Arcads Pricing in 2026: Plans, 800 Credits a Minute, and the 3-Day Trial

Ten talking-actor minutes a month, priced behind a signup

A growth lead at a supplement brand has until Friday to put Arcads into next month's creative budget. She types arcads.ai/pricing into her browser. It returns a 404.

That is not a broken link. Arcads publishes no pricing page, and its site navigation offers Features, Industries and a sign-up button. What it does publish, in its public help centre, is the meter: how many credits each plan carries and how many credits each kind of video spends.

Here is the short version. Arcads sells subscriptions that carry a monthly pool of credits. Its help centre lists the Starter plan at 8,000 monthly credits and Creator at 16,000, and prices its talking-actor models at 800 credits per minute, per actor. That works out to 8,000 divided by 800 = 10 talking-actor minutes a month on Starter, and 16,000 divided by 800 = 20 on Creator. The dollar prices appear only on an in-app paywall after signup. On August 7, 2026, it listed Starter at $110 a month, Creator at $220 and Pro at $550, each discounted 30% that day. A 3-day trial charges your saved card for Starter unless you cancel before the 72 hours are up.

A disclosure before the detail: we make Novoads, an AI UGC ad tool that competes with Arcads for the same buyers. So every Arcads figure below comes from Arcads' own help centre, terms and homepage, read on September 18, 2026, and carries the date of the page it came from. The dollar prices are the one exception, and they are labelled as a dated capture every time they appear.

What Arcads' help centre publishes about its plans

Starter and Creator, in credits

Arcads' help article "How to buy more credits?", dated July 30, 2026, is the closest thing it has to a public plan list. It names two self-serve plans by their monthly allowance, and one group of larger plans by what they do differently:

Plan	Monthly credits	Rollover	At the limit
Starter	8,000	None	Account paused
Creator	16,000	None	Account paused
Pro, Scale, Business	Not published	Unused credits roll over	Extra usage billed

On both self-serve plans, the article says credits reset each cycle and do not roll over, and your account is temporarily blocked once you reach the monthly limit. From there you have three moves: wait for the renewal date, when credits are replenished, upgrade from the paywall, or ask the team about a larger plan.

Pro, Scale and Business: the tiers you ask for

Above Creator, the same article changes voice. It points you to an Arcads team email about a Pro plan, names Scale and Business as higher tiers, and adds that higher volumes benefit from a lower cost per credit. It gives these plans two terms the entry tiers lack:

• Rollover. Unused credits on Pro, Scale and Business roll over to the next cycle and accumulate, as long as the subscription stays active.
• No hard stop. A Pro account is not blocked at the monthly limit. Additional usage is charged per extra credit.

The article gives no monthly credit figure for Pro or the tiers above it, so this post gives none either.

Standard offers and customized offers in the terms

Arcads' terms and conditions, in force since August 21, 2026, describe the same split in contract language. Standard offers are the plans described on the platform. A customized offer is made after a call and summarized at the time of purchase. Three pricing rules hang on that split:

1. Running out. On a standard offer, exceeding your credits means waiting for the subscription to renew or requesting a customized offer. On a customized offer, Arcads invoices the additional credits each month.
2. API access. The terms say the API is only accessible to a client who subscribes to a customized offer.
3. Currency and tax. Prices are in US dollars unless otherwise specified, and fees exclude local, national or foreign taxes.

If you plan to drive Arcads from code, that API line is the first pricing question to ask, before any per-minute math. The assistant route works differently, and our guide to Arcads' MCP and Claude Code skills covers it.

What the dollar prices were on August 7, 2026

The list prices on the in-app paywall

Arcads shows its prices after you create an account, on an onboarding paywall inside the app, and its help centre sends plan upgrades through that same paywall. We captured it on August 7, 2026, from a newly created account, in US dollars. It showed three monthly plans:

Plan	List price, Aug 7	Shown that day	Credits a month
Starter	$110/mo	$77/mo	8,000
Creator	$220/mo	$154/mo	16,000
Pro	$550/mo	$385/mo	Not published

Treat every dollar figure in that table as a snapshot. The paywall sits behind a signup, so nobody can link to it or recheck it without an account, and prices may differ by country. The figures on your own paywall are the ones that bind. For how that compares with a vendor that posts its whole ladder on a public page, see our Arcads vs HeyGen comparison.

