Google Flow Credits Explained: Costs per Clip, Plans and Top-Ups

How Flow credits work, in short

Every personal Google Account that can use Flow gets 50 Flow credits a day, with or without a subscription. A Google AI plan adds a monthly allowance on top: 200 credits with Google AI Plus, 1,000 with Google AI Pro, 10,000 with Google AI Ultra 5x and 25,000 with Google AI Ultra 20x ^[1]. Neither bucket rolls over. As of November 2026, Flow's video models are Omni Flash 1.2, charged per second, and Veo 3.1 Lite, charged per clip. Two rates explain most of the bill: 3 credits per second of 720p Omni video, and 10 credits per Veo 3.1 Lite clip. Learn those two. The rest is detail.

The two buckets behave differently. Your daily 50 refresh when you start the first generation of the day, and whatever you leave unused that day is gone. Plan credits refresh at the start of each billing cycle and also vanish if you do not spend them before the next one. So the daily allowance is never banked into a monthly total, and a quiet month on Google AI Pro does not carry its unused credits forward. Credits are shared across the account on any device. Only Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers see a credit history with balance, next refresh date and usage. Google can change costs at any time; the prompt box settings show the current price before you generate.

What a clip costs in November 2026

Omni Flash 1.2 bills by duration, so length and resolution are the two dials. By our arithmetic, a 10-second clip at 720p costs 30 credits. Past ten seconds the rate doubles, which is why a 15-second 720p clip costs 60 credits and a 15-second 360p clip costs 20. Only paid plans can go beyond ten seconds. Google says 360p generates at one third of the credit cost of 720p, and it pitches 360p as a draft resolution: you test the idea cheaply, then upscale the take you keep.

Veo 3.1 Lite works the other way. It charges a flat 10 credits per clip whatever the length, 5 credits on either Ultra plan, at 720p only. A 4-second clip and an 8-second clip cost the same. Ultra 20x subscribers and family plan managers also get a Lower Priority mode where Veo 3.1 Lite costs 0 credits; no other plan has it. The trade-off: Veo 3.1 Lite cannot extend or edit video, so its cheap clips are final takes, not raw material for revisions.

One detail catches new users. Credits are charged per generation, not per request. If a single prompt creates two videos, you pay for both. Check the number of outputs before you press generate on a long 720p clip, because that is where a doubled request costs the most credits in one click.

The costs around a clip

Extension, upscaling and editing each have their own price, and each sits behind a plan gate. Veo Extend was retired on November 5, 2026; extending now needs a paid plan and Omni Flash 1.2. Each extension adds 3 to 10 seconds and costs the same per second as a first generation: 1 credit at 360p, 3 at 720p. Editing a generated or uploaded clip with Omni Flash 1.2 also costs the same credits per second as generating it, so a revision is never free.

Upscaling is the cheapest step in Flow. On Plus, Pro and Ultra, upscaling an Omni clip to 720p or 1080p costs 0 credits for the first ten seconds and 1 credit for each second beyond that. 4K upscaling is Ultra only and costs a flat 50 credits for up to ten seconds, plus 5 per extra second. That pairing rewards a draft-then-finish habit on paid plans. Without a plan there is no video upscaling at all.

Several things in Flow do not touch your video credits. Images use none; instead each image model has a daily cap. Nano Banana Pro allows 20 images a day without a plan, 100 on Plus or Pro and 500 on Ultra, while Nano Banana 2.1 and Nano Banana 2 Lite share 400 a day without a plan and 1,000 on paid plans. Questions to the Flow agent are free too, within a daily query limit Google does not publish per plan. Any video the agent or a Tool produces spends credits, though. By default the agent asks before it spends, and Tools show a warning banner first.

What each plan's credits buy

Here is the monthly allowance turned into clips, plan credits only. The daily 50 come on top but expire each day, so treat them as a separate small budget. On a free day, by our arithmetic, 50 credits cover five Veo 3.1 Lite clips, about 16 seconds of 720p Omni video, or five 10-second Omni clips at 360p. That is enough to learn the tool, not to run a weekly content calendar. Free users can also lose video generation during peak hours, roughly 2 PM to 5 PM UTC; see whether Google Flow is free for the rest of the free tier.

