthly allocation on the $75 Premium tier. Budget static and video separately.
- Annual discounts vary by 3x. Runway takes 20% off for annual billing. DesignerBox takes up to 60%. That single toggle moves your effective cost more than switching tools.
- Read the billing label before the number. Some pricing pages display the annual rate by default, so the figure you copy is not the monthly price.
- Top-up credits cost more than plan credits. On DesignerBox a Bulk pack runs about $0.033 a credit against $0.03 on Basic, and packs expire after 12 months.
The three ways AI ad generators charge
Three models cover the category. Knowing which one a tool uses tells you more than its headline price.
Credit-based
You buy a monthly credit allocation and each generation draws it down. This dominates the category because the vendor’s own cost is per generation, so they pass the shape through. Static images are cheap. Video is not.
Per-seat
You pay per user per month, generation included or loosely capped. In AI ad tools this rarely stands alone. It shows up as a top-tier add-on: HeyGen’s Business plan adds team members at $20 per seat per month (heygen.com, July 2026), and Creatify caps seats by tier rather than selling them individually (creatify.ai, July 2026).
Per-video
You pay per finished asset. Common with UGC and avatar marketplaces where a human is in the loop. Predictable per unit, expensive at volume.
AI ad generator pricing compared (2026)
Every figure below was read from the vendor’s own pricing page in July 2026. Where a rate is not published in a form we could read, it says so rather than guessing.
| Tool | Free plan | Entry paid (billed monthly) | Mid tier (billed monthly) | Top self-serve (billed monthly) | Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runway | 125 one-time credits | Standard $15, 625 credits/mo | Pro $35, 2,250 credits/mo | Max $95, 9,500 credits/mo | Credit |
| HeyGen | 3 videos/mo | Creator $29, 600 credits/mo | Pro $49, 1,000 credits/mo | Business $149, 1,500 credits/mo, plus $20/seat | Credit |
| Creatify | 10 credits/mo, watermarked | Starter $39, 100 credits/mo, 1 seat | Pro $99, 300 credits/mo, up to 5 seats | Enterprise, custom | Credit |
| DesignerBox | 112 credits | Basic $15, 500 credits/mo | Pro $35, 1,000 credits/mo | Ultra $200, 8,000 credits/mo, 5 seats | Credit |
Sources: runwayml.com/pricing, heygen.com/pricing, creatify.ai/pricing, accessed July 2026. DesignerBox figures are current as of July 2026.
Two honest caveats on that table. Creatify’s Pro tier carries a credit slider, and 300 credits is the base position, with the higher positions not published as fixed prices. Runway is the only one of the four publishing annual rates in readable form: Standard $12, Pro $28, Max $76 per month billed annually (runwayml.com, July 2026).
HeyGen and Creatify both confirm an annual discount exists without printing the per-tier figure where it can be read, and Creatify states only “up to 50%”, which is not a rate you can apply to a tier.
Why the plan price is not the cost per ad
Two plans at $35 can differ by 10x in what they produce. The conversion from credits to output is where the money actually goes, and only some vendors publish it.
Runway publishes theirs. 625 credits buys 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 or 78 Gen-4 images. 2,250 credits buys 187 seconds or 281 images (runwayml.com, July 2026). So a second of video costs roughly 12 credits against roughly 8 for an image, and the Standard plan is either 52 seconds of video or 78 stills, not both.
DesignerBox publishes its conversion too, and the spread is wider because the catalogue spans cheap and premium models. Generating or editing an image is 5 credits. A nine image avatar set is 25. Video is charged per second of output, which is where a plan disappears:
| Operation | Credits | Equivalent in images |
|---|---|---|
| Generate or edit an image | 5 | 1 |
| Avatar set, 9 images | 25 | 5 |
| Seedance Pro Fast, 720p, 5s | 150 | 30 |
| Kling Standard, 720p, 5s | 225 | 45 |
| Sora 2, 720p, 8s | 1,600 | 320 |
| Veo 3.1 with audio, 8s | 6,400 | 1,280 |
Sit with the last row. One 8 second clip with audio costs the credits of 1,280 static images, and 6,400 credits is more than the entire 2,500 credit monthly allocation on the $75 Premium plan. You cannot make that clip once a month on that tier. Every credit-priced tool in the category has this property. Most are quieter about it.
