# Runway AI Buyer's Checklist: 6 Checks Before You Pay (2026)

> Before paying for Runway: which models need Standard, what 625 credits buy, rollover and refund rules, training terms, Team seats and support in Nov 2026.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/runway-ai-buyers-checklist — The Professional's Toolkit · updated November 2026_

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Before you pay for Runway, check six things: the models your videos need, what your credits buy each month, what happens to credits and money you don't use, the rights and training terms, whether you need one seat or a team, and how support works. The figure that settles most purchases is small. By our arithmetic, the 625 monthly credits on Standard buy about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 video, roughly ten five-second clips. That is a test budget. Pro's allowance covers about 37 such clips and Max's about 158, so the right plan follows from how many finished seconds you need, not from the feature list.


**625 credits** — Standard's monthly allowance: about 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 video by our arithmetic, lost at each reset



- **~52 s** — Gen-4.5 video a month on Standard's 625 credits, by our arithmetic
- **30 days** — Refund window, and only if the plan or credits are unused or close to unused
- **10 months** — Minimum stay before yearly billing beats monthly billing, by our arithmetic


## Check the models before the plan

Runway sells one plan and one credit balance that reach both its own models and other labs' models. Gen-4.5, Aleph 2.0 and Act-Two sit next to Kling 4.0, Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1 and Gemini Omni Flash in the same workspace, and every one of these video models needs Standard or higher. In November 2026, Gen-4.5 turns text or an image into a clip of 2 to 10 seconds at 720p, in the web app rather than the mobile apps [1], and it has no sound of its own there. Run your planned shots through these questions:

- **Sound in the same pass?** Gen-4.5 clips need Runway's separate audio tools for voice, effects and music. Veo 3.1 with audio costs 320 credits per 8 seconds and Kling 4.0 at 1080p 118 credits per 5 seconds, against 60 credits for five seconds of Gen-4.5.
- **Shots longer than 10 seconds?** Inside Runway, Kling 4.0 runs 3 to 30 seconds and Seedance 2.5 runs 4 to 30 seconds. Anything longer is assembled from clips in an editor.
- **Editing footage you already have?** Aleph 2.0 in Edit Studio takes 2 to 30 seconds of video at 480p to 1080p and charges 28 credits a second, with a 56-credit minimum. It is not a lip-sync model.
- **A real performance driving a character?** Act-Two handles one character per generation, up to 30 seconds, at 5 credits a second.
- **4K or a phone workflow?** Kling 4.0 has no 4K on Runway yet, and Gen-4.5, Act-Two and Edit Studio stay on desktop web. There is an iPhone app and an Android app, but no iPad app.

Older tutorials can mislead you here. Gen-3 and Gen-2 are retired; Gen-4.5 replaced them for generation and Aleph 2.0 for editing. The third-party lineup moves too: Sora 2 left Runway on April 3, 2026. Our [model-by-model comparison](/articles/runway-ai-models-compared) lists lengths, resolutions and credit rates side by side, so you can price the model you will actually run every week rather than the flagship on the homepage.

## Will 625, 2,250 or 9,500 credits cover your month?

Every image, clip, voice line and Agent message spends credits at a rate set by model, length and resolution, and Runway shows the total before you generate. Runway also warns that the per-model rates on its pricing page are not always the full cost of one generation, so trust the estimate in the app over the rate card when you budget. Here is the plan grid as Runway's pricing page lists it in November 2026 [2]:

| Plan | Price | Credits | Unused plan credits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 125, one time | never renew, never expire |
| Standard | $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly | 625 a month | lost at each reset |
| Pro | $35 a month, or $28 a month billed yearly | 2,250 a month | lost at each reset |
| Max | $95 a month, or $76 a month billed yearly | 9,500 a month | up to one month rolls over |
| Team | $69 per seat a month, or $55 per seat a month billed yearly | 6,900 per seat a month, one pool | up to one month rolls over |

Turn the allowance into seconds of the model you plan to use most. By our arithmetic, at 12 credits a second for Gen-4.5, Standard covers about 52 seconds a month, Pro about 187 and Max about 791. For five-second Aleph 2.0 edits the counts are 4, 16 and 67. Those are generations, not keepers. Runway's own guidance says to judge cost per usable output, and a clip that fails your eye still spends its credits, so divide every count by your real hit rate. Plan for retakes.

