AI Video Ad Cost Benchmarks: All 12 Models Priced (September 2026)

Quick answer: as of September 4, 2026, a finished AI video ad costs from under $1 for a 5-second clip to about $8 for an 8-second Sora 2 Pro render, depending on the model, length, and resolution, and most working combinations land under $5. This post publishes the exact per-model numbers from live production pricing across all 12 major AI video models, in one table, measured the same way. First published July 2026; every figure re-measured against the production price list on September 4, 2026, with the diff under What changed since July.

Where these numbers come from

Every figure below is the live production price on UGC Vids AI as of September 4, 2026. It is the credit price a customer actually pays for each model, length and resolution, converted at Starter-plan rates: $49 for 5,000 credits, which is $0.0098 per credit, or about $0.98 per 100 credits. Every dollar figure in this post assumes that Starter rate unless it says otherwise. Growth ($99 for 12,000 credits) and Agency ($199 for 25,000 credits) make every number 16-19% cheaper, and annual billing takes about 30% off again, so the same render costs $0.0068 per credit on Starter annual and $0.0056 per credit on Agency annual. The credits column is plan-independent: multiply it by your own plan's rate. This is not estimated from vendor marketing pages; it is what the renders cost in production that day. Seedance 2.0 runs on BytePlus in production; every other model runs on Replicate.

The table below is a snapshot of one day. If you want the version that cannot go stale, every model has its own page with the specs and the full credit table read straight out of our production price list at build time: all 12 AI video models, specs and credit costs.

AI video ad cost by model, September 2026

Prices are per finished video, ready to upload, at Starter-plan rates. Talking-head models include native voice and lip-sync; scene models generate product/b-roll footage from an image and prompt. Three talking-head models (Pruna Avatar, OmniHuman 1.5, VEED Fabric 1.0) have no duration setting. The clip runs as long as the spoken script and is billed per spoken second: Pruna 18.4 credits/s, VEED Fabric 30.7, OmniHuman 32.7. Their rows are priced at a 15-second script and scale in a straight line with script length: a 30-second script costs exactly twice the 15-second row.

Four patterns worth noticing. First, the spread is wide: the most expensive combination costs nearly six times the cheapest, for videos of similar length. Second, newer does not mean pricier: Happy Horse 1.1, Alibaba's June 2026 release, undercuts Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.0 and Sora 2 Pro at 1080p. Third, resolution is the silent multiplier: Seedance 2.0 costs 2.2x more at 1080p than 720p, while Veo 3.1 charges nothing extra for 1080p. Fourth, and new since July: both Sora rows are true today, but OpenAI retires Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro on September 24, 2026, so do not build an ad workflow on either. Veo 3.1 is the closest like-for-like that will still be there.

Cost per second, talking-head models only

Talking-head ads (an avatar speaking your script with lip-sync) are the workhorse format of UGC advertising, so here is the same data normalized to price per finished second, at Starter-plan rates. For the three per-spoken-second models this is the exact billing rate, not an average; for the rest it is the 8-10 second tier divided by its length.

For comparison, a hired human UGC creator at the $150 median to $212 average per 15-to-60-second vertical video that inBeat's 2026 rate guide reports (citing a 2022 Brands Meet Creators survey) works out to about $10-14 per finished second on a 15-second ad, ten to eighty times the AI rate, before shipping the product to them and waiting for delivery.

What $50 of testing budget buys, by model

At Starter-plan rates, $50 is about 5,100 credits. Per model, that is:

• ~36 Grok Video scene clips (10s each, 140 credits), the volume play for b-roll testing
• ~28 Happy Horse 1.1 talking-head ads (5s, 1080p, 180 credits), flagship quality at test-budget volume; ~13 at the 10-second length (370 credits)
• ~20 Veo 3.1 ads (8s, 1080p, 245 credits), the cinematic option
• ~18 Pruna Avatar talking-head ads (15-second spoken script, 276 credits), the cheapest lip-synced option
• ~6 Sora 2 Pro ads (8s, 1080p, 820 credits), the premium option, for hero creative only, and only until OpenAI retires it on September 24, 2026
• 0 videos from a hired human creator at the $150 median rate above, for the same $50

The practical takeaway for media buyers: at these prices the constraint on creative testing is no longer budget, it is how fast you can review outputs and read your ad metrics. Thirty hook variants, a reasonable working volume for a testing program, cost $40-240 in AI renders depending on model, versus roughly $4,500-6,400 in creator fees at those rates.

What changed since July

We re-measured every row against the production price list on September 4, 2026. This is the full diff against the July 18, 2026 snapshot, including the part that is on us:

• No model's credit price moved. Every credit figure in the tables above is the same one that was live on July 18, and the three plan prices ($49 for 5,000 credits, $99 for 12,000, $199 for 25,000) are unchanged, so the dollar figures are unchanged too.
• No model was added or removed. The catalog is the same 12 models.
• One correction, ours: Pruna Avatar. The July table quoted Pruna off a static 20-second anchor row (180 credits, $1.76). Pruna is billed per spoken second at 18.4 credits, so a 20-second script actually costs 368 credits, about $3.61, and the 15-second row above is 276 credits, $2.70. The July per-second figure ($0.18/s) was right; the per-ad total was not. OmniHuman 1.5 and VEED Fabric 1.0 are billed the same way, but their static 15-second rows already matched the per-second charge, so nothing changed there.
• Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro are being retired. OpenAI removes both from the API on September 24, 2026 (the notice is on the Replicate model pages for sora-2 and sora-2-pro: "OpenAI is discontinuing Sora 2 on September 24, 2026. After that date, the Sora 2 API will no longer be available."). Their rows stay because the prices are true today, but we no longer recommend building on them.
• One billing-mechanics fix, July 30.Delivery cues in a script (tags like "/excited") are now stripped before the per-spoken-second models count seconds, so a tagged script is not billed for words the actor never says.
• Added, not moved: a plan-independent credits column, the Happy Horse 1.1 720p rows, and per-second credit rates. All of these were at these prices in July and were simply missing from the table.

Methodology and caveats

• Every model listed runs with native audio where the model supports it; no separate voiceover cost is added.
• Failed renders are not charged on UGC Vids AI, so effective cost per usable ad equals list price. Platforms that bill failed generations will have a higher effective cost than their list price implies.
• Model vendors reprice and retire models. Replicate lists Happy Horse 1.1, released in June 2026, at $0.18 per second at 1080p against $0.28 for Happy Horse 1.0; OpenAI retires Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro on September 24, 2026. Treat this table as a dated snapshot; we update it when prices move and keep the verification date visible at the top.

Want to run the comparison yourself? Every plan is free for 3 days, and a paid plan gives you all 12 models.