We build free calculators that answer one question AI tool vendors make surprisingly hard: given how much content I actually produce, what will this cost me per month?
Pricing pages list tiers. They don't tell you which tier fits your workload, what happens when you run out of credits, or whether the cheap plan even allows commercial use. That gap is what these tools close.
Who runs this
AI Content Cost is run by an independent short-form video creator, not a media company. The daily production pipeline behind our channels — scripting, AI voice over, image generation, editing — is exactly the workflow these tools serve, which is why the calculators model the questions a working creator actually has: commercial rights, hard caps, and what happens at real monthly volumes.
How we keep the numbers right
Every figure is checked against the vendor's own pricing page, and we date-stamp the last verification on each tool.
When a vendor's page can't be read programmatically, the row is labelled APPROX and the number comes from cross-checked third-party sources — we tell you rather than quietly guessing.
We re-check on a fixed schedule, because these prices move. ElevenLabs changed its plan quotas in 2026 and a large share of comparison articles still quote the old numbers.
Everything runs in your browser. Scripts you paste into the calculator are never uploaded, stored, or sent anywhere. There is no account, no signup, and no tracking of what you type.
Verification log
Every pricing check we run, on the record:
2026-09-22 — Pictory re-verified after its AI Studio launch: prices unchanged, and the new AI credits do not change the maths. Monthly Starter $29 (200 min), Professional $59 (600), Team $199 (1,800); annual $25/$35/$119 per month — identical to our August check. What is new: every plan now bundles "AI credits" for image, video and avatar generation (100 / 500 / 2,400 per month on monthly billing). They are included in the plan price, not billed separately, so our minute-based ranking stays valid and no figure on this site moved. The free-trial terms are still absent from the pricing page, so that row keeps its APPROX label.
2026-09-02 — Background music guide published; four music services verified in one pass. Epidemic Sound (Creator $9.99/mo billed $119.88/yr, Pro $16.99/mo billed $203.88/yr — the official page displays yearly-billed rates only, so we quote those and say so), Uppbeat (Essentials $6.99 / Creator $8.99 / Pro $14.99 / Business $34.99, as displayed with yearly billing), Artlist (Music & SFX "starting at $9.99/mo" — the full tier ladder only appears in checkout; the pricing page now leads with AI bundles such as Max at $50.66/mo billed annually), and ElevenLabs Music (commercial-use-cleared generation included in paid plans, drawing on plan credits). One honest gap: we could not verify Epidemic's monthly-billing rate without entering checkout, so we don't print one. Also on the record: only the ElevenLabs link in that guide pays us — Epidemic, Artlist, Uppbeat and YouTube pay us nothing and are ranked anyway.
2026-08-19 — The Pictory code is confirmed permanent — and here is our incentive, on the record. Pictory's affiliate manager confirmed by email that ACCAc20 is a "forever" code: it keeps working on renewals and future purchases, not just the first payment, so we now say so next to the links. Two more things from that same email, disclosed in full: our commission is paid once, on a referred subscriber's first qualifying purchase — which means we would earn several times more if you start on an annual plan than a monthly one. And yes, annual + the 20% code genuinely works out to 50%+ below the monthly list rate — the calculator's own arithmetic already showed annual as cheaper before anyone suggested it. The rankings stay list-price arithmetic either way; we're telling you our incentive so you can discount it.
2026-08-18 — We now have a Pictory discount code, and it is deliberately excluded from the maths. Pictory's affiliate team issued us a reader code (ACCAc20, 20% off). We show it next to the Pictory links because it saves you money. We do not apply it to any comparison: every figure on this site stays a list price. If we discounted the one tool that hands us a code, the "cheapest" badge would start reflecting our commercial relationships instead of your workload — which is the exact failure mode this site exists to avoid. We have also not yet verified whether the discount is one-off or recurring, so we make no claim about its duration.
