AI credits explained: how generation pricing actually works
AI credits are a metering unit: the platform translates the real compute cost of each generation — an image, a song, a second of video — into a number, and you spend that number from a balance. Every serious AI creation tool uses some version of this, because generating media costs the provider real money per output, which makes flat unlimited plans impossible to sustain honestly. The systems differ in the details that actually cost you money: whether credits expire, how the exchange rate is disclosed, and what a "generation" secretly includes. This guide explains the mechanics, then publishes our own full price list, because a transparency post that hides its own numbers would be a strange thing to write.
What are AI credits, and why does every tool use them?
When you generate an image or a video clip, a model runs on expensive hardware for seconds to minutes, and the provider pays for that run whether you keep the result or not. Video is the extreme case: every extra second of footage multiplies the work, which is the same reason single AI video generations stay short.
Credits exist to map that variable cost onto something predictable. Instead of billing you per generation in cents — which would feel like a taxi meter — the platform sells you a pool, usually monthly on a subscription or as a one-off pack, and prices each action in credits. A cheap action (one image) costs a little; an expensive one (a 4K video clip) costs a lot. Done well, this is fair: heavy users pay more than light users, and nobody subsidizes anyone dramatically.
The corollary is worth stating plainly: no honest tool offers unlimited free AI generation. Anything marketed as unlimited is either rate-limited into being effectively metered, quality-capped, or losing money in a way that ends in a repricing. If a credit system exists, it is because the costs are real.
How credit systems differ across the industry
The word "credits" hides very different mechanics from tool to tool. Fair is fair — most vendors are metering honestly — but four design choices separate the systems you can budget around from the ones that quietly work against you.
Expiry. Some platforms expire credits monthly (use them or lose them), some pool them annually and expire the pool, and some let them accumulate. This is the single biggest difference in real-world value: a quiet month on an expiring plan burns allowance you already paid for. It is the most common complaint we see in reviews of editing and generation tools, and it is why our comparison posts always list the credit policy next to the price.
Disclosure. The best systems publish a full exchange rate — this action costs exactly this many credits — before you commit. The worst tell you a generation's cost after it runs, vary the cost without notice, or price in an abstraction ("points," "compute units") with no published table at all. If you cannot find the price list, assume the answer would not help the sale.
What one generation means. Some tools charge per attempt, including failed or unusable outputs; some charge per second of video rather than per clip; some quietly bill extra for upscaling, variations, or removing a watermark from the thing you already paid to generate. Read the definition, not just the number.
Rollover and top-ups. Whether unused credits carry forward, and what happens the day you run out mid-project, determines whether a plan fits a real creator's lumpy workload — nobody generates the same amount every month.
If you are shopping across tools, our free AI tools roundup applies these four questions to the free tiers of the current field.
The questions to ask before buying any credit plan
Compressed into a checklist you can run against any pricing page in two minutes:
- Do credits expire — and if so, monthly or annually?
- Is there a published table of what every action costs, visible before signup?
- Does a failed or rejected generation refund its credits?
- Are video costs per clip or per second, and at which resolution?
- What does the free tier actually let you finish, not just start?
If a pricing page cannot answer these, that is itself an answer.
PrismPoster's numbers, in full
Here is our own system, measured against the same checklist. PrismPoster is one credit wallet across four studios — Image, Video, Character and Music — so an image credit and a video credit are the same credit, and the published costs are:
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| One image | 20 |
| One full song (vocals or instrumental, 35 languages) | 25 |
| Video clip, 360p (5s base) | 30 |
| Video clip, 720p (5s base) | 80 |
| Video clip, 1080p (5s base) | 125 |
| Video clip, 4K (5s base) | 250 |
Video clips run 4 to 10 seconds in 16:9 or 9:16, and longer clips bill per extra second — resolution is the main lever on price, so it pays to draft at 360p and re-render the keeper, a workflow our resolution guide walks through. Free exports carry a small AI-generated label with the PrismPoster mark; any credit pack removes it. C2PA content credentials are embedded as provenance metadata on every export.
