Is Runway AI Free? The 125-Credit Plan and What It Leaves Out

Yes, Runway is free to start, but the free part is small and it does not come back. The Free plan costs $0 and deposits 125 credits once: they never expire, and they never renew after you spend them.^[1] Every video generated on it carries a Runway watermark. Runway's own flagship video model, Gen-4.5, its Aleph 2.0 editor, Act-Two and the other labs' video models it hosts (Kling, Seedance, Veo, Gemini Omni) all need Standard or higher. Free is a sampler. It teaches you the workspace, covers a short run of images and lets you hear the voice tools. It does not cover clean, ongoing video work. For that, the entry ticket is Standard at $15 a month.

What 125 one-time credits really cover

Credits are the single currency of Runway's web and mobile apps. Every image, video, voice clip and Agent message spends them at a rate set by the model, the length and the resolution, and the app shows the total cost before you press generate. The clearest use on Free is still images: Gen-4 Image costs 8 credits per picture at 1080p, so by our arithmetic 125 credits come to 15 images and then stop. Gen-4 image generation and References opened to Free accounts in May 2025, which is why images remain the cheapest way to learn how Runway reads a prompt.

Video is murkier. Runway does not publish the exact list of models on the Free plan and says the selection changes over time. Its video-generator page describes what Free users can do: create images and voiceovers, talk with preset Characters, and work on existing footage through upscaling and scene building. Agent, the chat assistant that plans and builds multi-shot pieces, is open on every plan, but each message spends credits on top of whatever it generates. Runway does not publish the per-message cost of Agent's default model; switching Agent to Opus 5.5 costs 24 credits a message, and GPT-6 Astra 40.

Two rules turn this small balance into a hard ceiling. You cannot buy more credits on Free, because top-ups are sold only on paid plans.^[2] And credits come back only when a generation ends in an error; a finished result you dislike keeps its cost. On a balance that never refills, every reroll is permanent. Plan each prompt. Free also caps you at 5GB of storage and three projects, so it is no place to keep a working library.

The watermark and the locked models

Two lines in that grid decide most cases. The watermark sits on every Free video, and images get a smaller one. Runway's usage-rights article says you own what you create and may use it commercially on every plan, Free included, with no credit to Runway required.^[3] That right is real but narrow. A watermarked clip rarely suits a client deliverable or a paid ad. Outputs of Runway's own models also carry C2PA content credentials on every plan. One data point belongs here as well: Runway's consumer Terms let it train its models on your inputs and outputs, and a no-training commitment is an Enterprise term.

The model line matters more than it looks. Gen-4.5 is the model most people mean when they search for the Runway video generator, and the Gen-3 and Gen-2 models that older tutorials show were retired. So a Free account cannot reach the video model the marketing leads with. That is the catch. Standard opens all of Runway's image and video models, removes the watermark and adds 4K upscaling. For what each model does and costs, see our Runway models compared guide.

Is there a Runway free trial?

Not in the usual sense. Runway does not advertise a free trial of its paid plans, and the Free plan is the way to try the product. Signing up needs no credit card. Runway's Terms mention trial and promotional memberships in general, one per user, renewing at the full fee once the promotion ends, but no standing trial offer appears on the pricing page. Its education FAQ says plainly that education users get no free trial.

The realistic test of Gen-4.5 is one month of Standard billed monthly. Treat that month as spent. Refunds are discretionary: Runway may refund a purchase or renewal from the last 30 days only when the plan or credits are unused or close to unused. A month in which you generated clips is generally not refundable, and a refund ends the plan at once. Canceling has its own trap too. The flow finishes only after you press Confirm cancellation in Stripe, deleting your account does not cancel the subscription, and paid plans renew automatically until that last click.

Moving to Standard: what $15 a month buys

Standard costs $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly ($144 a year), with 625 credits a month.^[4] Gen-4.5 spends 12 credits a second, so by our arithmetic the allowance covers about 52 seconds of video, roughly ten five-second clips. Each Gen-4.5 clip runs 2 to 10 seconds at 720p, from text or an image, in the desktop web app, with no sound of its own there; voice, effects and music come from Runway's audio tools or from a model with native audio. Count on fewer usable clips. A clip that fails your eye still costs its credits, so the real cost per usable clip is higher.

Yearly billing saves 20%, but it costs 9.6 monthly payments up front and pays off only if you would stay 10 months or more. Start monthly. Standard credits also reset at each billing date and do not roll over, a rule our Runway pricing guide covers alongside the higher plans that carry a month forward. If you run short in a busy month, Standard lets you buy top-ups: 1,000 credits for $10, which never expire. At that rate a five-second Gen-4.5 clip comes to $0.60 and a ten-second one to $1.20. Purchased credits are spent last, after the month's plan credits.

Free-sounding things that cost money

There is no unlimited plan to buy. The legacy Unlimited plan closed to new subscribers in June 2026 and ends November 30, 2026; its monthly subscribers move to Max. Any page promising unlimited Runway generations describes something Runway no longer sells. The plugins for Premiere Pro, After Effects and DaVinci Resolve Studio are free downloads, and on Free you can sign in, but generating needs Standard or higher and spends plan credits. Runway Ads and App Studio likewise sit on paid plans only.

Downgrading lands you back on the Free rules. When a paid plan ends, your assets stay and any purchased credits stay, but new generations carry the watermark again, and an account holding more than three projects cannot open a new one. Export first. Finally, the 125 credits are not guaranteed. Runway withholds them when an account or network is linked to fraud, and that user must subscribe to generate anything.

How other free tiers differ

Rival free tiers trade different things away, and their credits are separate currencies, so counts never compare. Kling AI gives a free Basic account monthly credits when you log in, without publishing the amount; output is 720p, watermarked and barred from commercial use. Google Flow is free with 50 Flow credits a day, free clips run up to 10 seconds, and every output carries Google's SynthID mark. Pika's free tier works on credit packs and carries no commercial license. Higgsfield's free tier opens a small set of models with no credits included.

The renewing allowances at Kling and Flow suit someone who wants to keep experimenting at no cost. Runway's one-time deposit does not. Runway's case is different: one paid plan reaches its own Gen-4.5, Aleph 2.0 and Act-Two plus Kling, Seedance and Veo models in the same workspace. That breadth is locked behind Standard, though. Our Runway alternatives guide weighs each rival's limits for someone leaving Runway's Free plan.

The bottom line

Runway is free in the way a test drive around the block is free. The 125 one-time credits, the watermark and the locked video models make the Free plan a place to learn prompts, try images and voices, and decide whether the workspace suits you. Real video work starts at Standard: about ten five-second Gen-4.5 clips a month by our arithmetic, no watermark, and access to the other labs' models. Pay monthly first, treat that month as spent, and move to yearly billing only once you know you will stay ten months or more.