Runway Text to Video Pricing

Gen-4.5 generates 2 to 10 second clips at 720p, 24 or 25 fps. Text-to-video is 16:9 at 1280×720 only — the other aspect ratios are image-to-video. 4K is available through upscaling rather than generation, at 2 credits a second on paid plans.

The first thing people get wrong: the free plan is not a free text-to-video tier. It grants 125 credits that never renew, and its only video model is Gen-4 Turbo, which needs an input image. Everything generated on it carries a Runway watermark.

The second: monthly credits are use-them-or-lose-them on Standard and Pro. They reset within 24 hours of the billing date. If your work is lumpy — a busy fortnight then nothing — the effective rate is worse than the table suggests, and the calculation to run is what you spend on a slow month, not a busy one.

On character consistency, Runway is honest in its docs and worth reading carefully. Its Gen-4 Image References model handles up to three references with @name tagging and is genuinely good at holding a character across images. The Gen-4.5 video model takes text or one image; Runway's own documentation says support for additional inputs is coming. So multi-shot consistency on Runway today is a manual two-stage workflow: build each keyframe with image references, then image-to-video each keyframe separately.

Credits are $0.01 flat and video bills per second at each model's own rate, with no subscription floor. A five-second clip is $0.36 on Hailuo 2.3, $0.49 on PixVerse C1, $0.95 on Kling V3.0 and $3.00 on Veo 3.1 — the same Veo 3.1 that costs $2.40 to $4.80 for five seconds on Runway Standard credits.

The structural difference is where character consistency lives. Seven of the ten published models here take character references at the video stage — three to nine per shot — so a multi-shot sequence is one pipeline rather than a hand-assembled two-stage workflow. That is the trade Reelfo is making; Runway trades the other way and gets a far better editing suite for it.

And credits do not reset. A month where you generate nothing costs nothing, and the balance is still there when you come back.

Signing up puts 100 credits in your account, once, with no card. That is enough for the script, character and shot-list stages plus about one keyframe — it is a look at the pipeline, not a free finished reel.