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Free tiers verified August 24 – September 14, 2026
Truly free forever means two tools: Pika Free (80 credits/month, 480p, watermarked, no commercial use) and Runway Free (125 one-time credits). Everything else on this page costs money or could not be verified.
We checked five AI video platforms on their official pages. Pika publishes the only recurring free allowance; Runway's free credits arrive once and never refill. Vidu's public plan prices sat behind a login, DomoAI sells no free plan at all, and Wizstar's pricing page listed nothing free — its lowest entry is a promotional $8.99 first month that renews at $18.05. Below: what free really buys, each tier in detail, a comparison table, and the arithmetic for when paying beats working around the limits.
The short answer: two verified free tiers, both with strings attached
If you want AI video that costs $0 on a standing plan, the verified shortlist is two tools long: Pika Free, which grants 80 video credits every month on Pika 2.5 at 480p, watermarked and excluded from commercial use, and Runway Free, which grants 125 credits once — not monthly — alongside 5GB of storage. Those are the only free tiers we could confirm on official pricing pages. Vidu’s public plan prices sat behind a login when we checked, DomoAI publishes no free plan at all (trial credits may appear in-app for new accounts), and Wizstar’s pricing page showed nothing free either — its lowest entry was a promotional $8.99 first month that renews at $18.05. All figures come from official pages checked between August 24 and September 14, 2026.
The framing matters because “free AI video generator” almost always means “free to sample”. Every free tier we verified restricts at least one of three things — watermark, resolution, or commercial rights — and one of them never refills. This guide lays out exactly what each $0 lane buys, in dated figures, and then does the arithmetic for the moment a paid plan becomes cheaper than fighting the limits.
See DomoAI’s watermark-free paid plans →
How this roundup was prepared
This is an evidence-led roundup built from official pricing and product pages, not a hands-on lab test, and every number carries its checking date. Pika’s figures come from the official pika.art pricing page checked on September 9, 2026. Runway’s and DomoAI’s come from their official pricing and product pages reviewed on August 24, 2026. We attempted to verify Vidu’s public plan prices on September 8, 2026 and could not do so without logging in, so this article quotes no Vidu dollar figures. Wizstar’s pricing page was captured on September 14, 2026, while a limited-time campaign was running, so its promotional figures are quoted with their list-price anchors.
Two disclosures. DomoAI and Vidu links on this page carry affiliate identifiers; Pika and Runway links do not. If commissions steered this verdict, it would read very differently — the two tools that win the free-tier question are the two we earn nothing from. We also do not score output quality or render speed, because no vendor publishes comparable numbers; where a detail is unpublished, we say so and tell you to check it in-app.
What free really means in AI video
Before comparing tiers, it helps to know the three levers vendors pull to keep a $0 plan from cannibalising paid ones. Read any free tier against all three, because a plan that looks generous on one lever is usually tight on another.
The watermark lever
A watermark makes free output fine for private tests and useless for publishing under your own brand. Pika states it plainly: free-tier videos are watermarked, and the watermark comes off at Basic. For Runway Free, treat exports as watermarked until you confirm otherwise inside the app — Runway’s page lists “no watermarks” as a feature from the paid Standard plan, which tells you where the line sits.
The commercial-use lever
This is the lever people miss. Pika’s free tier explicitly excludes commercial use, meaning a monetised YouTube channel, a client deliverable, or an ad built on free-tier output would breach the licence even if you cropped the watermark away. Commercial permission is a term of service, not a visual property of the file. Whatever tool you test, read the licence for the exact tier before anything you make earns money.
The credit lever: monthly versus one-time
Credits meter everything in this category, and the refill schedule is the difference between a standing tool and a demo. Pika’s 80 free credits renew monthly, so the free plan remains a small but real ongoing allowance. Runway’s 125 free credits are one-time: spend them and the free plan becomes a viewer, not a generator. Neither vendor publishes a flat per-clip credit cost on the pages we checked — costs vary by model, length, and resolution — so check the in-app cost display before you burn an allowance on one experiment.
The free tiers, one by one
Pika Free: the only verified recurring allowance
Pika generates new clips from text prompts and images, and its free plan is the most complete $0 offer we verified: 80 video credits per month on the Pika 2.5 model, capped at 480p, watermarked, and not licensed for commercial use, per the official pricing page checked September 9, 2026. That combination makes it a genuine ongoing sketchpad — every month you get another 80 credits to test ideas — and a poor publishing tool, since 480p watermarked non-commercial output has almost nowhere legitimate to go. The paid ladder starts at Basic, $8 per month billed yearly, which lifts all three restrictions at once: watermark off, all resolutions, commercial use permitted, with 700 monthly credits plus Pikaframes and editing tools. Yearly billing reflects a 20% discount; monthly rates exist but were not listed on the page we checked.
