Runway is a creative suite and a developer platform from the same company. The browser product lives at app.runwayml.com. Marketing and pricing live at runway.com. The API is documented at docs.dev.runwayml.com, and credits for that API are bought in the developer portal. For a Shorts, TikTok, or YouTube workflow, Runway is where a team generates a shot, edits with a generative tool, or calls a model from code. It is not the caption burn-in tool most creators already have open. Finish text on screen in CapCut unless you have a reason to stay inside Runway for the whole cut.

Runway's own description, from runway.com/llms.txt checked on 2026-10-16, says the workspace includes Runway's models and third-party models such as Kling, Veo, and Seedance. That is why a Runway credit and a Kling unit are different purchases. Generating Kling inside Runway spends Runway credits. Generating Kling on Kling's API spends Kling units. Read Kling before you mix those bills.

Who it's for

Runway fits creators and small studios who want one login for several video models plus an editor, and developers who want a credit price they can put in a cost model. A faceless YouTube channel testing Gen-4.5 b-roll, a performance marketer generating product shots, and an engineer calling Seedance or Kling through one API are all in range. Pro and Max are the plans that list Runway MCP on the pricing card, so an agent workflow should not assume the Free or Standard plan includes that connector.

It is a weaker fit when the job is a stock avatar reading a script in 30 languages. HeyGen is built for that. It is a weaker fit when the job is a product URL in and a finished ad out with almost no prompting. Creatify is built for that. It is a weaker fit when you only need a cloned narrator. ElevenLabs is the voice product, though Runway's API also resells some ElevenLabs audio models under Runway credits. Those credits are not an ElevenLabs subscription.

Standard is the plan for someone trying AI video with a monthly grant. Max is the plan for heavy solo use, and it is the plan that rolls unused monthly credits. Free is a one-time credit deposit, not a monthly refill.

What it does

The product page path on runway.com describes a creative suite that generates and edits video, images, and audio. The pricing card says paid plans unlock the model list, an agentic creative collaborator, music, voice, and sound effects, and 4K upscaling. Pro and Max add brand kits, custom voice clones, and Runway MCP. Max adds early access to new models, studio-grade HDR and ProRes outputs, and a line that reads "Unlimited Wan 3.0 & Wan 3.0 Prime." The same card qualifies that line, and the Wan 3.0 row repeats it: "Unlimited in Tool Mode until October 18." Pro and Max also print "Unlimited" beside Seedance 2.5 without that October 18 sentence on the same line. Treat the printed date as the limit that was on the card, and do not plan a month of 4K Wan past it on the adjective alone.

The API is wider than the four models printed on the consumer comparison table. The pricing guide checked on 2026-10-16 lists Runway models (Gen-4.5, Gen-4 Turbo, Aleph 2.0, Act Two), Kling, Wan, Seedance 2.0 and 2.5, Veo 3.1, Hailuo, Grok Imagine, Gemini, and others, plus image, upscale, audio, and a few recipe endpoints for product ads. Generations routed through a model router bill at the rate of the model the router selects, and the response reports that model and the credit cost.

Pricing tiers

Consumer plans

Verified on 2026-10-16 against runway.com/pricing. Annual billing is presented as 20 percent off, and the card shows the annual monthly equivalent next to the monthly price.

Plan	Price	Credits	Storage and notes from the card
Free	$0	125 one-time credits, and the FAQ says they do not expire	5 GB. A selection of models. Not a monthly grant
Standard	$15/month, or $12/month billed annually (save $36/year)	625 / month (7,500 / year on the yearly compare header)	No watermarks, 20 GB, up to 3 projects, 5 parallel generations, music voice and sound effects, 4K upscaling
Pro	$35/month, or $28/month billed annually (save $84/year)	2,250 / month (27,000 / year on the yearly compare header)	100 GB, up to 5 projects, 15 parallel generations, 1 brand kit, 1 custom voice clone, Runway MCP, top-up credits, unlimited 4K upscaling
Max	$95/month, or $76/month billed annually (save $228/year)	9,500 / month (114,000 / year on the yearly compare header)	500 GB, up to 10 projects, 20 parallel generations, up to 3 brand kits, up to 3 custom voice clones, Runway MCP, unused credits roll over 1 month, HDR and ProRes

The page's own Gen-4.5 arithmetic: 625 Standard credits equal 52 seconds of Gen-4.5, 2,250 Pro credits equal 187 seconds, and 9,500 Max credits equal 791 seconds. That matches the FAQ statement that Gen-4.5 uses 12 credits per second, and the compare table's 60 credits per 5 seconds.

