Pictory Alternatives: What One 30-Second Ad Costs on Each Tool

Get your videos out of Pictory before you compare prices

If you're leaving Pictory, the FAQ on its pricing page tells you what to do first. Its answer to "What happens to my videos if I cancel?" is that the videos you create are yours to keep, but you must download them before you cancel. The next sentence reads "Video projects are permanently deleted from the platform when your account is cancelled." So your first job is getting the finished videos and their caption files out while your paid term is still running.

Your second job is choosing among the Pictory alternatives. We compared them on one number, the cost of a single 30-second ad on each tool's cheapest paid plan. By that measure, Pictory's own stock-avatar video comes out among the cheapest, at about 22 cents on monthly Starter. So if you're leaving to pay less for the same kind of video, read the table before you cancel.

We didn't try any of these tools for this comparison. Every rival figure below comes from the vendor's own pricing, help and terms pages, read on October 30, 2026, from Spain. InVideo and Fliki showed us euros, and the other four showed US dollars. Our own figures come from the rates the Novoads app charges, plus one ad we rendered ourselves.

A quick pick by the ad you make, then one table

Our quick pick sends you to a tool by what you want on screen.

• If your videos start from text, as Pictory's do, look at Lumen5 first, since its Basic plan doesn't charge per video. Fliki is the other option, and it adds stock avatars on its Standard plan.
• If you want a talking avatar to present your script, HeyGen is built around that, and 30 seconds of its Avatar IV costs about 75 cents on monthly Creator.
• If your ad starts from a product page, Creatify and InVideo both build ads from a link, Creatify with its AI actors and InVideo with a lip-synced creator made from your description.
• If you want an AI actor reading your script in a UGC-style ad, that's what we built Novoads for, though the table shows it isn't the cheap option at 30 seconds.
• If your ads are mostly static images, our Predis.ai alternatives compares tools built for those.

Prices as shown on October 30, 2026.

Tool	Makes ads from	Entry paid plan, as shown	Branding and ad use	One 30-second ad, monthly billing
Pictory	Text, a URL, images or slides	Starter, $29 monthly or $25 a month annually	No watermark on paid plans, built "for marketing, education, training, and business use"	Stock avatar, 15 credits, about $0.22
InVideo	A product link, your script and a described creator	Starter, €20 monthly (€10 a month annually, marked 50% off)	Watermark removed at export, ads "cleared for commercial use"	VEED Fabric 1.0, 114 to 288 credits, €5.70 to €14.40 (may not be on Starter)
Creatify	A product, app or service URL	Standard, $15 monthly or $10 a month annually	Watermark removal, "You own all of your creatives"	Avatar video, 10 credits, about $2.73
HeyGen	A script and a chosen presenter	Creator, $29 monthly or $24 a month annually	HeyGen branding removed, Free plan output barred from ads	Avatar IV, about 15.5 credits, about $0.75
Fliki	Ideas, scripts, blog posts or slides	Standard, €24 a user monthly	Watermark removal, commercial license	Stock avatar, about 8.3 credits, about €1.11
Lumen5	Text	Basic, $29 monthly or $19 a month yearly	No Lumen5 branding, full commercial rights	No per-video charge
Novoads	A script and an AI actor, or generated clips	Starter, $15 a month, monthly only	Fully licensed for commercial use, per our pricing FAQ	Talking actor at 720p, 200 credits, $15.00

The last column prices 30 seconds of video on monthly billing and nothing else. The presenters differ from tool to tool, so the column compares cost and says nothing about how good the ad looks.

We got each cell in that column by multiplying the vendor's own credit rate for half a minute by what one credit costs on that plan. On monthly Starter, Pictory sells 2,000 credits for $29. Its stock avatar uses 15 of them per 30 seconds of video. That comes to about 22 cents.

A few rows needed a judgment call. HeyGen lists avatar rates per minute, so we halved them, the way HeyGen's own help article prices a 30-second example. Creatify rounds up to the next 15 seconds, and we charge by the started minute. InVideo's Starter card says the available models depend on the plan but doesn't name VEED Fabric, so treat that row as an open question. The euro rows are what InVideo and Fliki showed a visitor from Spain, and we haven't converted them.

