What a new account can make before the first payment
Four channels here state what a new account gets before paying anything, and no two count it in the same unit. One grants credits once, one grants none and sells packs, one counts videos a month, and one combines credits with named items such as reference images and a storyboard. As of 2026-10-13.
| Channel | What a new account receives | Unit it is counted in |
|---|---|---|
| HeyGen | Up to three videos a month, each up to a minute, no card needed | Videos a month |
| Pika | A free plan with no monthly credits; packs can be bought on it | None; packs only |
| Runway | 125 credits, once | Credits, one time |
| SceneMixer | 50 credits, 15 reference images, a first storyboard and one preview of up to five seconds | Credits plus named items |
Inclusion rule. Channels whose plans or price page state an allowance for an account that has not paid. A trial that requires a card or a paid plan is not counted as a free allowance. Order. Alphabetical by channel.
1Credits convert at the channel's own rate
An allowance in credits is only comparable once it is turned into seconds. At Runway's published 12 credits a second, 125 credits is about ten seconds of its generation model. At SceneMixer's default tier of 10 credits a second, 50 credits is five seconds. Neither figure is a lot of footage, and neither is meant to be.
Read as a sample size, both are enough to see what a model does with a prompt and not enough to judge a series. That is a fair description of what a free allowance is for.
2Named items are worth more than their credit value
The fourth row adds things that are not credits at all: fifteen reference images that belong to the account rather than one project, the storyboard for the first episode of the first drama, and a single preview of up to five seconds rendered from the user's own cast. The guide states that reading a script and generating video are charged normally.
Those items front-load the part of a series that comes before any video: the cast and the locations every later shot is built on. An allowance shaped like that tests the pipeline, where a credit grant tests the model.
3A video count measures something else
Three videos a month of up to a minute is the most generous allowance here in raw runtime, and it is counted in a unit nothing else on this ledger uses. It cannot be set against a per-second rate, and it renews, where the credit grants here do not.
For a buyer the useful question is narrower than which allowance is bigger: which one lets the specific thing being judged be tried before money changes hands. For a talking presenter that is a video; for a drama it is a cast and one shot of them.
4No allowance at all is also an answer
One channel's free plan carries no monthly credits and no commercial licence, and sells packs on top. That is a plain statement of terms rather than an omission, and it makes the first purchase the real start of the trial.
- What an account gets before payingA free plan with up to 3 videos a month, each up to 1 minute, with no credit card required
- What an account gets before payingA free plan with 0 credits a month, packs only, and no commercial licence
- What an account gets before payingA free plan with 125 credits granted once
- Published per-second price12 credits per second at $0.01 a credit, which is $0.12 per second
- What an account gets before paying50 credits on sign-up, 15 reference images per account, the first project's episode-1 storyboard, and one preview of up to 5 seconds
- Starting without a payment methodCredit packs bought as needed, with no monthly fee and no card required to start
- Wan 3.0 480P10 credits per second, about $0.06the default tier
5Sources
Each figure is read from the vendor page linked in the ledger, checked 2026-10-13. How a figure qualifies is on method; what a rate leaves out is on limits and unspent credits and parallel generations. Nearby: Paying yearly, Price of sound, Price of a reference.