Arcads vs MakeUGC: Pricing, Trials and Which AI UGC Tool Fits

Both sell credits. Only one shows dollars before signup.

On paper, Arcads and MakeUGC look like twins. Both market libraries of more than a thousand AI actors, both turn a script into a UGC-style talking video, and both sell a monthly pool of credits. Then you try to price them.

MakeUGC prints its self-serve ladder on a public page (checked September 21, 2026): $59, $79 and $149 a month, each started for $1. Arcads has no pricing page at all (arcads.ai/pricing returned a 404 the same day), yet its help centre publishes the meter: 8,000 monthly credits on Starter and 16,000 on Creator (article dated July 30, 2026), a per-minute rate for talking actors, and a 3-day trial that bills Starter if you do not cancel. So you can price both before you pay. You just price them in different units, and that difference says a lot about who each tool is for.

This head-to-head covers what each one costs, how the two trials work, realism, a real product on camera, languages, and which to pick for the ad you actually need to ship. We skip the feature-grid ties and stay on the handful of differences that change what you ship and what you pay.

The comparison at a glance

If you only read one section, read this one.

• Arcads sells itself on realism: its homepage calls its library "the most realistic and captivating AI Actors". It publishes its credit meter and keeps dollar prices behind a signup.
• MakeUGC sells breadth and a visible price: a script-first flow, a public ladder of three self-serve plans, and a $1 start.

Factor	Arcads	MakeUGC
Actor library (vendor claim)	1,000+ AI actors	1000+ AI creators
Languages (vendor claim)	30+	50+
Headline video model	Seedance 2.5	Seedance 2.5
Public pricing page	None	Yes
Monthly credits	8,000 or 16,000 (help centre, Jul 30, 2026)	500, 1,000 or 2,000 (Sep 21, 2026)
Dollar price	Shown after signup	$59 / $79 / $149 (Sep 21, 2026)
Pricing model	Credits, prices after signup	Credits, public prices
Trial	3 days, then Starter	$1 to start
Product on camera	Custom actor can hold it	Listed on the Pro card
Best for	Realism-led talking actors	Public prices, broad casting

Read across and the trade is clear. Arcads tells you what a credit buys but not what a month costs until you sign up. MakeUGC tells you what a month costs and meters the renders inside it. The credit columns are not comparable with each other, which is a trap we come back to below.

What Arcads costs: a published meter and a gated price

Arcads is easier to price than its missing pricing page suggests. Its help centre publishes the allowance, the rate and the trial terms. Only the dollar figure sits behind a signup.

The credit allowance on each plan

Arcads' help-centre article on buying more credits, dated July 30, 2026, lists the Starter plan at 8,000 monthly credits and Creator at 16,000. On both, credits reset each cycle and do not roll over, and the account is temporarily blocked once you reach the monthly limit. From there the article gives you three moves:

• wait for the renewal date, when the credits are replenished,
• upgrade to the Creator plan directly from the paywall,
• or contact the team about a Pro plan.

So Starter and Creator are self-serve inside the app; only Pro and the larger plans route to a conversation.

That block is the friction worth knowing about before you commit. In our reading, a heavy testing week that drains the pool on day 20 stops production until the renewal or an upgrade, rather than quietly billing overage. The same article says Pro works differently: usage past the limit is charged per extra credit.

What 8,000 credits buys

A second help-centre article, "How Are Credits Counted?", dated April 29, 2026, prices Arcads' talking-actor models at 800 credits per minute, per actor, and says length is always rounded up. Divide and you get the number that matters:

• Starter: 8,000 ÷ 800 = 10 talking-actor minutes a month.
• Creator: 16,000 ÷ 800 = 20 talking-actor minutes a month.
• Two actors in one video: credits are counted per actor, so a two-person clip halves those minutes.

Because length rounds up to the minute, a 45-second hook bills like a full minute. The same table prices video models and presets per generation (its product showcase preset is 800 credits), and it is dated April 29, so check the in-app cost of any model newer than that before you plan a month around it. For the full rate table and what each plan buys, see our Arcads pricing breakdown.

The dollar figure, with its date

Dollar prices appear only after you create an account, on an onboarding paywall inside the app. When we captured it on August 7, 2026, from a new account in US dollars, it listed Starter at $110 a month, Creator at $220 and Pro at $550. Treat those as a dated snapshot, not today's price: nobody can recheck that paywall without an account, and the figure on your own paywall is the one that binds.

At those August 7 list prices, both self-serve plans work out to about $11.00 per talking-actor minute ($110 ÷ 10 and $220 ÷ 20). That is our arithmetic, not a figure Arcads publishes, and it is the most useful way to hold the two plans side by side.

What MakeUGC costs: a public ladder and a metered month

MakeUGC goes the other way and puts its whole self-serve ladder on a public page. The price is never the mystery. The meter is.

Three self-serve plans on one public page

MakeUGC's pricing page, checked on September 21, 2026, lists three self-serve plans, each with a fixed monthly credit pool:

• Start up: a fixed 500 credits a month for $59, with access to "Selected models".
• Growth: 1,000 credits a month for $79, with "Access to all AI models" and Batch Mode included.
• Pro: 2,000 credits a month that renews at $149, and the card that lists product-in-hand videos plus Video Agent & PDF to Video.