Pictory's own Starter plan is $29 a month, or $25 a month billed annually. Our breakdown of Pictory's pricing covers its other plans and what its credits buy.

What to do before you cancel Pictory

The one page that mentions deletion

The deletion line is in that FAQ on Pictory's pricing page, and no other Pictory page says so. Pictory's help articles on cancelling, subscriptions, auto-renewal and pausing explain what you can still open and download, but none of them mentions deletion or how long projects are kept.

Pictory's general FAQ comes closest, though it's about a different event. It says that deleting your account will permanently remove all associated videos, embedded links and shared video URLs.

When your access actually ends

No Pictory page says when deletion happens, but its help center does say when your access ends. Its subscriptions FAQ says a cancellation takes effect at the end of your current term. And its article on cancelling adds that you can go on creating, editing and downloading videos until your subscription's end date.

So cancelling doesn't cut you off the same day, and you have the rest of your paid term to download what you want to keep. Pictory doesn't currently offer refunds on paid subscriptions. Our Pictory review covers that along with the rest of its terms.

A lapsed plan, a pause and a finished trial

A subscription that runs out isn't the same thing as a cancelled account, and Pictory's help center treats the two differently.

• If your subscription expires and you don't renew, Pictory's auto-renewal article (September 9, 2026) says you can no longer access the projects you made on that account.
• Pictory's pause article (July 23, 2026) says a pause costs $1 a month and keeps your account and project data available.
• On a monthly plan, the pause lasts 90 days, and then the subscription restarts on the same plan unless you resume or change it first.
• Pictory's credits article (September 14, 2026) says purchased credits never expire as long as you have an active subscription. In our reading, that means they lapse when the subscription does.
• When Pictory's free trial ends, you can still sign in, but you can't download videos without a paid subscription.

Before you cancel, we'd do four things in this order.

1. Download every video you want to keep while your paid term is still running.
2. Export the captions as .srt, .vtt or text files, which every Pictory plan includes, so you don't have to retype your scripts in the next tool.
3. Spend the credits you've paid for while the subscription is still active.
4. Choose between cancelling and pausing. If you might come back, the $1 pause keeps your projects, and on a monthly plan the subscription restarts by itself after 90 days unless you change it first.

Two alternatives for videos that start from text

Lumen5, for text-to-video at a flat price

Of the tools here, Lumen5 is the closest match to what Pictory does with text. Its pricing page describes it as an AI video maker that generates videos from text, and on Basic, its entry paid plan, you can make as many as you like.

Basic costs $29 a month on monthly billing. Billed yearly, it's $19 a month, which Lumen5 charges as $228 once a year. Basic's videos carry no Lumen5 branding and export at 720p. For 1080p, you need Starter, at $79 a month. Billed yearly, Starter works out to $59 a month.

So a 30-second ad doesn't add to your bill, and Lumen5's row in our table prices the video alone. If you add an AI voiceover, it draws on Basic's AI voice minutes, 20 a month on monthly billing or 240 a year billed yearly.

Lumen5's help center says you have full commercial rights to all the videos you make, and it adds one rule that matters for ads. A video that sells a product or service counts as a commercial video, and it can't use editorial-only media files.

The catches on Basic are the 720p ceiling and the voice allowance, which caps how many narrated ads you can make in a month. Our Lumen5 pricing breakdown covers every plan and its limits.

Fliki, for voiced videos with a stock avatar

Fliki makes videos from ideas, scripts, blog posts or slide decks, and its Standard plan adds voice cloning and a limited set of stock avatars.

To a visitor from Spain, Fliki's pricing page showed Standard at €24 per user a month on monthly billing, for 180 credits. Fliki's own FAQ says its prices are listed in USD, but we only saw euros. The same FAQ says its subscription plans give you a commercial license to all the content you create, and paid plans drop the watermark that Free plan videos carry.