The practical rule: size your plan on the video, then treat the images as free by comparison. Sizing on images and hoping video fits is how the budget dies. The per second economics are broken down further in our guide to what AI video generation costs.
What DesignerBox costs
DesignerBox prices on credits like the rest of the category, across five tiers.
| Tier | Billed monthly | Billed annually (per month) | Credits/mo | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 112 | 1 |
| Basic | $15 | $6 | 500 | 1 |
| Pro | $35 | $15 | 1,000 | 1 |
| Premium | $75 | $30 | 2,500 | 1 |
| Ultra | $200 | $100 | 8,000 | 5, plus $19 each |
Three details that matter more than the headline. Annual billing grants the same monthly allocation resetting monthly, not the year’s credits upfront. The commercial licence starts at Pro, so free and Basic are not cleared for paid ads. AI video and try-on start at Premium.
At Basic, 500 credits is 100 images at $0.15 each. At Ultra, 8,000 credits is 1,600 images at $0.125. Billed annually, Basic falls to $0.06 an image. Current tiers are on the DesignerBox pricing page, and the per model credit rates sit on the model catalogue.
How to work out your real monthly cost
Five steps. Ten minutes. Do this before you compare any two plans.
- Count the month’s mix. Not “some ads”. Statics, videos, and the seconds per video. Motion’s Creative Benchmarks 2026, drawn from 578,750 creatives across 6,015 Meta advertiser accounts launched between September 2025 and January 2026, found mid-tier accounts ship roughly 6 to 7 new creatives a week and top-spending accounts ship 12 to 19 or more (motionapp.com, March 2026). Motion sells creative analytics, so read that as a volume benchmark from a vendor with an interest in volume, not as a target.
- Convert the mix to credits. Use the vendor’s published conversion. If a tool does not publish one, that is your answer about how predictable the bill will be.
- Divide the allocation by the mix. Seven creatives a week is about 28 a month. All static on DesignerBox, that is 140 credits, and Basic covers it four times over. Make four of those 28 into 8 second Sora 2 clips and you add 6,400 credits, which needs Ultra.
- Check the billing period on the number you copied. See the next section.
- Price the overflow. DesignerBox credit packs run Starter 100 for $5, Standard 500 for $20, Bulk 1,500 for $50. They require an active paid subscription and expire after 12 months. At $0.033 to $0.05 a credit they cost more than plan credits, which is normal across the category and worth pricing in rather than discovering.
The billing details that change the number
The default toggle. Photoroom’s pricing page labels its tiers “Per month, billed yearly” behind a monthly and yearly switch marked “Save 33%” (photoroom.com/pricing, July 2026). The figure showing when the page loads is the annual rate. Transcribe it as the monthly price and you understate the tool by a third. This is not unique to one vendor, and it is the most common error in every pricing comparison in this category.
Discount depth varies more than price. Runway takes 20% off across its tiers for annual billing. DesignerBox takes 50% to 60%. Comparing two monthly prices while one tool discounts annual three times harder than the other compares the wrong pair of numbers.
Sliders and seats. A base tier price with a credit slider is a starting price. A per-seat add-on at the top tier changes the shape of the bill for a team of five.
The comparison that matters most is not another tool. It is what you spend now. A studio day and the reshoot cycle behind it are covered in our breakdown of what a product photoshoot costs, and that is the baseline any generator has to beat. If you are running several tools at once, the six-tool stack has a cost that never appears on any invoice.
Is a paid AI ad generator worth it against the free tools?
The ad platforms ship their own generators at no cost beyond ad spend, and free tiers exist across the category. They are a real option for testing and a poor one for shipping.