Other compare-table rates, which are consumer credits, not a separate dollar price: Aleph 2.0 is 140 credits per 5 seconds. Seedance 2.0 Pro at 1080p is 160 credits per 4 seconds. Seedance 2.0 Fast is 116 credits per 4 seconds. The yearly column then estimates how many of those clips a year of credits can buy (for Gen-4.5: 125 on Standard, 450 on Pro, 1,900 on Max). Those counts assume you spend the whole grant on that one model.

Rollover, from the FAQ on the same page: Standard and Pro monthly credits do not roll over. They reset within 24 hours of the billing date. Max rolls up to one month of unused credits. Additional credits you purchase never expire. The FAQ on the same page says the minimum purchase is 1,000 credits.

API credits

Verified the same day at docs.dev.runwayml.com/guides/pricing. Credits cost $0.01 each in the developer portal. Sales tax may apply. A sentence that says consumer plan credits spend on the API was not observed. Treat the wallets as separate until a help article says otherwise. At $0.01, a model rate in credits is the cent price. Gen-4.5 at 12 credits per second is $0.12 per second before tax.

Video rates copied from that guide, credits per second unless noted:

Gen-4.5: 12. Gen-4 Turbo: 5. Act Two: 5.
Aleph 2.0: 28, with a 56-credit minimum.
Veo 3.1: 40 with audio, 20 without. Veo 3.1 Fast: 15 with audio, 10 without.
Kling 3.0 Standard: 9 without audio, 13 with audio. Kling 3.0 Pro: 12 without audio, 17 with audio. Kling 3.0 4K: 43 either way. Kling O3 uses 13, 17, or 43 at standard, pro, and 4K, and the guide says O3 bills those rates whether or not audio is off.
Seedance 2.0: 36 at 480p or 720p, 40 at 1080p, 150 at 4K. Seedance 2.0 Fast: 29 at 480p or 720p. Seedance 2.0 Mini: 16 at 480p or 720p, 64-credit minimum.
Seedance 2.5: output plus input video. At 480p, 20 per second of output plus 10 per second of input and reference video. At 720p, 30 plus 15. At 1080p, 68 plus 34. Reference images and audio are free. Combined video is capped at 30 seconds. Minimum 80 credits. Draft mode bills the 480p rate, and enhancing that draft to 1080p is a second charge at the 1080p rate.
Wan 3.0: 5 / 10 / 20 at 480p / 720p / 1080p. Wan 3.0 Prime: 6.8 / 14 / 28 at those resolutions.

HDR and professional containers add a surcharge on Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0 only: 5 credits per second for ProRes or a PNG sequence, and 20 credits per second for the listed 10-bit and HDR profiles, or 40 credits per second when the output is larger than about 4 megapixels. The guide lists more models (Hailuo, Grok Imagine, Gemini Omni Flash, Happy Horse). Their rows are on that page and are not all repeated here. Quote the row you call.

Image examples from the same guide: Gen-4 Image is 5 credits at 720p or 8 at 1080p. Gen-4 Image Turbo is 2 credits at any resolution. Audio examples: Eleven v3 is 1 credit per 50 characters. Eleven Multilingual v2 is 1 credit per 50 characters. Eleven v4 is 2.2 credits per 1,000 characters until 12 October 2026 PT, then 5 credits per 1,000 characters. Those are Runway API credits, not the ElevenLabs subscription credits on ElevenLabs.

Pros

Consumer prices and credit grants are printed for Free, Standard, Pro, and Max, with both monthly and annual figures.
Gen-4.5's 12 credits per second is stated in the FAQ and matches the 60-credit, 5-second table, so a creator can check the arithmetic.
The API price is a flat $0.01 per credit, which turns every row in the guide into a dollar rate without a hidden currency.
Pro and Max name Runway MCP on the plan card, and the developer docs separate that generation server from the developer-portal server.
Third-party models are priced in the same guide, so a test of Kling versus Seedance versus Gen-4.5 can stay on one invoice.