2026-08-13 — Murf Dub added to the dubbing calculator, verified on Murf's own pricing page (Dub tab): pay-as-you-go at 2 credits per minute per language, credits from $0.25 at the best rate — a flat $0.50 per dubbed minute with no subscription, confirmed against the calculator on Murf's page (10 min × 1 language = $5). The free trial (100 credits) is watermarked. This is the only pay-as-you-go option in our dubbing comparison, and it wins for irregular workloads.
2026-08-13 — ElevenLabs Starter corrected to $6/month across the site. Our calculator data had the correct $6 from launch, but prose on six pages still said $5 — an inconsistency on our side, spotted via ElevenLabs' own affiliate newsletter and re-verified on the official pricing page. Also confirmed there: Creator's first-month 50% discount ($11). Fixed everywhere the same day. This log exists precisely so you can see when we get something wrong.
2026-08-09 — Pictory and InVideo verified on their official pricing pages. Pictory monthly: Starter $29 (200 video min), Professional $59 (600), Team $199 (1,800); annual: $25/$35/$119 per month for 2,400/7,200/21,600 minutes per year. InVideo annual (15% off): Plus $17/mo (75 credits), Max $85/mo (390), Generative $170/mo (800), Elite $900/mo (4,250). Note on InVideo: its quotas are credits that burn at different rates per AI model, and the page illustrates them in image generations, never in video minutes — so we rank Pictory by minutes and describe InVideo's billing model separately rather than inventing a conversion. Also worth knowing: InVideo's free plan is real but is not listed anywhere on its pricing page.
2026-08-08 — LOVO (Genny) removed from all comparisons. Lovo Inc. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in May 2026 amid a voice-actor lawsuit, and lovo.ai now returns HTTP 402 across every endpoint. Reports indicate the site continued selling subscriptions after the filing. We do not rank a service that cannot deliver, so it is gone from the calculator and from our PlayHT migration guide rather than left in with an out-of-date price.
2026-08-08 — Murf fully verified on the official pricing page; APPROX label removed. Monthly: Creator $29 (2 hrs/month), Business $99 (8 hrs/month). Annual: Creator $19/mo ($228/yr, 24 hrs/year), Business $66/mo ($792/yr, 96 hrs/year). Worth knowing: on annual billing the allowance is an annual pool you can draw down unevenly, while monthly billing is a strict per-month cap — the effective rate is identical, so we model both as 120 and 480 minutes per month. Free tier is 10 minutes total (not per month) with no commercial rights.
2026-08-05 — Free-tier comparison published; HeyGen plans re-verified against the official pricing page (Creator is 600 credits/month — several comparison articles still cite an outdated 200).
2026-08-04 — Dubbing rates verified: ElevenLabs 3,000 credits/min watermark-free (official help center), HeyGen 2/5 credits per minute (official), Speechify 3 credits/second (official), Dubverse 4 credits/min (official). Rask remains APPROX (vendor page unreadable; cross-checked against three independent sources).
2026-08-04 — Speechify Studio yearly pricing confirmed on the official page ("7 months free" → $7.92/mo Starter). Murf and LOVO cross-checked against multiple third-party sources; zero corrections needed, APPROX labels retained until direct page verification.
2026-08-04 — Initial launch data set: ElevenLabs 2026 quotas (Creator 121k / Pro 600k credits) verified against the official pricing page.
How this site makes money
Some outbound "Try" buttons are affiliate links. If you subscribe to a product through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
What commissions do not buy: they never affect the pricing data, the ranking, or which provider gets the "cheapest" badge. That badge is assigned by arithmetic on the numbers you entered — including to providers that pay us nothing. Where a raw API is genuinely cheaper than every subscription we sell, we say so.
Not every provider we list has an affiliate programme, and we list them anyway. A comparison that only includes tools that pay us isn't a comparison.
Contact
Spotted a price that's out of date or a plan we've modelled wrong? That's the most useful thing you can send us — write to hello@aicontentcost.com and we'll correct it.