Is Luma AI Free? Trial Credits, Rules and the Cheapest Plan

Luma AI has no free plan on its pricing page;^[1] Luma says free trial credits are included on all plans, without stating how many.^[2] So the honest answer is free to try, not free to keep. The home page carries a Try for free button, and Luma's video generator page promises trial credits for text-to-video in HDR and 1080p, yet no Luma page puts a number on them. Luma's terms cap trials at 14 days and limit trial output to internal evaluation. The cheapest way to keep going is Plus at $30 a month, or $25 a month billed yearly ($300 a year).

Trial credits, not a free plan

Luma AI (formerly Dream Machine) sells three self-serve plans, Plus, Pro and Ultra, with Team and Enterprise sold through Luma's sales team. None of them is a $0 card. What Luma offers instead is a trial allowance. Its AI fact page says trial credits come with all plans, its llms.txt file says pricing includes free trial credits, and the video generator page says the trial can turn text, a script or an existing image into video. Every one of those pages stops short of a figure. That gap matters, because a trial you cannot size is hard to plan a serious test around.

Luma's own roundup of free AI video generators lists free text-to-video access among its features, but it gives no credit count, watermark rule or resolution for that access. Product Shots, one of the mini apps, has a Try Product Shots Free button, again with no allowance attached. Read together, the pages describe a door, not a budget. Treat the trial as a sample. Use it to learn how the workspace, Luma Agents and the Ray3.2 video model behave, not to finish a project you intend to publish. Our Luma app guide covers where the workspace runs.

How far the credits stretch depends entirely on what you generate, because every generation in Luma is priced in credits. A 5-second Ray3.2 clip costs 20 credits at the 360p Draft tier, 100 at 720p and 400 at 1080p in standard dynamic range. HDR doubles the SDR price and HDR with EXR export triples it. Third-party models such as Veo 3.1, Google's video model, or Kling 4.0 from Kling AI are billed per second in the same credits. Spend the trial in Draft mode first. Render at 1080p only once a prompt works.

The rules that come with free output

Free use is governed by Luma's terms of service, and four lines in them matter to anyone testing. Trials last no more than 14 days unless Luma agrees otherwise in writing.^[3] Anything generated during a trial may be used only for internal evaluation and testing, with no warranty. Commercial use needs an active paid plan that allows it, and it covers only output made while that plan is running. A clip made during the trial therefore cannot go into a client ad, even after you subscribe. Regenerate it on the paid plan.

The license changes too. For output made outside a paid term, Luma holds a broader license that includes public display and distribution, and it may use that output to train its models; your inputs fall under the same expanded license. Outside Enterprise and the API, Luma's terms allow it to use your inputs and outputs to train its models even on paid plans (review). No opt-out is published. Luma's terms do give you ownership of your outputs, but commercial use covers only what you make while on a paid plan.

Two smaller rules close the loop. Luma's acceptable use policy bans opening several accounts to collect more free or discounted usage, so a second email address is not a second trial. On watermarks, Luma's image-to-video page says paid-plan downloads come as MP4 files without a watermark, and the terms let Luma embed watermarks, content credentials or provenance data in any output, which you may not remove. Plan for that before you publish anything.

The cheapest paid way in

Plus is the entry point, and it is the plan that adds commercial use, Luma and third-party image and video models, and edit access for guest collaborators.^[1] Prices are per account, not per seat. Pro adds what Luma calls 4x usage with the Luma Agents and Ultra 15x; Luma does not define the term on its pricing page. Separately, by our arithmetic, Pro's and Ultra's credit allowances are exactly four and fifteen times Plus's. The pricing page ties no extra feature to Pro or Ultra.

