Which rates can be read without signing in

This is the one criterion the ledger can verify directly. Two entries publish nothing readable in public and are left unrated rather than scored low; the rest divide between a plain per-second figure and a credit rate that only becomes a price once the credit price is found. As of 2026-09-12.

Inclusion rule. Tools rated on this rubric: a public English product page addressing at least four of the seven criteria. A tool the vendor documents too thinly to rate is left out rather than rated low. Order. Descending on this criterion, then alphabetical; unrated last.

1Two unrated cells, and why they stay blank

Two vendors put no usable rate on a public page: the figure appears after sign-in, or only as a monthly allowance with no conversion. Scoring that one would make it look like an expensive tool rather than an undisclosed one, which is a different fact.

Leaving the cell blank keeps the two apart. It also means their averages are taken over six criteria, and the table says so beside the number.

2A credit price is a rate only when the credit has a price

Several entries publish a credit cost per second without publishing what a credit costs, which is not a rate at all. Where both halves are public the conversion is arithmetic and the entry rates well; where only one half is, it does not.

The conversions this site makes, and the ones it refuses to make, are set out on the method page, and the resulting figures are on the ledger.

3Transparency is not cheapness

The entry at the top of this column is not the cheapest second in the register, and the cheapest second does not top this column. What is rated is whether a production can work out its cost before committing, which is a separate question from whether that cost is low.

Conflating them is the most common misreading of a column like this, and it is worth stating on the page rather than in a footnote.

4What a public rate has to include to count

A number, a unit, and what the unit buys. A per-second figure with no resolution attached is not a rate a production can use, because the same second costs differently at 480P and 1080P on nearly every channel here. Entries stating the figure without the tier sit below those stating both.

The same applies to what the rate covers. Where generation is priced and assembly is not mentioned, the published figure describes part of the job, and the rating reflects the part that is missing.

5What would move a rating here fastest

Publishing the credit price beside the credit rate. Several entries sit one step below the top for that single omission, and closing it costs a vendor one line on an existing page.

Where a vendor has published it somewhere this site has not read, naming the page is enough to have the row rechecked.

6Cells in this column with a page of their own

Values in this column held by at most two of the rated tools, each read against the rule above: SceneMixer, cost transparency, LTX Studio, unrated on cost, Sora, unrated on cost. The crowded middle of a column gets no entry, because a value seven tools share describes the field rather than any one product.

Ratings describe what each vendor publishes, read 2026-09-12, and are given under the rule on how scoring works. All seven criteria together are on the ratings table. Next: Script handling, Cast consistency.