Runway Free: a one-time sandbox with a deadline built in
Runway is a general-purpose generation and editing suite, and its free plan is best understood as a fixed budget rather than a tier you live on: 125 one-time credits and 5GB of storage, per the official pricing page reviewed August 24, 2026. Once those credits are gone, they are gone — there is no monthly refill — and free exports should be assumed watermarked until you confirm otherwise in the app. What the budget buys is a look at the deepest toolset in this roundup: text-to-video, image-to-video, video-to-video, and an editing pipeline that paid users run through to 4K upscaling. The paid floor is Standard at $12 per month billed yearly ($15 monthly) with 625 monthly credits and no watermarks.
Vidu: pricing we could not verify, so we will not guess
Vidu, the AI video platform from ShengShu, pitches text-, image-, and reference-to-video generation with a distinctive emphasis: keeping the same character, object, and style consistent across a multi-shot sequence, plus ultra-fast generation, an off-peak mode, and smooth 2D anime. On the money question we owe you a straight answer: when we checked on September 8, 2026, Vidu’s public plan prices could not be verified without logging in, so this article quotes no Vidu dollar figures and makes no claim about whether a free tier exists. Two licensing details from its official FAQ are worth knowing before you commit either way: Subscription Credits are valid for 30 days, while Purchased Credits stay valid for 2 years. If Vidu’s consistency pitch fits your project, open the official pricing page and read the current tiers for yourself.
DomoAI: no free plan, and it does not pretend otherwise
DomoAI is the odd one out in this roundup twice over. It is a restyle-first tool — upload a real clip and it re-renders the frames as anime, 3D, or illustration while keeping your original motion — rather than a generator, and it sells no free plan at all. Trial credits may appear in-app for new accounts, so check what signup actually offers you, but the published floor is Basic at $6.99 per month billed yearly, per the official pricing page reviewed August 24, 2026. The trade for losing the $0 lane is that every DomoAI plan you can buy exports without a watermark, which makes it the cheapest verified watermark-free entry point on this page.
Wizstar: no free plan on the captured page
Wizstar (wizstar.com) is an AI video platform aimed at creators, e-commerce sellers, and marketers — product links and images into videos, AI avatars, lip sync, and video translation. Its official pricing page, captured September 14, 2026, listed no free plan. The cheapest entry, shown under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking, was the Starter plan at $8.99 for the first month as a new-user promotion, renewing at $18.05 per month thereafter, with 1,310 monthly credits and watermark-free exports. Campaign pricing can change, so treat the renewal price as the real price and reconfirm before subscribing.
Comparison table
Figures appear only where we verified them on the dates shown; “not verified” means exactly that, not a guess in either direction.
| Tool | Free tier | Free credits | Watermark on free | Commercial use on free | Cheapest verified paid exit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pika | Yes, standing | 80 per month (480p, Pika 2.5 only) | Yes | No | $8/mo billed yearly (Basic) |
| Runway | Yes, one-time | 125 once, plus 5GB storage | Assume yes until confirmed | Check terms | $12/mo billed yearly (Standard) |
| Vidu | Not verified (pricing behind login, Sep 8, 2026) | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified | Not verified — see official page |
| DomoAI | None (trial credits may appear in-app) | — | — | — | $6.99/mo billed yearly (Basic, watermark-free) |
| Wizstar | None on captured page | — | — | — | $8.99 first month promo, renews $18.05/mo |
Pick by job
- Learn AI video over several months for $0: Pika Free. The 80 credits refill monthly, which no other verified tier here does. Accept that everything you make is 480p, watermarked, and non-commercial.
- Audition the most professional toolset once: Runway Free. Spend the 125 one-time credits deliberately — one generation pass, one edit pass — because there is no second allowance.
- Test character and style consistency across shots: Vidu is pitched squarely at that job; since we could not verify its public pricing, read the official page before assuming anything is free.
- Restyle footage you already shot: no verified free lane exists. DomoAI is the specialist, from $6.99 per month billed yearly, and trial credits may appear in-app at signup. Our DomoAI vs Pika comparison maps that boundary in detail.
- Publish commercially from day one: skip free tiers entirely. Pika’s free plan forbids it outright, and unverified terms elsewhere are not a licence. The cheapest verified commercial-and-watermark-free entries are DomoAI Basic at $6.99 and Pika Basic at $8, each for a different job.
- Avatar, lip-sync, and product videos: Wizstar plays here, with no free plan on the page we captured; our business AI video tools guide covers the wider category.
When free stops making sense: the upgrade math
Free tiers fail in predictable ways, and each failure points at a specific paid plan. The moment to pay is when the workaround — re-rendering to dodge a watermark, rationing credits, shelving a monetised upload — costs you more time than the subscription costs money.