Fliki prices each part of a video separately, so we added up the parts for a 30-second ad with a stock avatar on screen the whole time.

• The stock avatar, at 0.25 credits a second, comes to 7.5 credits.
• Script to video costs 0.5 credits for any finished video under 5 minutes.
• A Green-rated voice, at 0.5 credits a minute, uses 0.25 credits.
• Export, at 0.1 credits a minute, uses 0.05 credits.

Together, that's about 8.3 credits, or about €1.11 on monthly Standard. Without the avatar, the same ad takes about 0.8 credits.

Our sum assumes the avatar fills all 30 seconds, and Standard's set of stock avatars is limited. On October 30, 2026, Fliki's pricing page also showed a Halloween code, FLIKIHALLOWEEN40, for 40% off annual plans. That's a promotion, and it doesn't change the plan's standing price. Our Fliki pricing guide walks through the other plans.

Three alternatives that put a presenter on screen

HeyGen, for a talking avatar billed by the minute

HeyGen's ad flow is short. You type a script, choose a presenter and generate the ad.

Creator costs $29 a month, or $24 a month if you pay annually. It comes with 600 credits and 1080p exports, without HeyGen branding. HeyGen's terms, last updated October 16, 2026, say you own your output and don't restrict its commercial use. The exception is output made on the Free plan, which can't be used in advertising.

HeyGen's help center lists Avatar IV at 31 credits per minute of video and Avatar V at 48. Its own example prices a 30-second scene at half a per-minute rate, and we did the same. So 30 seconds of Avatar IV comes to about 15.5 credits. That's about 75 cents on monthly Creator, or about 62 cents if you pay annually. Avatar V takes 24 credits for that half minute, about $1.16 on monthly billing.

The catches are on the Creator plan itself. Creator users can't buy one-time credit packs, and Avatar V comes "with limited usage" on that plan. On monthly billing, unused credits roll over for one more month. Our HeyGen pricing post breaks down every HeyGen plan.

Creatify, for avatar ads from a product link

Creatify turns a product, app or service into ads, starting from a URL. Standard comes with 300 AI actors and AdFlow's templates, and the ad clone tool starts on Pro.

Standard is $15 a month, or $10 a month with annual billing. It gives you 55 credits a month and removes the watermark that Free plan exports carry. Avatar videos cost 5 credits per 15 seconds, rounded up. So a 30-second ad takes 10 credits. On monthly Standard, that's about $2.73, and with annual billing it's about $1.82.

On rights, Creatify's FAQ says "You own all of your creatives, even after your plan ends. You can use them in any channel without limitations." Its pricing page also lists "Full commercial license terms" among the Enterprise plan's extras.

Two things can trip you up. Credits expire after two months, and Creatify says the credits its Agent, Ad Flow and Ad Clone tools use can't be determined upfront. Our Creatify pricing post prices every plan.

InVideo, for a lip-synced creator from a product link

InVideo builds a UGC ad from a product or app link, your script and a description of the creator you want. Its agent then animates that creator with voice and lip-sync.

InVideo showed us Starter at €20 a month on monthly billing, for 400 credits a month. Billed annually, it showed €10 per seat a month under a "50% off" label, a discount we'd treat as a promotion rather than a standing price. InVideo's page for its performance ads says they're cleared for commercial use, including paid social and client work. A paid plan removes watermarks when you export, but projects you exported before subscribing keep theirs.

InVideo's model rate card prices VEED Fabric 1.0 at 3.80 to 9.60 credits a second. The low end is its 480p rate, and the high end is its 720p rate. Half a minute of it takes 114 to 288 credits. On monthly Starter, that's €5.70 to €14.40.

The top of that range is 72% of Starter's monthly credits. Starter's card rules out Seedance 2.5 and the full Seedance 2.0 and lists Seedance 2.0 Fast and Mini. It also says the available models depend on the plan, so we can't tell whether Fabric is on Starter. Unused credits don't roll over, and InVideo reserves the right to update credit costs without notice.

