AI video generators for beginners: free plans compared

Three kinds of AI video tools

"AI video generator" covers tools that do very different jobs, and picking the wrong kind is the most common beginner mistake. Before comparing free plans, decide what you want to make.

Text-to-video with stock footage and a voiceover. You paste a script, a blog post or a slide deck, and the tool assembles stock clips, captions and an AI voice. Fliki, invideo AI and Pictory work this way. They are ideal for faceless social videos, explainers and repurposing written content.

AI presenters (avatars). A realistic digital person reads your script on camera, often in many languages. Synthesia and HeyGen lead here. They suit training, onboarding, product explainers and video translation.

Generative video. You describe a scene, or animate an image, and a model creates new footage. Runway is the reference in our comparison. It suits creative shots, b-roll and experiments, but it produces seconds rather than minutes of video per month on entry plans.

What each free plan includes

We read every official pricing page on October 29, 2026. Here is what you get without paying.

• Fliki: 3 credits per month, 300 voices across 80+ languages, HD 720p videos, with a Fliki watermark.
• Synthesia: the Basic plan gives 500 credits per month, which Synthesia equates to 10 minutes of Studio video creation or dubbing; videos carry a Synthesia watermark.
• HeyGen: 3 videos per month, up to 1 minute each and watermarked, with access to Avatar IV, the Video Agent, 500+ presenters and 30+ languages.
• Runway: 125 credits, once (they do not renew each month), a selection of generative models and 5 GB of storage.
• invideo AI: a free plan with a small allowance of credits that resets every Monday; downloads carry an invideo watermark. The pricing page does not state the allowance, invideo's help center describes it.
• Pictory: no free plan, only a 14-day free trial, with exports capped at 720p.

In short, a free plan is a way to learn the tool, not to publish. Watermarks, 720p exports and tight credit caps are the rule. Synthesia's ten monthly minutes are the most generous allowance for avatar videos; HeyGen's three one-minute videos are enough to test an avatar and a translation; Runway's one-time credits let you try generative models before committing.

The first paid plan: what changes

Entry prices are close, but what they unlock is not. Monthly prices first, then the per-month price on annual billing:

• Runway Standard: $15 per month or $12 on annual billing; 625 credits per month, which Runway converts to about 52 seconds of its Gen-4.5 model; no watermarks; 4K upscaling.
• Synthesia Starter: $19 per month or $14 on annual billing ($168 per year); 1,250 credits per month; download and logo removal; 125+ avatars. Synthesia showed a $9 first-month promotion on monthly billing.
• invideo AI Starter: $20 per month or $10 on annual billing, with "50% off" badges; a Halloween offer ran until October 31. Prices this promotional are hard to compare: check them again before you subscribe.
• Fliki Standard: $28 per month or $16.80 on annual billing ($201.60 per year); 180 credits per month, 1080p, voice cloning and limited stock avatars.
• HeyGen Creator: $29 per month or $24 on annual billing; 1080p export, branding removed, a custom video avatar and 175+ languages for translation.
• Pictory Starter: $29 per month or $25 on annual billing; up to 30 minutes of video per month and a large stock library from Getty and Storyblocks.

Annual billing cuts the price by roughly 15 to 50 percent depending on the tool, but you commit for a year. For a first project, one month of a monthly plan is usually the cheaper way to find out whether you will keep using the tool.

Credits: the hidden unit of every plan

Almost every tool now prices in credits rather than minutes, and each tool spends credits differently. Runway is the clearest: it tells you that 625 credits buy about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 video on Standard, and 2,250 credits about 187 seconds on Pro. Pictory states minutes per month directly (30 on Starter, 90 on Professional). Others leave you to discover the conversion inside the app, and the rate can change with the model, the resolution and the length.

Two practical tips. First, estimate the length of the videos you will actually publish in a month, then check on the pricing page or in the free plan how many credits a minute of that kind of video costs. Second, check whether unused credits roll over. Runway states that credits roll over for one month on its Max plan. If a pricing page does not mention rollover, assume unused credits expire and ask the publisher's support.

How our ranking reads these plans

Our score for AI video generators weighs six published facts: whether there is a free plan, the entry price per month, the number of languages, voice cloning, the maximum export resolution and the watermark on the free plan. Runway leads our ranking with 9.5/10 thanks to the lowest entry price, a free tier and 4K upscaling, even though the pricing page we read does not list a language count. invideo AI follows with 9.2 for its free plan, 50+ languages, voice cloning and 4K export from Starter. HeyGen and Synthesia both score 9.1: HeyGen for 175+ languages and 4K on Pro, Synthesia for 140+ languages and voice cloning on every plan, held back by 1080p exports. Fliki scores 8.9 and Pictory 8.4, because Pictory has no free plan.

Two cautions. invideo AI's annual prices were promotional when we checked (a Halloween offer until October 31), and its score uses the $20 monthly price, not the discount. And a score only reads the plans on paper: Synthesia, for example, has the largest free allowance for avatar videos in this comparison, which no single criterion captures.

A first project in one afternoon

The best way to compare these tools is to make the same short video with two or three of them, on their free plans, in a single afternoon. Pick a real need: a 45-second product explainer, a short tutorial for colleagues, or a social post that repeats one idea from an article you wrote.

1. Write the script first. Around 100 to 120 words is roughly 45 seconds of speech. A finished script lets you compare tools on the same content instead of on their demo templates.
2. Run it through two tools of the same kind. For example, HeyGen and Synthesia for a presenter, or Fliki and invideo AI for a faceless video with stock footage.
3. Check the details that matter when you publish: pronunciation of names, captions, the watermark, the export resolution and how long the export takes.
4. Note what the free plan could not do, and look up which paid plan removes that limit. That is the plan to price, not the most expensive one.

This small test costs nothing and tells you more than any feature list, including ours. Our ranking tells you which tools publish the strongest plans on paper; your script tells you which one sounds and looks right for your audience.

Which one should a beginner start with?

• You want a talking presenter or to translate a video: start with the free plans of HeyGen and Synthesia and compare the avatars on your own script.
• You want faceless videos from text: try Fliki's free plan for the voices, and invideo AI if you need lots of stock footage.
• You want creative, cinematic shots: Runway's free credits show you what generative video can and cannot do today.

Whichever tool you choose, read its terms on commercial use and on the rights to avatars, voices and generated footage before publishing, especially for client work. Cloning a voice or a face requires the consent of the person concerned. And keep an eye on promotional prices: the cheapest plan today may not be the cheapest after the offer ends. All the tools, with their plans and sources, are in our AI video generator ranking, and you can put any three side by side in the comparison tool.

Our selection

Three tools from our AI video generators ranking that match the situations described above.