Two pricing models, same account
Vidsly runs two ways to pay for AI video, and every plan uses at least one of them. Credit-based generation deducts from a monthly wallet every time you render a scene — the model every plan has, Free through Studio. Unlimited generation, available on Creator and up, charges zero credits per clip and instead caps you with a daily allowance that paces rather than rejects. Neither model is a trick; they're built for different volumes of output, and the plan that "saves you money" depends entirely on how much you actually publish — not on which one sounds more generous.
What credits actually cost you, tier by tier
Every paid plan's credits roll over for up to 90 days and spend on narration, scene images, or motion clips in any mix. Here's what the wallet buys at each tier, straight from the pricing page:
- Basic — $4/month ($40/year): 5,000 credits ≈ 3 full AI video scenes on the premium engines, or 12 scene images, or 10 presenter videos. No unlimited lane.
- Starter — $9/month ($90/year): 20,000 credits ≈ 13 full video scenes, or 50 scene images, or 40 presenter videos. Still no unlimited lane — this tier is entirely pay-per-clip.
- Creator — $19/month ($190/year): 40,000 credits ≈ 19 full video scenes on the premium 1080p engines plus the unlimited lane at zero credits per clip, paced at 30 clips a day.
- Pro — $49/month ($490/year): 100,000 credits ≈ 48 full video scenes plus Unlimited Premiere (720p) at 40 clips a day (HD counts double, so 20 HD clips/day).
- Studio — $99/month ($990/year): 200,000 credits ≈ 97 full video scenes plus Unlimited Premiere at 60 clips a day (30 HD/day).
Notice the shape: on Basic and Starter, every scene you render permanently spends down the wallet. There's no separate credit-pack marketplace to top up with — credit packs don't exist on Vidsly; if you outrun the monthly bundle, your only lever is the next tier up, not a discounted refill.
What the unlimited lane costs instead: an allowance, not a meter
Creator and up work completely differently once you're on Unlimited Director's Cut or Unlimited Premiere: rendering a clip there never touches the credit wallet at all. Instead you get a printed daily number — Creator 30 clips/day, Pro 40, Studio 60 — that resets at midnight UTC and paces rather than rejects: a video bigger than today's remaining budget starts now and finishes after the next reset, it never just fails. HD clips on Unlimited Premiere count double against the same number. Run the math against the credit tiers above and the unlimited lane's effective cost per clip, at any real volume, rounds to zero.
The actual breakeven
Cost-per-scene on the credit tiers works out to roughly $1.33/scene on Basic and $0.69/scene on Starter (monthly price ÷ scenes included). That's genuinely fine — even cheap — if you're publishing occasionally: a video every week or two, a handful of clips a month. The math only turns against you as volume climbs, because credits are the only lever on those tiers; there's no ceiling to hit before the wallet just runs empty and waits for next month.
The unlimited lane flips that shape entirely. Once you're posting daily, Creator's flat $19/month with a 30-clip-a-day allowance — call it up to 900 clips over a month if you post every single day — makes per-clip cost on the credit tiers look absurd by comparison. A 6-scene daily Short, thirty days a month, is 180 scene-clips; at Starter's effective $0.69/scene that's roughly $124 in credits alone, well past what Creator charges flat with allowance to spare. The breakeven sits around the point where you're publishing more than a handful of scene-clips a week — past that, the unlimited lane wins every time, and it keeps winning harder the more you publish.
Annual billing changes the math a little further
Every tier also has a yearly price equal to ten months instead of twelve — Basic at $40/year instead of $48, Starter at $90 instead of $108, Creator at $190 instead of $228, Pro at $490 instead of $588, Studio at $990 instead of $1,188. If you already know your cadence is stable — you've been publishing on the same tier for a couple of months without hitting a wall — annual billing is a straightforward two-months-free discount on whichever plan the volume math above already pointed you to. It doesn't change which tier is right for you; it just makes the right tier a little cheaper.
Picking your plan by posting cadence, not by feature list
- Occasional or one-off video (a single project, a monthly upload): Basic. You're not publishing enough to make an allowance-based plan worth it.
- A few videos a month, no daily pressure: Starter — more credits, priority generation, still fully pay-per-clip.
- Publishing several times a week or daily: Creator. The unlimited lane alone likely covers your entire cadence at zero marginal cost per clip; the 40,000 monthly credits become a bonus for one-off premium 1080p renders.
- Daily publishing where output quality matters for the brand: Pro. Unlimited Premiere's 720p HD and priority queue placement are worth the jump once thumbnails and sponsor conversations are on the line.
- Multiple channels or a full daily-plus cadence: Studio. The highest allowance (60/day, 30 HD/day) plus the deepest credit pool for anything that needs a one-off premium render.
The honest answer
There's no universally cheaper model — the entire point of running both is that credits are the right tool below a certain publishing volume and the unlimited lane is the right tool above it. Read the full mechanics of the unlimited lane in how it actually works, or see the resolution split in Unlimited Premiere's HD tier.
Not sure where your cadence lands? Compare every plan side by side or open the Studio and generate your first video free — no card required.