Third-party models drain the balance faster. Standard buys one eight-second Veo 3.1 clip with audio a month, Pro seven and Max 29. Kling 4.0 at 1080p gives 5, 19 and 80 five-second clips at list rates, or 7, 25 and 106 under a 25% promotion that ends November 30, 2026. Per credit, the plans get cheaper as they grow: 2.4¢ on Standard billed monthly, 1.56¢ on Pro and 1.0¢ on Max. Max gives 4.2 times Pro's credits for 2.7 times the monthly price.

Running short mid-month has two exits. Paid plans can buy top-ups of 1,000 credits for $10, and purchased credits never expire; at that rate a five-second Gen-4.5 clip costs $0.60 and a five-second Aleph 2.0 edit $1.40. Top-ups are spent last, after the month's plan credits and any rollover, and you cannot change that order. Free accounts cannot buy them. Upgrading instead is prorated and adds the credit difference at once, so moving from Standard to Pro adds 1,625 credits on the spot.


> 💡 **Price the clip you keep:** Runway shows each generation's credit cost before you run it. Multiply it by the takes you usually need for one usable clip, since rejected clips still spend credits.


## What happens to credits and money you don't use

On Standard and Pro, unused plan credits disappear at each reset, which lands within 24 hours of the billing day. Max and Team carry up to one month of unused credits forward. Annual billing does not front-load anything, because yearly subscribers also receive their credits month by month, and every plan renews automatically at the then-current price. By our arithmetic, yearly billing equals 9.6 monthly payments, so it pays off only if you would stay 10 months or more. Before committing, run these four checks:

- **Credits back:** only when a generation ends in a generation error. A finished clip you dislike keeps its cost, and so does a stuck generation you cancel or one an AI assistant starts through Runway MCP.
- **Refunds:** discretionary, for a purchase or renewal from the last 30 days that is unused or close to unused [3]. A granted refund ends the plan at once and the unused credits go with it. Disappointing results, used credits and App Store or Google Play purchases generally get no refund from Runway.
- **Canceling:** the flow finishes only after Confirm cancellation in Stripe, and deleting your account does not cancel the subscription. Access runs to the end of the paid period; then the account drops to Free, with watermarked video.
- **Unlimited:** the legacy Unlimited plan closed to new subscribers in June 2026 and ends November 30, 2026. Every current plan has a fixed allowance.


> ⚠ **Finish the cancellation in Stripe:** Canceling ends only after Confirm cancellation in Stripe, and deleting your Runway account does not cancel the subscription.


## Rights, watermarks and who trains on your footage

You keep ownership of what you upload and generate, and Runway places no restriction on commercial use on any plan, Free included, with no credit to Runway required. On Free, though, every video carries a Runway watermark; Standard and above remove it. Outputs may not be unique, so a similar clip can be generated for someone else. You also need the rights to any music, footage or likeness you bring in, and a custom voice clone, available from Pro, requires the speaker to read a consent script. Outputs of Runway's own models carry C2PA content credentials.

The data clause deserves a slow read. The Terms of Use, updated in October 2026, let Runway use your inputs and outputs to train and improve its models under a perpetual license [4]. No training on your data is an Enterprise term. Runway says its third-party model providers are contractually barred from training on customer content. On security, Runway holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001:2022. Moderation scans inputs and outputs, cannot be switched off, and repeated blocked attempts can suspend an account. Support cannot allowlist a prompt.