The 30% discount was an offer, not a price

On the day of the capture, all three prices were struck through and discounted 30% under a countdown timer. A timed discount tells you what Arcads was willing to charge that week, not what a plan costs month after month. Budget on the list price, and treat any discount on your own paywall as a bonus that may not be there at renewal.

What one credit and one minute cost at those prices

Divide the price by the allowance and the two self-serve plans turn out to be one rate at two sizes. Cost per credit = monthly price ÷ monthly credits.

• Starter at list: $110 ÷ 8,000 = 1.375 cents a credit. A talking-actor minute (800 credits) costs $11.00.
• Creator at list: $220 ÷ 16,000 = the same 1.375 cents, and the same $11.00 a minute.
• At the August 7 discount: $77 ÷ 8,000 and $154 ÷ 16,000 both come to about 0.96 cents a credit, or $7.70 a minute.

So Creator doubles the minutes and doubles the price. The volume discount the help centre mentions starts above Creator, where its plan article gives neither a credit allowance nor a price. For a method that works on any vendor's credits, our explainer on how AI video credits work walks through it.

How Arcads counts credits

Talking actors: 800 credits a minute, per actor, rounded up

Arcads' article "How Are Credits Counted?", dated April 29, 2026, prices all three of its talking-actor models, Arcads 1.0, Audio-Driven and OmniHuman 1.5, at 800 credits per minute, per actor. Two rules change the bill:

• Every actor counts. If you use multiple actors in the same video, credits are counted per actor. A two-actor dialogue costs twice what a monologue of the same length costs.
• Length rounds up. The article says length is always rounded up, and its example bills a 1 minute 45 second video with two actors as 2 minutes times 2 actors, or 3,200 credits.

That example rounds to the next whole minute, and it is the only rounding example Arcads gives. If the rule works the same way on short clips, a 20-second hook costs the same 800 credits as a full-minute testimonial. Starter's 8,000 credits then buy 10 talking-actor videos, not 10 minutes you can cut into any lengths you like. Plan on that reading until your own credit balance shows otherwise.

A second Arcads page uses a different credit scale

Arcads' model guide "Understanding Omnihuman 1.5, Audio-Driven, and Arcads 1.0", dated July 2, 2026, says of each of the three models: "Cost is 1 credit per minute." That is 800 times lower than the April article's rate. Arcads' terms describe credits in a similar unit, as a number of credits corresponding to a number of videos, where one video can cost more or less than one credit.

Neither page reconciles the two scales. Only the 800-credit meter makes sense of the 8,000 and 16,000 allowances in the July 30 article, so budget on it.

Video models, presets and tools, per generation

Everything that isn't a talking actor is priced per generation, from the same credit pool. Here is part of the April 29 table, with a dollar column at the Starter list rate from the August 7 capture (1.375 cents a credit):

Generation	Credits	At Starter list
Kling 3.0	176 to 560	$2.42 to $7.70
Veo 3.1	800	$11.00
Seedance 2.0, 720p	192 to 720	$2.64 to $9.90
Product showcase preset	800	$11.00
Unboxing POV preset	400	$5.50
Translate video	240	$3.30
Add captions	80	$1.10

Three notes on reading it:

• It predates Seedance 2.5. Arcads' homepage says Seedance 2.5 is live, but the April table has no row for it.
• Images cost no credits within a daily limit. Arcads' platform guide says image generation is free up to 100 images per day.
• Some tools cost nothing. Change voice, transcribe and remove background are each listed at 0 credits.

The credits article also offers a way to stop guessing: Arcads' support team says it is happy to help you estimate a project's credits before you generate.

The 3-day trial and the refund rules

How the trial turns into a Starter charge

Arcads' refund policy, last updated September 16, 2026, describes the trial in one sentence: if your 3-day trial ended without you cancelling, your saved card was automatically charged for the Starter plan. The heading above it calls it a free trial. To avoid the charge, the policy says, cancel your trial from your Billing settings before the 72 hours are up.