The catch sits in the first line of each card. Start up carries "Access to Selected models" only; Growth at $79 is the first card that lists "Access to all AI models". An Enterprise tier and a separate API ladder sit on the same page for teams that need more. The page also carries discount badges and a countdown offer banner; budget on the monthly figure each card prints, and treat anything time-boxed as a bonus that may not be there at renewal.

The meter inside the month

MakeUGC's FAQ explains the meter: each generation costs "a set number of credits depending on the model, duration, and resolution", and credits refresh each billing cycle and do not roll over. So the sticker tells you what a month costs, and the model you pick decides how many ads fit inside it.

Growth and Pro add an Unlimited mode. Per the same FAQ and the plan cards:

• Unlimited lets you generate without spending credits on supported models in your plan.
• Speed and concurrency may vary during peak hours.
• The Start up card lists Unlimited as unavailable.

For a team that renders heavily on one supported model, that is the real reason to look past the entry plan.

The credit math that decides your real cost

The published price is not your real cost; the render count is. Testing is never one render per idea. A single ad angle usually becomes several once you count:

• the first pass that comes out almost right,
• the reshoot that fixes the hook,
• the language variants for each market,
• and the near-misses you scrap before one lands.

Multiply that across ten angles and a 1,000-credit month feels a lot smaller by week three. The pressure lands on both tools, in different ways. MakeUGC's meter punishes exactly the high-volume testing that finds winners, and Arcads blocks Starter and Creator accounts at the limit until renewal or an upgrade.

One more trap: a credit is not a unit you can compare across vendors. Arcads' 8,000 and MakeUGC's 500 are different currencies, so 8,000 is not sixteen times more ad. Convert each plan into finished output, meaning minutes of talking actor or clips of the model you will actually use, and compare that. We walk through the unit problem in AI video credits explained and the full cost-of-testing math in how much UGC creators charge, which applies just as much to AI tools as to human ones.

Trying before you pay: three days or one dollar

Both tools let you in before the full charge, on very different terms. Each trial has a catch worth knowing before you enter a card.

Arcads: three days, then Starter

Arcads' refund policy, updated September 16, 2026, describes a 3-day trial: if it ends without you cancelling, your saved card is automatically charged for the Starter plan. To avoid the charge, the article says to cancel from your Billing settings before the 72 hours are up. The article's own heading calls it a "free trial"; the charge comes at conversion.

Two refund details matter if you miss the window:

• Credits consumed during the trial itself do not count as subscription credits.
• If you have used no subscription credits since the charge and ask within 24 hours, Arcads says it may qualify as a one-time courtesy refund. Once subscription credits have been used, the charge is not eligible for a cash refund.

MakeUGC: one dollar, and Unlimited waits

MakeUGC starts every self-serve plan the same way: each card's button reads "Start for $1", and the Pro card shows $1 against "Renews at $149". The pricing FAQ adds the detail most buyers miss. Unlimited does not start on the $1 trial: it "only activates after your $1 trial ends and your first full billing cycle begins."

That shapes what the trial can show you. During it you are spending credits, and MakeUGC's FAQ says credits always use the priority queue while Unlimited runs in the standard queue. So if unlimited Seedance 2.5 is the reason you are buying, the trial cannot tell you how that queue feels at peak hours. You find out after the first full charge.

How to get a real answer out of either trial

Short trials reward preparation. Whichever tool you test:

• Write your scripts before you start the clock, so the days go to rendering, not drafting.
• Render the exact ad you plan to run, including a product shot, not the demo template.
• Set a reminder before the conversion point: hour 72 at Arcads, and before the trial converts at MakeUGC.
• Judge the output on a phone, at feed speed, next to an ad that already works for you.

Realism, casting and languages

This is where the two brands talk loudest, and where the gap is narrower than their copy suggests.

Arcads: realism is the pitch

Arcads is what people reach for when the actor has to be convincing, and it says so:

• Its homepage calls its library "the most realistic and captivating AI Actors", markets 1,000+ of them, and offers a way to create your own.
• Its help centre names its talking-actor models, Arcads 1.0 among them, priced per minute.
• Around them, Arcads says it aggregates multiple AI models; the homepage currently announces "Seedance 2.5 is live" and lists Kling among its tools.

If your ad hinges on a viewer believing a real person is talking, that focus is the reason to shortlist it.

MakeUGC: breadth and a script-first flow

MakeUGC counters with breadth. It markets 1000+ realistic AI creators and 50+ languages, and its homepage sums up the flow as write your script, pick an avatar, generate video. It is less about squeezing out the last few percent of realism and more about giving you a wide, fast catalog to cast from across markets. The script-first shape makes it easy to fan one script out across several actors and markets, and the Growth plan includes Batch Mode for exactly that. Where Arcads optimizes the individual ad, MakeUGC optimizes the assembly line.