## One seat, a team, or the API

Standard, Pro and Max are single-user plans; inviting anyone needs Team or Enterprise. Team runs from 2 to 9 seats in one workspace at $69 per seat a month or $55 per seat a month billed yearly. Editors and Admins take a seat while Viewers do not, and inviting an Editor first tries to charge the card on file for the new seat. By our arithmetic the two-seat minimum comes to $138 a month, or $110 a month billed yearly ($1,320 a year).

What the seats buy is sharing. Each Team seat adds 6,900 credits to one pool with a month of rollover, plus frame-accurate comments, up to 100 shared projects and Agent Connectors for Figma, Dropbox and Notion, which no other plan gets today. Check the edges too. More than nine seats, more than one workspace under one contract, SSO, audit logs or control over which third-party models people may use all mean Enterprise, which is priced on request. Its SSO is OIDC, with no SAML and no SCIM. On self-serve plans, each extra workspace needs its own plan and credits.

Developers face one more split. Web-app credits and Runway Dev (API) credits are separate pools on self-serve plans, while Enterprise contracts can pool them. The API needs no subscription but is prepaid per project before the first call, and its credits never show up in the web app. If an app or pipeline is part of the plan, our [Runway API guide](/articles/runway-api) covers the per-second rates, usage tiers and the attribution rule for apps built on it.

## Support, and a low-risk way to start

Runway has no phone line and no live chat with people. An AI assistant takes first contact and escalates; escalated billing tickets get replies in about 3 business days on Pro and up and 5 on Free and Standard. Enterprise adds same-business-day priority support. If a stuck charge or a refund question would hurt your schedule, that gap matters more than any model feature. Trustpilot complaints cluster around refunds, charges, slow support and credits spent on unusable clips.

Try before paying. The Free plan costs $0, needs no card and gives 125 credits once. Runway does not advertise a free trial of its paid plans. Free cannot reach Gen-4.5, Aleph 2.0, Act-Two or the third-party video models, so it tests images, voiceovers and the interface; by our arithmetic 125 credits equal 15 Gen-4 images at 1080p. The real test of video is one month of Standard at $15 a month on monthly billing. Once you generate, that month is spent and generally no longer refundable.


> 💡 **Pilot on monthly billing first:** Yearly billing equals 9.6 monthly payments by our arithmetic, so it pays off only if you stay 10 months or more. Test one month on monthly billing first.



## FAQ

**Does Runway offer a student or educator discount?**

Yes. College students and faculty verified through SheerID get 25% off paid subscription plans, though not off credit purchases; high school students are not eligible.

**Which payment methods does Runway accept?**

Runway bills through Stripe, which takes cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Alipay, Cash App Pay and WeChat Pay depending on your location.

**What if I subscribed through the iPhone or Android app?**

Plans bought in the App Store or Google Play are billed and refunded by Apple or Google, not by Runway, so refund requests go to the store.

**Can I switch from annual to monthly billing later?**

Yes, but Runway's help pages disagree on how the remaining annual balance comes back, as a refund to your card or as invoice credit, so ask Runway support before switching.


## The bottom line

Runway is worth paying for when you want its own editing and performance tools and other labs' models under one credit balance, and you have counted the seconds. Price your month in usable clips of the model you will actually run, start on monthly billing, and move to yearly only once you expect to stay ten months. Read the training clause before uploading client footage, finish any cancellation in Stripe, and pick Team only when two or more people must share credits. Skip it if you need single Gen-4.5 shots longer than ten seconds or a human on the phone.



## Sources

[1] Runway Help Center: Creating with Gen 4 5 — https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/46974685288467-Creating-with-Gen-4-5 (2026-11)
[2] Runway pricing (US): plans, credits and model rates — https://runway.com/pricing (2026-11)
[3] Runway Help Center: Requesting a refund for your plan or payment — https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/24343363554067-Requesting-a-refund-for-your-plan-or-payment (2026-11)
[4] Runway Terms of Use — https://runway.com/terms-of-use (2026-11)
[5] Runway Help Center: how credits work — https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/15124877443219-How-do-credits-work
[6] Runway changelog — https://runway.com/changelog