Against the checklist: purchased credits never expire — the pricing page says so and the wallet enforces it; the one exception is the free starter grant, which expires 72 hours after signup. The cost table above is published before signup, and the credits help article keeps the canonical list. Costs are shown on the generate button itself, so you always see the price of an action before you run it. There is no subscription: credits come in one-off packs from €3.99, and any pack opens every feature, the Premium engine included. Because purchased credits never expire, a light month is not a wasted month.
The honest limits, so this reads as disclosure rather than a brochure: heavy 4K video work consumes credits fast — that is genuine compute, not margin, and our AI video cost guide breaks down where the money goes across the industry. And image-to-video will refuse raw photos of identifiable real people; while generated stills, products, art, and landscapes animate without restriction.
What a beginner can actually make on the free grant
The free start is a one-time grant of 150 credits in most regions — no card, video generation included, and a 72-hour clock: whatever is unspent expires 72 hours after signup, with a countdown in the wallet. It is not a recurring allowance and we do not pretend otherwise: it is a real budget to test every studio and finish real work.
Spent entirely on one medium, 150 credits is roughly 7 images, or 3 full songs, or 1 short video clips at 720p (80 credits each). Nobody spends it that way, so here is a realistic mixed run a first-time user can complete:
- A short video with an original soundtrack. Generate a handful of images to find your visual, animate the best two or three into 720p clips, generate one song, and cut it together on the timeline. That is a finished, watermark-free video from a standing start — and it exercises image, video, music, and editing in one project.
- A character test. Build a consistent character in the Character Studio, generate it across several scenes and angles, and animate one still. This is the thing most worth testing before paying anywhere, because character consistency is where tools differ most.
- A batch of stills. At 20 credits per image, the grant covers enough generations to genuinely learn how prompting behaves — iterations included, not just keepers.
The point of publishing this math: a free tier should be evaluated by what it lets you finish. Ours finishes a small project, not a thumbnail of one.
Weighing cost and limits? See AI video without a subscription, Cheapest AI video generator, AI video without a watermark, the best image-to-video tools, and The best AI video generators.
More on how PrismPoster works and where it has been recognised: AI music licensing explained, what AI likeness consent means, our SaasHunt Project of the Day win, and what an AI content studio is.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do AI credits work?
A platform prices each generation — an image, a song, a video clip — in credits and deducts that amount from your balance when you run it. On a subscription the balance refills monthly; with one-off packs you top it up when you choose. The mechanics that matter are whether credits expire, whether costs are published upfront, and whether failed generations are refunded.
Do AI credits expire?
It depends entirely on the tool: some expire credits monthly, some pool them annually and expire the pool, and some never expire them. PrismPoster's purchased credits never expire and there is no subscription; the one-time free grant is the exception and expires 72 hours after signup. Always check the expiry policy before comparing two tools on price alone.
Why don't AI tools just offer unlimited generation?
Because every generation costs the provider real compute money, and video especially scales with every second and every step up in resolution. An unlimited plan would either lose money or be silently rate-limited into a metered plan with worse disclosure. Credits are the honest version of the same constraint.
How many credits does an AI video cost?
On PrismPoster, a base clip costs 30 credits at 360p, 80 at 720p, 125 at 1080p, and 250 at 4K, with extra seconds billed on top. Other tools price per second or per attempt at rates they may or may not publish — check whether the number you see includes the resolution you actually need.
Are free AI credits really free?
Usually yes, but read what they buy: some free tiers watermark exports, cap resolution, or expire the credits before a beginner can learn the tool. PrismPoster's free grant is 150 one-time credits with no card required, video included, a 72-hour expiry on whatever is unspent, and a small AI-generated label with the PrismPoster mark on exports until you buy any credit pack.
Try the math yourself
The fastest way to understand a credit system is to spend some. A free account comes with the 150-credit grant described above — enough to generate images, a song, and a few video clips today, and to check every claim in this post against the actual product. If you want to see the full exchange rate first, the pricing page and the how credits work article carry the complete tables. No card, no clock, and the credits will still be there whenever you come back.
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