By our arithmetic, Plus's 10,000 monthly credits cover 25 five-second Ray3.2 clips at 1080p in SDR, 100 at 720p or 500 at the Draft tier, if every credit goes to that one job with no failed or rejected takes. Yearly billing saves $60 a year on Plus, $180 on Pro and $600 on Ultra, about 17% on each by our arithmetic; Luma advertises the toggle as saving up to 20%. On Plus, twelve monthly payments of $30 a month add up to $360 a year, against $300 a year billed yearly.

That gap is worth claiming only if you are sure. A short trial rarely tells you whether you will still need Luma in month ten. Pay monthly first. By our arithmetic, yearly billing costs less only if you keep the plan 10 months or more (10 x $30 = $300 on Plus; the same 10-month line holds for Pro and Ultra), so shorter use is cheaper month to month. Team and Enterprise have no public price at all; Luma quotes them through sales.

What to check before the first charge

Credits behave differently from a trial once you pay. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle, so a plan's allowance is use-it-or-lose-it (pricing). Failed generations get their credits back, but takes you reject still cost credits. Luma's Agents may also produce several variations or retry on their own, which spends credits quietly unless you ask for one version. Write that into your first prompts.

Refunds are narrow. Luma's billing policy says an unused plan may qualify for a full refund after support reviews the account, but refunds cover the most recent billing period only, and every decision is at Luma's discretion.^[4] Additional credits bought beyond the allowance, under the optional spending limit, are non-refundable once used, and Luma publishes no per-credit price for them. Set the limit to zero if you want a hard ceiling.

Subscriptions renew automatically, and you must cancel at least one day before the term ends to avoid the next charge. A yearly subscriber can switch to monthly, with used months recalculated at the monthly rate. If Luma grants it, a Plus subscriber who switches after three months would get back $210 by our arithmetic. Subscriptions and generated assets cannot move to another account later. Choose the sign-up email carefully. Educators should read our Luma for education guide first, since the Education Program states no discount.

Free routes outside Luma

If a free entry matters more than Luma's workspace, several rivals publish one, though only Kling AI and Google Flow renew theirs. Note the distinction first: Luma runs Kling 4.0 and Veo 3.1 as models inside its own workspace, billed in Luma credits, while Kling AI and Google Flow are separate products with their own free entry. Each vendor's credit is a different currency, so the counts below are not comparable with Luma's.

Runway Free gives 125 credits one time; they never renew, output carries a watermark and you cannot buy more credits on that plan. Runway's Free plan does not include Gen-4.5, Aleph 2.0 or the outside video models, which start on Standard; it covers images, voiceovers and work on existing video. Runway Standard costs $15 a month or $12 a month billed annually.

Kling AI keeps a free Basic account with monthly free credits that you claim on login and that stay valid for 31 days; Basic output is watermarked, 720p and for personal use only, and commercial use needs a paid Kling AI plan. Kling AI Standard costs $8.80 a month or $6.60 a month billed annually. Google Flow gives 50 Flow credits a day without any subscription, and Google AI Plus costs $4.99 a month.

Higgsfield Free has no monthly credits and runs one job at a time, so it suits exploring the interface more than producing work. Pika Free costs $0 and works on credit packs only, with no monthly credits and no commercial license; Pika's pricing page, updated October 2026, sells packs at 60 credits per $1. None of these is Luma's Ray3.2. If your test is specifically about Ray3.2 or Luma Agents in the Luma workspace, the trial and then a paid plan, Plus first, are the route; developers can also reach Ray3.2 through the pay-as-you-go API. Our text-to-video guide shows what that first prompt should look like.

The bottom line

Luma AI is free only in the sense of a trial: credits come with every plan, Luma never says how many, its terms cap trials at 14 days and trial output is for internal evaluation. Use those credits in Draft mode to judge Ray3.2 and the Agents, keep nothing you plan to publish, and if the work fits, start Plus at $30 a month billed monthly. Switch to $25 a month billed yearly only if you will keep the plan 10 months or more, which by our arithmetic is where yearly billing starts to cost less. If you need a free allowance that lasts, look at the free entries other video tools publish instead.