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Facts checked against both vendors on October 13, 2026.
Choose Runway if the budget is small or the work is occasional: its Standard plan is 15 US dollars a month, paid plans are described as watermark-free, and the pricing page prints a per-model credit cost, so a month of Gen-4.5 clips can be counted in advance. Choose Luma if the work is heavy and the user wants one workspace that routes between Luma's own Ray models and outside models such as Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.0, and a 30 US dollar entry price is acceptable. The real axis is the credit pool: Runway sells 625 credits for 15 US dollars, Luma sells 10,000 credits for 30 US dollars, and the two credit units are not interchangeable, so only a per-clip cost comparison means anything.
Runway and Luma both sell AI video generation behind a credit meter, and both have moved beyond a single in-house model. Runway pairs its own Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0 models with third-party Seedance 2.0 models and a developer platform. Luma's Dream Machine pairs its Ray3.2 and Uni-1 models with outside video, image and audio models, driven by an agent that picks the model for the job.
The figures below come from each vendor's own pricing, product and API pages as read in October 2026. Where a vendor page does not state something, this page says so instead of filling the gap. All prices are in US dollars.
Runway publishes four self-serve tiers. Free is 0 US dollars with 125 one-time credits that do not expire. Standard is 15 US dollars a month, or 12 a month billed annually, with 625 credits a month. Pro is 35 a month, or 28 annually, with 2,250 credits. Max is 95 a month, or 76 annually, with 9,500 credits and up to one month of unused credits rolling over. Storage steps from 5 GB on Free to 20 GB, 100 GB and 500 GB on the paid tiers.
Luma lists three individual plans on its pricing page. Plus is 30 US dollars a month, or 25 a month billed yearly (300 a year), with 10,000 credits. Pro is 90 a month, or 75 annually, with 40,000 credits. Ultra is 300 a month, or 250 annually, with 150,000 credits. Team and Enterprise are sales-led, with shared team credits, usage analytics and SSO on Team. Luma's Pro and Ultra descriptions add 4 times and 15 times usage with Luma Agents respectively.
The cheapest paid doorway is therefore half the price on Runway, 15 against 30 US dollars monthly. Luma has no listed plan below 30. Luma's site shows a try-for-free link, but the pricing page does not describe what the free tier includes, so a free allowance cannot be compared with Runway's 125 credits.
Both products charge credits, but the unit differs, and so does how clearly the price of one clip can be seen. Runway prints a table. Gen-4.5 costs 60 credits per 5 seconds, which is 12 credits a second. Aleph 2.0 costs 140 credits per 5 seconds. Seedance 2.0 Pro at 1080p costs 160 credits per 4 seconds and Seedance 2.0 Fast costs 116 credits per 4 seconds. Runway's own yearly estimate for Standard is 125 Gen-4.5 clips, which is roughly ten 5-second clips a month, and 450 a year on Pro.
Luma's pricing page includes cost tables by resolution and clip length, with resolutions up to 4K and clip lengths such as 5 and 10 seconds, but the per-clip credit figures could not be read out cleanly enough to quote. A reader should open Luma's cost tables and divide the credit pool by the cost of the model and resolution actually wanted before treating 10,000 credits as a bigger allowance than 625.
Concurrency is stated by Runway only. Standard allows 5 parallel generations, Pro 15 and Max 20. Luma's pricing page does not state concurrency limits for individual plans.
Runway's home page names Gen-4.5 as its video model, with Aleph 2.0 for video-to-video work, plus research models GWM-1, Praxis-1, Solaris and GWM Worlds 2, and tools such as Act-Two. Its pricing page also sells third-party Seedance 2.0 Pro and Fast, and its developer documentation lists third-party video models such as wan3 and veo3.1 on the API.
Luma's Dream Machine page lists Ray3.2 and Ray3.14 for video and Uni-1 for images, plus Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.0, Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image 2 and ElevenLabs audio models. An agent selects the model automatically, and the user can choose manually. Luma's API page describes Ray3.2 as handling text-to-video, image-to-video, video-to-video and reframing.
Both therefore work as model aggregators with a house model. Which house model produces better footage for a given prompt cannot be settled from vendor pages, and has to be tested on the reader's own material.
Luma's API documents outputs at 540p, 720p and 1080p, with 1080p supported natively, and aspect ratios of 9:16, 3:4, 1:1, 4:3, 16:9 and 21:9. Text-to-video and image-to-video are priced at 5 and 10 seconds, and extensions come in 5-second blocks. Video-to-video source clips must be 30 seconds or shorter. The API page contradicts itself on video-to-video length: the FAQ mentions 10, 15 or 20 seconds while the pricing table lists only 5 and 10, so anyone building on it should confirm the supported lengths first. HDR output costs twice the standard rate and HDR with EXR costs three times.
Runway's pricing page does not state a maximum clip length. It describes 4K upscaling from Standard, unlimited 4K upscaling on Pro and Max, and studio-grade output with HDR, ProRes and image sequences on Max. On the API, ProRes and PNG sequence outputs add 5 credits a second and HDR adds 20 credits a second.
On camera control, Luma's page says camera motion can be added when animating still images, but gives no detail on the controls. Runway's home page did not describe camera control. Neither could be compared further from the pages read, so camera control has to be tried in each interface.
Runway describes Standard and above as watermark-free. Its pricing page does not state whether the Free plan carries a watermark, and does not state commercial use rights by tier. Luma lists commercial use as a feature of Plus, which implies it applies from the entry paid tier upward, but its pricing page does not describe the terms and does not mention watermarks at all.
For client work, neither page is enough. The terms of service for each vendor should be read before delivering paid work, especially for any footage generated through a third-party model inside either app, because the licence for those outputs is not set out on the pricing pages.
Runway Dev is a separate developer platform. Credits cost 0.01 US dollars each, bought per project in the developer portal, and requests sent through its Model Router are charged at the rate of whichever model the router selects. Video is usually priced per second of output and resolution: wan3 costs 5, 10 or 20 credits a second at 480p, 720p and 1080p, and veo3.1 costs 40 credits a second with audio and 20 without.
Luma's API runs on its own platform and offers Ray3.2 and Uni-1 models. Ray3.2 text or image to video in standard dynamic range costs 0.15 US dollars for 5 seconds at 540p, 0.30 at 720p and 1.20 at 1080p. A 10-second 1080p clip is 3.60 US dollars. Video-to-video at 5 seconds is 0.72, 1.44 and 2.16 dollars across the three resolutions. Dedicated-capacity plans with guaranteed throughput are sold through sales, and users of the older Dream Machine API need a migration guide from their Luma contact.
The API pages describe their own billing, separate from the consumer plans, so a subscription should not be assumed to cover API calls.
Built from each tool's listing. Vendors can update their own listing after claiming it.
Free is 0 US dollars with 125 one-time credits. Standard is 15 US dollars a month (12 annually) for 625 credits, Pro is 35 (28 annually) for 2,250, and Max is 95 (76 annually) for 9,500. Credits on the API cost 0.01 US dollars each.
Plus is 30 US dollars a month (25 annually) for 10,000 credits, Pro is 90 (75 annually) for 40,000, and Ultra is 300 (250 annually) for 150,000. Team and Enterprise are quoted by sales. The API prices Ray3.2 clips from 0.15 US dollars.
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