Guide
A credit is not a price until you find the conversion
The meter here is credits. A credit means nothing until the vendor states what it buys: a generated video, a second, a minute, an avatar pass or a voice pass. Two tools can both sell a thousand a month and differ tenfold in what arrives. This page covers how to find that conversion, why a credit meter counts attempts, and what thirty ads cost on a table published in full. By the end you will be able to line two plans up in the same column.
- The conversion rate to find before comparing tools
- 1 credit = ?
- What every credit meter actually counts
- Generated, not kept
Find the conversion before you find the price
Read the live pricing page for the current tiers. Plans in this category get revised on a scale of months. A stale number in an article is how people budget wrong.
The durable part is the mechanism. Vendors convert a credit into different quantities, and the quantity is the whole story: a generated video, a second of output, a rendered variation, an avatar pass or a voice pass.
Write the conversion down next to the tier price. Without it you are comparing two numbers that measure different quantities, which is the most common mistake made on a pricing page.
Ask for the conversion in writing when the page is vague about it. A support reply naming the exact quantity per credit is worth more than an hour spent comparing tier names across three tabs.
If the conversion is not published anywhere, that absence is useful information. It means the vendor expects you to discover consumption by using the product, so start on the smallest plan and measure before you commit.
Credits count attempts, and most attempts are supposed to lose
The meter runs when the machine works, not when you are happy. Three variations of the same ad cost three times one variation, even though you will run one of them.
For ad testing that is not a flaw, it is the point. Motion's analysis of 550,000+ Meta ads puts the share of creatives that carry spend at 5 to 8 percent. So most of what you make is meant to lose, and the meter is charging you for the losing.
That means your tier is set by total production, not by your publication schedule. Thirty ads live against a one in three keep rate is ninety generations, plus whatever you burn learning the tool in week one.
Sizing a tier to a publishing target is the single most expensive misreading of a credit meter, and it shows up as a top-up purchase in the third week of every month.
Twenty creatives, one that carries the spend
The pessimistic end of the published 5 to 8 percent range. A credit meter bills all twenty, which is the correct way to price a search.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Four questions predict the invoice better than the tier price does
Ask these of every tool you compare, so the columns line up. Two of the four usually dominate: regeneration behaviour and rollover, because both quietly multiply.
A generous credit allowance that expires monthly and charges full price for a one-word fix is a smaller allowance than it looks. Rollover matters more than the headline number when your schedule is uneven, which most schedules are.
Feature gating is the third trap. A capability locked to a tier rather than to a balance means you can hold credits you cannot spend on the thing you bought the tool for.
Price the failure case as well. If you buy annually and stop in month four, what did the experiment cost? In a category where formats fall out of favour inside a quarter, monthly is frequently the cheaper bet.
Write the four answers into the same sheet as the tier prices. A plan you cannot answer them about is a plan you cannot forecast, and that is a reason to stay monthly.
- What does one credit convert into, exactly, for the output type you need?
- Does a regeneration after a small edit cost full price, or is there a cheaper path?
- Do unused credits roll over, and for how long?
- Which capabilities are gated by tier rather than by credit balance?
Comparing a credit tool to a per-video tool
Three rows, one denominator. The third row is frequently the opposite of what the tier prices suggest.
Units per published ad
Include your keep rate and revisions
Units included per tier
At the tier you would actually buy
Plan price per published ad
The only number worth arguing about
A conversion published in full, and free iteration after it
Here is the same meter with the conversion printed on the pricing page rather than discovered in month two.
A batch is 100 credits and covers transcription, the director pass and the b-roll search. An export is 20 credits per output minute. A generated music track is 20 credits. Nothing else in the editor charges anything at all.
So thirty finished thirty-second ads cut from ten takes is 1,000 credits of batches plus 300 of exports. That is 1,300 in total. The trial is 7 days and 300 credits with no card, Basic is $39.99 for 2,500 credits, Premium is $79.99 for 5,000 and a top-up is $15 for 1,000.
The part that changes the arithmetic is what happens after the machine works. You direct on the transcript. Highlight a phrase and a clip lands over exactly those words. Delete a line and the cut rebuilds. Change the pace and it re-cuts. Iteration consumes nothing, so only finished output bills.
The condition attached to all of it is a person and a camera. Every project starts from a filmed take of three minutes or less, 9:16 is the only export, and there is no timeline for a four frame nudge.
That is the trade in one line. Fewer attempts available, and no charge for changing your mind about the ones you have.
Creatify and Cutroom, meter against meter
Two rows go to Creatify and they decide it for a catalogue business. The other six are what a published conversion buys you.
| Creatify | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| Works from a product page | Assets pulled automatically | Starts from a filmed take |
| Hundreds of SKUs at once | Built for catalogue volume | One take at a time |
| Conversion published up front | Read their current table | 100 a batch, 20 a minute |
| Cost of a small edit | Often a fresh generation | Re-cut free, export bills |
| A real person on screen | Generated presenter | Whoever filmed the take |
| Finished ad, not a draft | Somebody still cuts it | Cut, captioned, paced |
| Captions burned in for mute | Usually styled elsewhere | Six packs, one tap |
| Free iteration after generation | Attempts are the meter | Transcript edits cost nothing |
Questions people ask
- Why do you not publish their credit prices here?
- Because tiers and conversions in this category change on a scale of months. A number quoted here would be wrong within a quarter and you would budget against it. The mechanism is durable, so that is what this page explains.
- Are credits better than per-video pricing?
- They are more flexible and less legible. Credits let a short output cost less than a long one, which is fairer. They also make comparison harder, because the same word means different quantities at different vendors.
- How do I stop over-buying in month one?
- Start on the smallest plan that lets you produce for two weeks, record how many generations each published ad consumed, then move. Top-ups exist precisely so that a wrong guess in month one is cheap to correct.
- Is there anyone who should buy the catalogue generator instead?
- Anyone with four hundred SKUs and nobody to film. Every Cutroom project starts from a filmed take, so a large catalogue with no creative team gets nothing from it. Buy the generator and size the tier to production rather than to publishing.
Find what a credit converts into, then compare. Ours is on this page: 100 a batch, 20 an exported minute, and every change of mind free.