On October 30, 2026, InVideo's pricing page also showed a Halloween sale, 85% off a 2-year Max plan. Our InVideo pricing post covers its plans and credits.

How Novoads makes the same 30-second ad

Novoads makes UGC-style video ads from a script and an AI actor you pick from our library. You can also use it to generate video clips with models such as Seedance 2.0.

Our 40-second actor ad, and what it cost

The closest thing we've made to this post's ad is a 720p video from October 20, 2026. In it, Olivia, an actor from our library, uses the Alexandra voice to read a 112-word script about switching to linen sheets, written for people who sleep hot. The finished video ran 40.3 seconds and took 4 minutes 38 seconds to render. Every word of the script came through as written, and the render cost 200 credits, the price of one started minute.

Talking actor at 720p · Olivia reads a 40.3-second script about linen sheets for hot sleepers · 200 credits · rendered 2026-10-20

Where every tool above costs less

On its entry plan, every tool in the table with a presenter costs less than our talking actor for a 30-second video, including InVideo's Fabric at its lowest rate. At the top of its range, Fabric's €14.40 on monthly Starter is close to our $15.00 but in a different currency, so we wouldn't call that one either way.

Our talking actor costs more because we bill it by the started minute, so a 30-second ad costs as much as a one-minute ad. A started minute costs 200 credits at 720p. At 480p, it's half that.

• On Starter, one of these ads costs $15.00, all 200 of the month's credits.
• On Plus, it's $9.80.
• On Plus billed annually, it's $7.80.
• At 480p, each of these costs half.

Novoads pricing on monthly billing, Starter, Plus and Ultra with their monthly credits · taken 2026-10-30

Where Novoads catches up

A full minute is where started-minute billing helps. A one-minute actor ad costs the same 200 credits as a half-minute one. InVideo bills Fabric by the second, so a minute at its top rate is 576 credits, more than InVideo Starter's 400 monthly credits.

Generated clips are the other place we catch up. A five-second Seedance 2.0 clip at 720p costs 23 credits in Novoads. That's $1.73 on Starter and $1.13 on Plus. Creatify's Standard card says its monthly credits cover 7 such videos. On monthly billing, that puts one at about $1.88 to $2.14, more than ours on any monthly plan. With Creatify's annual billing, the range drops to $1.25 to $1.43, which is cheaper than our Starter but still more than our Plus.

The cheapest way to make a 30-second ad in Novoads skips the actor. Two 15-second Seedance 2.0 Mini clips make up the 30 seconds. At 720p, they take 30 credits.

• On Starter, that's $2.25.
• On Plus, it's $1.47.
• On Plus billed annually, it's $1.17.
• At 480p, the pair costs about 78 cents on Plus.

That route gives you two generated clips rather than an actor reading your script, so it suits product shots and scenes more than a testimonial. Our pricing FAQ says "All videos generated with Novoads are fully licensed for commercial use." You pay for Novoads from the first month, and our pricing page lists every plan and its credits.

Choosing by how long your ads run and how many you make

If your ads run 30 seconds or less

Billing by the second or by the half minute keeps a short presenter ad cheap, so cost per ad won't often decide between HeyGen, Fliki and Creatify. We'd choose among them by the presenter you like and by whether you start from a script or a product link.

If they run a full minute

A price set by the second or the half minute doubles at 60 seconds, while a price per started minute stays the same. Before you commit, check that a minute-long ad still fits inside the plan you'd buy.

By how many you make a month

• On Lumen5 Basic, you can make as many videos as you like, though narrated ones draw on its AI voice minutes.
• HeyGen Creator's 600 credits cover about 38 thirty-second Avatar IV videos.
• Fliki Standard's 180 credits cover about 21 thirty-second videos with a stock avatar on screen.
• Creatify Standard's 55 credits cover 5 thirty-second avatar videos.
• Novoads Plus covers 5 talking-actor ads of up to a minute each, and Starter covers 1.

Download your Pictory library first, then price your next ad at its real length on the plan you'd actually buy.