So the trial runs on a saved card, and it converts to Starter at whatever price your paywall shows. Two details matter for anyone testing inside those 72 hours:

• Trial usage is separate. Credits consumed during the trial itself don't count as subscription credits.
• The first render after the charge counts. Once subscription credits have been used since the charge, it isn't eligible for a cash refund.

When a charge can come back as cash

The policy separates cash refunds from credit reimbursements. Cash comes back in four cases:

1. An unused period. If you used zero generation credits in a billing period, Arcads refunds the full amount, requested within 30 days of the charge.
2. A trial-end charge. With no subscription credits used since the charge and a request within 24 hours, it may qualify as a one-time courtesy refund.
3. A change of mind. Within 24 hours of your first charge, with no credits used, once per account.
4. The wrong plan. If you bought a lower plan and upgraded because you needed a specific feature, you can ask within 7 days for the lower-tier charge back. The credits that plan added are removed.

The policy calls its 30-day limit firm and says approved subscription refunds take 5 to 10 business days. A separate help article, dated August 19, 2026, adds that renewals happen automatically at the start of each billing cycle, and tells you to save your cancellation confirmation email. With it, Arcads refunds every charge from your cancellation date onwards. Without it, only the most recent charge.

Failed renders come back as credits, not cash

When a generation fails because of a platform issue, Arcads may restore credits, not cash, for requests made within 30 days of the generation, and it reviews them case by case. An error saying used credits were not counted refunds automatically. Disappointment doesn't qualify: the policy says poor output quality alone, such as unsatisfying lip sync, does not qualify for credit reimbursement.

The terms put the same idea in contract language. The client acknowledges that several videos requiring several credits may be necessary to achieve the expected result. Retries are part of the price, and they come out of your pool.

Unlimited Seedance 2.5: what the promotion covers

The homepage offer

As of September 18, 2026, the Arcads homepage leads with a timed offer: 7-day unlimited generations of Seedance 2.5 in Arcads Studio for anyone who subscribes before the offer ends, with fair use terms applying. If Seedance 2.5 is new to you, our explainer on what Seedance 2.5 does covers the model itself.

What "unlimited" means in the terms

Article 12.5 of Arcads' terms defines the word narrowly. Unlimited refers to access without consumption of your credits, and not to generation speed, processing priority, the number of simultaneous generations, or the surfaces, resolutions or output durations covered. Three more rules come with it:

• It is a separate allowance. Promotional credits sit apart from your plan's credits, have no monetary value, and are not refundable or carried forward.
• It ends. After the usage period, the same models consume credits from your plan in the ordinary way.
• It changes nothing on price. A promotional offer gives no right to a reduction, refund or compensation on the subscription price.

Workflows, the Agent, the API and MCP still spend credits

The terms also limit where unlimited applies. Any generation outside the covered surfaces, including via Workflows, the Agent, the API or MCP, consumes credits from your plan in the ordinary way. Arcads' MCP guide adds that the connector needs an active subscription with remaining credits, and that generation requests fail without one.

The practical reading: if your plan is to batch Seedance variants through a workflow or an AI assistant, the unlimited window is not part of your budget. Price that work at the plan's credit rate.

A month of talking-actor tests on Starter and Creator

The brief

Back to the supplement brand. It wants 12 distinct talking-actor ads for a creative test, one actor each, every one under a minute. Why twelve? A test needs enough distinct variants to find a winner, and our guide to how many ad creatives you need explains where that floor comes from.

Each keeper may need more than one render. Arcads' own terms concede that several videos may be needed to get the result you want, so the math below runs at one, two and three takes per keeper.

The credit math at one, two and three takes

At 800 credits a render, with each clip billed as a whole minute:

Takes per keeper	Renders	Credits needed	Covered by
1	12	9,600	Creator
2	24	19,200	Neither self-serve plan
3	36	28,800	Neither self-serve plan

Starter's 8,000 credits stop at the tenth render, and the account pauses until renewal. Creator's 16,000 credits buy 20 renders, which is 12 keepers plus eight retries. Creator covers this test only if eight retries are enough. Anything past that means waiting a month or asking about Pro. Add a product showcase (800 credits) or a translation (240) to each ad, and the pool drains faster still.