- You hit Pika’s ceiling. If 80 credits vanish mid-month, or 480p watermarked output stops being acceptable, Pika Basic at $8 per month billed yearly is the clean exit: 700 credits, every resolution, no watermark, commercial use permitted. That one step fixes all three free-tier restrictions simultaneously, which is rare in this category.
- You spent Runway’s 125 credits and want more. There is no free refill, so the question is simply whether what you saw was worth $12 per month billed yearly for Standard’s 625 monthly credits and watermark-free output. If the answer is no, you lost nothing.
- Your job was never generation. If you kept feeding your own footage into generators hoping for a restyle, stop paying the wrong category. DomoAI Basic at $6.99 per month billed yearly is the cheapest verified watermark-free plan on this page, and restyling is its entire premise; our DomoAI alternatives roundup shows the wider field.
- Consistency across shots is the blocker. Single-clip free tiers cannot tell you whether a character survives a five-shot sequence. That is Vidu’s pitch, and its 30-day subscription-credit and 2-year purchased-credit windows are the terms to weigh — against prices you should read directly, since we could not verify them.
- You need avatars or localisation at volume. Wizstar’s $8.99 promotional first month is a cheap way in, but budget on the $18.05 renewal, and remember the promo was campaign pricing at the time of checking.
Whichever path fits, run one real project through the free or cheapest tier before committing to annual billing — every yearly price on this page assumes a year of commitment, and the discount is only a saving if you still use the tool in month eight.
Check Vidu’s current plans and pricing →
Frequently asked questions
What is the best completely free AI video generator?
Among the tools we could verify, Pika Free is the strongest standing free plan: 80 video credits every month on Pika 2.5, limited to 480p, watermarked, and not licensed for commercial use, per the official pricing page checked September 9, 2026. Runway Free is the better one-time sandbox, with 125 one-time credits and 5GB of storage, but those credits never refill. If you need a recurring allowance, Pika; if you want one thorough audition of a professional suite, Runway.
Can I use free AI videos commercially?
On Pika’s free plan, no — the official pricing page excludes commercial use, and that restriction lifts at Basic, $8 per month billed yearly. For Runway Free, we did not verify commercial terms, so read the terms of service for the free plan before publishing anything monetised, and assume exports are watermarked until confirmed. No other tool in this roundup had a verifiable free tier at all. As a rule, treat commercial permission as something the exact tier’s terms must grant in writing, not something a clean-looking export implies.
Does DomoAI have a free plan?
No. Based on the official pricing page reviewed August 24, 2026, DomoAI publishes no free tier; its floor is Basic at $6.99 per month billed yearly, and monthly billing costs more. Trial credits may appear in-app for new accounts, so check what signup offers before assuming a test costs money. The upside of the missing $0 lane is that every DomoAI plan you can buy exports without a watermark, making it the cheapest verified watermark-free entry in this roundup.
Is Vidu free?
We could not tell you honestly either way: when we checked on September 8, 2026, Vidu’s public plan prices were not verifiable without logging in, so we quote no Vidu pricing and make no claim about a free tier. What its official pages do establish is the product pitch — text-, image-, and reference-to-video with character and style consistency across multi-shot sequences — and two licensing terms: Subscription Credits are valid 30 days, Purchased Credits 2 years. Check the official Vidu pricing page for current tiers before deciding.
How far do 80 credits go on Pika’s free plan?
We cannot give you a clip count, because the official pricing page we checked does not publish a per-generation credit cost, and costs in this category typically vary by model, length, and resolution. The honest method is to check the credit cost the app displays before a job runs and divide 80 by that figure for your settings. Since the allowance refills monthly, one over-ambitious month costs you waiting time rather than money.
Is Runway’s free plan a monthly allowance like Pika’s?
No, and this is the most common misreading of the two free tiers. Runway Free grants 125 credits once, alongside 5GB of storage, per the official pricing page reviewed August 24, 2026; when they are spent there is no refill, and the paid floor is Standard at $12 per month billed yearly with 625 monthly credits and no watermarks. Pika’s 80 free credits, by contrast, renew every month. Budget Runway’s allowance like a gift card, not a salary.
Fact-checking note: Pika figures come from the official pika.art pricing page checked September 9, 2026 (yearly prices reflect a 20% discount; monthly rates exist but were not listed). Runway and DomoAI figures come from their official pricing and product pages reviewed August 24, 2026. Vidu’s public plan prices could not be verified without login when checked September 8, 2026, so none are quoted. Wizstar figures come from the official wizstar.com pricing page captured September 14, 2026, under a limited-time campaign at the time of checking. Reconfirm prices, plan limits, watermark policies, and licensing terms on the official pages before purchase.