Cons

Consumer credits and developer-portal credits are bought in different places. A shared balance was not observed.
Free credits are one-time. A channel that posts every day cannot treat $0 as a monthly production plan.
Standard and Pro do not roll monthly credits. Unused credits on those plans expire at the billing reset.
Max's Wan line is "Unlimited in Tool Mode until October 18," not an open-ended 4K grant. After that date, budget a normal credit row.
The API guide is long. A router can select a model you did not intend, and you pay that model's rate. Read the response metadata.
Runway is a poor substitute for a dedicated caption editor. Plan a second tool for on-screen text.

Usage flow

Pick Free only to test. For a posting cadence, pick Standard, Pro, or Max using the renewal credit grant and the 12-credit Gen-4.5 second, not the annual marketing equivalent alone.
Generate in the web app, or call the API with developer-portal credits. If an agent is driving the work, connect the generation MCP from a Pro or Max plan, which are the cards that list it.
Export and add captions, covers, and the platform crop in CapCut or your editor. Replace the voice in ElevenLabs when the Runway audio model is not the one you licensed there.

Workflow usage

On the faceless workflow (faceless), Runway is the generation and light-edit step. A 5-second Gen-4.5 shot is 60 consumer credits, which is about 8 percent of a Standard month (625 credits) and a smaller slice of Pro or Max. The same 5 seconds on the API is 60 credits at $0.01, or $0.60, if you are on the developer wallet. Keep those two sentences in different budgets.

On the UGC-ad workflow (ugc-ads), the API guide prices product recipes: product_ad, product_swap, and product_ugc, each with a 4-second minimum and a 15-second maximum. Product_ad at 720p is 200 credits for 4 seconds plus 36 credits per extra second. At 1080p it is 216 plus 40. That is a developer-portal price. It is not the same product as Creatify's URL-to-video credit. This site does not yet serve a live /workflow/ugc-ads page. The slug is the planning label.

Underlying models

Runway's own names on the pages checked are Gen-4.5, Gen-4 Turbo, Gen-4 Image, Aleph 2.0, and Act Two. The consumer card also names Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.0, Seedance 2.5, Wan 3.0, Wan 3.0 Prime, and Nano Banana Pro. The API guide adds Veo 3.1, Hailuo, Grok Imagine, Gemini image and video models, Seedream, Ideogram, and GPT Image variants. A single page that guarantees every one of those models is on the Free plan was not observed. Free says "a selection of generative creative models." Paid cards say access to all AI video and image models, which is the claim to re-check at purchase.

API and MCP

The API is public. The pricing guide URL above was opened on 2026-10-16. runway.com/llms.txt points API documentation at https://docs.dev.runwayml.com and the product at https://app.runwayml.com.

Two official MCP servers are documented:

Generation MCP at https://mcp.runwayml.com, described in the developer docs as the server that creates media in chat. Pro and Max plan cards list "Runway MCP." Standard's feature list, as read on 2026-10-16, did not include that line.
Runway Dev MCP at https://dev.runwayml.com/mcp, documented at docs.dev.runwayml.com/guides/mcp. It looks up tasks, model routers, and docs on a developer-portal account. The docs say not to put an API key in the MCP config. It does not replace the generation server.

Similar tools

Kling sells Kling models in Kling units. Use it when you want Kuaishou's API directly, including the $0.14 video unit.
Seedance is Dreamina's official Seedance plan. Runway is a second place to run Seedance, at Runway's credit rate.
Higgsfield is the other multi-model studio with its own subscription and an official MCP server.
CapCut remains the short-form editor after the generation is done.

FAQ

Do web-app credits pay for the API?

Not observed as a shared wallet on 2026-10-16. Plan credits are described on runway.com/pricing. API credits are purchased in the developer portal at $0.01 each. Keep two balances until Runway's docs say one of them spends on the other.

Which plan includes MCP?

Pro and Max list Runway MCP on the pricing card checked on 2026-10-16. Free and Standard did not show that bullet in the extract. The generation server documented by the developer docs is https://mcp.runwayml.com. The developer-portal server is a different URL.

How many Gen-4.5 seconds are on Standard?

The pricing page says 625 monthly credits equal 52 seconds of Gen-4.5, because Gen-4.5 costs 12 credits per second. A rejected generation spends credits too. The 52 seconds is the grant, not the number of keepers.

Does the Free plan refill?

No. The card says 125 one-time credits, and the FAQ says that deposit does not expire. It does not say a new 125 arrive next month.

Runway