Three things separate free from paid, consistently: watermarks, commercial licensing, and the model catalogue. Creatify’s free tier watermarks output (creatify.ai, July 2026). DesignerBox watermarks the free tier and starts the commercial licence at Pro. A watermarked asset cannot run as an ad, and an asset without a commercial licence should not.
The demand side explains why the question keeps coming up. IAB reports that nearly two in three video ad buyers now use generative AI for digital video creative, up from half in 2025, and that one third of ad assets will use it this year, rising to a projected 43% by 2027 (iab.com via prnewswire.com, July 2026).
Salesforce’s tenth State of Marketing report, published February 2026 from a survey of 4,450 marketing decision makers fielded between October and November 2025, found 78% of marketers say they need more personalised content than they can produce, and 75% are turning to AI to close that gap (salesforce.com, February 2026).
That is a volume problem, and volume is exactly what credit pricing meters.
FAQ
How much does an AI ad generator cost?
Published self-serve tiers run from free to about $149 a month. Verified July 2026 entry tiers billed monthly: Runway Standard $15 for 625 credits, HeyGen Creator $29 for 600 credits, Creatify Starter $39 for 100 credits, DesignerBox Basic $15 for 500 credits. Compare the credits and the conversion rate, not the plan price, because what a credit buys differs by an order of magnitude between tools.
What is the cheapest AI ad generator?
Of the tiers verified here, Runway Standard and DesignerBox Basic both start at $15 a month billed monthly, and DesignerBox Basic falls to $6 a month billed annually. Cheapest by plan price is rarely cheapest by output. DesignerBox Basic is 500 credits at 5 credits an image, so 100 images. Runway Standard is 625 credits at roughly 8 credits an image, so 78 images. The $15 is identical and the output is not.
Are there free AI ad generators?
Yes, and each has a catch worth knowing. Runway gives 125 one-time credits rather than a monthly refill. HeyGen’s free tier allows 3 videos a month. Creatify gives 10 credits a month with a watermark. DesignerBox gives 112 credits a month, watermarked, with the commercial licence starting at Pro. Free tiers are for evaluating output quality, not for running campaigns.
Is annual or monthly billing better for AI ad tools?
Annual is cheaper everywhere, and the size of the saving varies far more than the list prices do. Runway discounts 20% for annual billing. DesignerBox discounts 50% to 60%, taking Basic from $15 to $6. Check whether annual grants credits monthly or upfront: DesignerBox resets the same allocation each month rather than releasing the year at once, so annual billing lowers the rate without raising your monthly ceiling.
Why does AI video cost so much more than AI images?
Video is billed per second of output, so cost scales with duration and model quality rather than sitting at a flat per-asset rate. On DesignerBox an image is 5 credits, a 5 second Seedance Pro Fast clip is 150, and 8 seconds of Veo 3.1 with audio is 6,400. That last one is 1,280 images worth of credits for one clip. The gap reflects what the underlying models charge, which is why it shows up at every vendor.
How do I calculate my cost per ad?
Count next month’s creatives split by format, convert each to credits using the vendor’s published rate, and total it. Divide the plan price by the assets the allocation actually produces. On DesignerBox Basic, $15 for 500 credits at 5 credits an image is $0.15 an image. Redo the sum with your real video mix, because a handful of clips changes the answer completely.
Do AI ad generators charge per video?
Most do not. Runway, HeyGen, Creatify and DesignerBox all meter credits, and video draws more per unit than static. True per-video pricing is more common with UGC marketplaces where a person films the asset. Per-seat charges exist mainly as top-tier add-ons, such as HeyGen’s $20 per seat per month on Business (heygen.com, July 2026).
Competitor pricing verified from runwayml.com/pricing, heygen.com/pricing, creatify.ai/pricing and photoroom.com/pricing as of July 2026, monthly and annual billing labelled separately as published. Tiers in this category change frequently, so check the vendor’s live page before you buy. Adobe Firefly, Canva and Midjourney pricing is not quoted here because their pricing pages could not be read directly at the time of writing. DesignerBox credit costs and allocations are current as of July 2026. Individual results vary.