The engine is now the same

Here is the part the feature grids hide. On September 21, 2026, both homepages headline the same video model: Arcads announces "Seedance 2.5 is live", and MakeUGC's banner offers "Unlimited Seedance 2.5 for 30 days". In our view, that puts realism much closer to a tie for generated clips than either brand's copy implies. The differences that remain sit in each vendor's own talking-actor pipeline and in the casting, and the only honest way to judge those is to render your own script on both.

Languages: a tie-breaker, not a decider

Arcads advertises accurate translation in more than 30 languages; MakeUGC markets 50+. Both are vendor counts, not measured coverage, and either range covers the markets most advertisers run in. Unless you are chasing a long tail of rare languages, language count is a tie-breaker at best, which is why it sits low on this list despite looking impressive on a feature grid.

Product on camera

Neither tool is built product-first, but both have a path to putting your item in frame.

Arcads: an actor you create can hold it

Arcads' homepage describes it plainly: generate a face, "And make them hold your product, show your app, and wear your clothes." Its credit table also prices a product showcase preset at 800 credits. The path runs through creating an actor, so it takes setup, and a fast product shot is not as fast as it sounds. It closes the gap for product ads if you are willing to do that work.

MakeUGC: product in hand is a Pro-card feature

MakeUGC's homepage promises to "let any AI actor naturally hold and present your product on camera", and on the pricing page, product-in-hand videos are listed on the Pro card, the $149 plan. If that feature is why you are buying, budget for the top self-serve plan and confirm in the app what the lower plans include before you pick one.

Where both stop

The shared limitation is the order of operations. Both start from an actor and add a product. When the packaging has to be exactly right (a label that reads, a cap that matches), that ordering is backwards, and it is the case the Novoads section below is about. We see the same pattern in comparisons like Novoads vs MakeUGC.

A worked example: ten angles for one skincare serum

Say you are launching one skincare serum and want ten UGC angles to test this week, each a 30-second talking-actor clip.

On Arcads: the meter makes the math visible

Ten 30-second clips with one actor each bill ten rounded-up minutes: 10 × 800 = 8,000 credits. That is the entire Starter month, with no room for a reshoot or a second language. Realistically you are on Creator and its 20 minutes, which listed at $220 a month on the August 7 capture. For the serum to sit in the actor's hand, you set up a custom actor first.

On MakeUGC: the month is visible, the clip count is not

The month's price is on the page, and the per-clip cost depends on the model you pick. Three things decide the plan:

• Start up lists "Selected models" only, and Growth ($79, 1,000 credits) is the first card with "Access to all AI models", so confirm your model is on Start up before you pick it.
• Product in hand is listed on the $149 Pro card, so a serum-in-hand shot points you there.
• The meter then decides how many of the ten angles, reshoots and language variants fit in the month.

The question that decides it

Does the serum bottle itself have to look right? If the person could be holding anything, both tools work and you choose on realism versus price visibility. If viewers judge your actual label, both ask you to work against their actor-first grain to get there. That is the case where starting from the product saves the most time, and it is worth seeing both against a third option in Novoads vs Arcads and among the broader Arcads alternatives.

Where Novoads fits

Both Arcads and MakeUGC start from a person and bolt a product on. Novoads flips the order: it starts from your product image and builds the UGC ad around it, without a shoot. To put it in a creator's hand, there are two routes:

• Discover's product templates swap your product image into the template creator's hand.
• Or you create a custom actor from a photo of someone holding it.

It runs the same frontier video engines both rivals headline, Seedance 2.5 included, so realism is not the argument; price visibility and the product-first order are. Novoads starts at $15/month (Starter, 200 credits per month). Plus is $49/month (1,000 credits), and Ultra starts at $129/month (3,000 credits) for more volume. All plans are published on novoads.ai/pricing. At the Plus plan's credit rate, a clip runs from about 25 cents for a five-second Seedance 2.0 Mini clip to about $4 for an eight-second Google Veo 3.1 clip, and about $10 for a full 30-second Seedance 2.5 take. There is no trial: the plan's monthly price is the first charge.

Our reading of the practical payoff: when the packaging carries the message, the product image is the input you most need to control, so start from it, and check the label, shape and hands in every render before it gets spend, whichever tool made it. It is the same UGC-style ad trust signal both competitors chase, aimed at the product-first case.

Pick by the ad you ship, not the credit count

Arcads and MakeUGC are not competing on the same axis, which is why "which is better" has no single answer. Match the choice to what you value most:

• Pick Arcads if realism is your top priority, your ads live on a believable on-camera performer, and you are fine reading the price on a paywall after signup. Its published meter lets you plan in talking-actor minutes before you ever enter a card.
• Pick MakeUGC if you want every price on a public page, the widest script-first casting library, and a $1 start. Plan on Growth for the full model list and Pro for product in hand.
• Look past both if your ad's whole job is showing a real product accurately, because both are built actor-first and you will fight that workflow to keep your packaging honest.

If you are still weighing the field, we also compare Arcads and Creatify directly and weigh CreateUGC against its alternatives, and the pattern repeats. The 1,000-actor number on both sites is a tie, not a tiebreaker. Count what you will ship this month, convert each plan into that output, and pay for the tool that gets you to a winning ad fastest.