Google AI Plus, at $4.99 a month, adds 200 credits: six ten-second 720p Omni clips or 20 Veo 3.1 Lite clips. Google AI Pro, at $19.99 a month, adds 1,000: 33 ten-second 720p Omni clips, 16 fifteen-second 720p clips, or 100 Veo 3.1 Lite clips. Google AI Ultra 5x, at $99.99 a month, adds 10,000, which covers 333 ten-second 720p Omni clips or 2,000 Veo 3.1 Lite clips at Ultra's 5-credit rate. Google AI Ultra 20x, at $199.99 a month, adds 25,000, or 833 ten-second 720p Omni clips.

Those counts assume every generation is a keeper. It rarely works out that way. Failed generations come back to you, but a successful clip you throw away is spent, so Plus's 200 plan credits cover six ten-second 720p clips only with no retries, while the 50 daily credits add room for drafts. Drafting at 360p stretches every plan. Annual billing and refund rules are covered in our Google Flow pricing guide.

When credits run out: top-ups, family groups and refunds

Only Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can buy extra AI credits, through Google One ^[2]. Plus members cannot. Purchases are also unavailable in Japan and for members billed through Apple, Pixel Pass or another third party. Packs come in sizes such as 2,500, 5,000 or 20,000 AI credits, and Google does not publish pack prices outside the checkout. Purchased credits may expire after a period set when you buy them. They cannot be transferred, carry no cash value and may be forfeited if you cancel the plan. Auto-reload tops the balance up below a minimum threshold, needs an earlier purchase and an adult account holder, and stops after five reloads in a day.

Family plans pool usage rather than splitting it. For Flow, usage limits are shared by the whole Google One family group, up to five other members, and everyone in the group can see how many AI credits each member consumed. Only the plan manager can buy credits or change the plan. One heavy user can drain the month for everyone, so agree on a monthly budget before you share a plan with other people who generate video.

Refunds of credits happen automatically in two cases. Credits are deducted when a generation starts; if it fails or hits a safety filter, they return within one hour ^[3]. If Veo produces poor audio, Flow returns no video and refunds the credits, unless you turned on Return silent videos, in which case you get a silent clip and pay for it. Flow may also rate-limit generations on any plan after heavy use in a day. Subscription refunds are a separate matter: Google gives none for partial billing periods except where the law requires.

Retiring models: credit costs that end December 5, 2026

Google retires Veo 3.1 Fast, Veo 3.1 Quality and Omni Flash 1.1 in Flow on December 5, 2026; until then they stay available at standard credit rates. Until December 5, 2026, Veo 3.1 Fast costs 20 credits per generation, or 10 on Ultra, for 4, 6 or 8 seconds. Until December 5, 2026, Veo 3.1 Quality costs 100 credits for an 8-second clip on every plan. Until December 5, 2026, Omni Flash 1.1 costs 4 to 15 credits per clip depending on length and resolution, and editing with it costs a flat 40 credits.

Do not build a routine on them. Workflows tied to a retiring model break on December 5, 2026. Veo 3.1 Lite costs 10 credits a clip, while Veo 3.1 Fast costs 20 at the standard rate until it retires on December 5, 2026. In Google's own evaluation, Veo 3.1 Lite won 54.6% of text-to-video and 47.2% of image-to-video comparisons against Veo 3.1 Fast, which leaves Flow on December 5, 2026. Our Veo vs Omni comparison covers which current model suits which job.

The bottom line

Flow credits are simple once you separate the buckets: 50 a day for everyone, a monthly allowance from Google AI Plus, Pro or Ultra, and neither carries over. Budget in Omni seconds at 720p or in Veo 3.1 Lite clips, draft at 360p, upscale only the keepers, and watch the number of outputs per request. Light experimenters can live on the daily 50. Anyone shipping clips every week should start at Google AI Pro, the first plan that can also buy top-ups when a month runs short.