What it costs at the August 7 prices

At the paywall capture, Creator's $220 list price works out to $11.00 per render, and the $154 discount shown that day to $7.70. The two-take version needs 19,200 credits, more than Creator holds, so it turns into a conversation about Pro rather than a price you can read anywhere. The help centre promises a lower cost per credit at higher volumes; it doesn't say how much lower.

Billing rules that change the real monthly cost

No rollover on self-serve plans, and a hard stop

Starter and Creator reset credits every cycle, and the account pauses at the limit rather than billing extra. A quiet month is lost budget, and a launch month can stall in week three. To be fair about it, Novoads works the same way on rollover: its monthly credits refresh on the billing date and don't roll over either. That is a trait of the category's entry plans, not a flaw peculiar to Arcads. What the pause means in practice is that a busy month ends in a wait or an upgrade. Arcads' MCP guide also mentions topping up credits from the billing page, though the July 30 plan article lists only waiting, upgrading or asking about Pro.

Upgrades carry credits; downgrades and cancellations don't

Arcads' terms treat plan changes asymmetrically:

• Upgrade. The old subscription ends the day you subscribe to the new one, and unused credits carry over to the new period. Promotional credits are the exception.
• Downgrade. The lower plan begins at the next renewal date, and credits unused at the end of the period are lost.
• Cancellation. Unused credits are not refunded or carried forward.

So if you are torn between Starter and Creator, start small and upgrade: the credits come with you. Going the other way forfeits them.

Renewal, cancellation and taxes

Subscriptions renew tacitly for periods of the same length as the first one. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period in progress, and any period started is due in full. Prices are in US dollars unless stated otherwise and exclude taxes, so the paywall figure may not be the final number on your invoice.

How Novoads solves pricing a talking-actor month before you sign up

One published price, and the same per-minute math

Novoads is an AI UGC video-ad generator: upload a product image or write a script, pick an AI actor, and get an ad-ready video. Novoads starts at $49/month (Starter, 50 credits per month), and all plans are published on /pricing. There is no trial: the first charge is the plan's monthly price. A talking-actor video costs 10 credits per started minute, so a short clip bills as a full minute here too, and Novoads' Starter covers five talking-actor minutes a month, or $9.80 a minute.

Put that next to the August 7 capture, and name the price each time. Against Arcads' Starter list rate of $11.00 a minute, Novoads costs less per minute. Against the $7.70 discount shown that day, Arcads cost less. What a promotion does not change is what you can check before you pay: one price sits on a public page, the other on a paywall behind a signup.

The video engines are the frontier ones the category rents: Seedance 2.5, Seedance 2.0 Mini, Kling v3 Pro and Google Veo 3.1 are all in Novoads, each at its own published credit cost. To put your product in a creator's hand, create a custom actor from a photo of someone holding it, or start from one of Discover's product templates. You can check the math on the pricing page before you start a Novoads plan.

Where Arcads is the better buy

• Library depth. Arcads markets a library of 1,000+ AI actors, plus the option to create your own AI avatar, and our full review of what that library and its three talking-actor models deliver walks the limits buyers hit.
• Minutes per plan. Arcads' Starter carries ten talking-actor minutes to Novoads' five, and Creator twenty.
• A test window. Arcads lets you try it for 72 hours before the first charge. Novoads has no trial.
• Rollover at scale. On Pro and above, unused Arcads credits roll into the next cycle.

For a side-by-side on everything besides cost, see our Novoads vs Arcads comparison, and our list of Arcads alternatives compares seven tools on what a test month costs.

Price the minute, then open the paywall

Arcads' pricing is more open than its missing price page suggests. The allowance, the meter, the rounding rule, the trial and the refund terms are all public and dated. Only the dollar figure lives behind a signup. So work out your month in minutes first: how many renders, how many actors, how many retries. Then open the paywall with one number in mind. A credit plan is only as cheap as the minute it buys.