Arcads Pricing (2026): 8,000 Credits Buy 10 Minutes of Talking Actors

Direct answer

Arcads does not publish prices — they appear only on the in-app paywall. Its help center does publish the credit rules: Starter includes 8,000 credits a month, Creator 16,000, and a talking AI actor costs 800 credits per minute per actor, so Starter buys 10 minutes (about twenty 30-second ads) and Creator 20. Third-party paywall reports from August 2026 put Starter at $110 a month list ($77 on a 30% promotion), Creator at $220 ($154) and Pro at $550 ($385). On Starter and Creator that is $7.70–$11.00 per finished talking-actor minute. The 3-day trial auto-charges Starter if you do not cancel.

Last verified

Oct 3, 2026

How we know

Desk-verified against primary sources

Note

Includes third-party reporting — flagged in text

Sources

9 linked

Evidence used

• Plan credits, the block-at-limit rule, rollover and overage were read in Arcads' help center ("How to buy more credits", updated Jul 30, 2026) on Oct 3, 2026.
• The 800-credits-per-minute actor rate and every model and tool rate come from Arcads' "How are credits counted" article (updated Apr 29, 2026), read Oct 3, 2026.
• Trial and refund rules are quoted from Arcads' refund policy; licence terms from arcads.ai/terms (in force Sep 22, 2026). Both read Oct 3, 2026.
• Dollar prices are third-party: Arcads has no pricing page (arcads.ai/pricing returns 404). Figures come from paywall observations dated Aug 4 and Aug 24, 2026, one of them published by Creatify, a competitor.
• Per-minute and per-ad dollar figures are our arithmetic: reported price ÷ (plan credits ÷ 800).

How we checked this

• Every credit figure is Arcads' own; every dollar figure is labelled with who reported it and when. Confirm the amount due and the renewal amount on the paywall before you pay.
• The cost math assumes one talking actor and no retakes, then shows what retakes and other tools add.

Why you can't find Arcads' prices — and what has been reported

Arcads has no public pricing page; prices render only inside the app at the paywall, in USD and before tax. Paywall reports from August 2026 agree on Starter $110, Creator $220 and Pro $550 a month at list, shown at 30% off as $77, $154 and $385, with annual billing about 20% below list.

Search "arcads pricing" and most of what ranks is a competitor's blog — because Arcads itself publishes nothing to rank. arcads.ai/pricing returns a 404, the site map has no pricing page, and the plan cards render only after you sign up. Arcads' terms say prices are "indicated in USD" and are "exclusive of any local, national or foreign taxes", so the checkout total can land above the card price.

The dollar figures in circulation come from people who screenshotted the paywall. Two dated reports agree: Advibly saw Starter at $77 "displayed as 30% off $110", Creator at $154 off $220 and Pro at $385 off $550 on Aug 4, 2026; Creatify's blog — written by a direct competitor, so read it with that in mind — reported the same three prices on Aug 24, plus a $29 Lite tier with 1,800 credits and no talking actors, and annual billing at about $88, $176 and $440 a month.

Where the reports disagree is Pro's allowance: most say 40,000 credits, Creatify's August report says 48,000. Arcads' own help center names Starter (8,000) and Creator (16,000) but routes Pro and larger plans through sales — "Higher volumes benefit from a lower cost per credit". Treat every dollar figure here as a dated observation, and screenshot the amount due and the renewal amount before you confirm.

What 8,000 credits actually buy

A talking AI actor costs 800 credits per minute, per actor, rounded up. Starter's 8,000 credits are 10 minutes: twenty 30-second ads or forty 15-second ones, first takes only. A two-actor dialogue bills both actors. Video models, upscaling and the hook repurposer draw on the same pool.

Arcads' help center is unusually exact here: "Talking Actor – Arcads 1.0 → 800 credits per minute, per actor", the same rate for its Audio-Driven and OmniHuman 1.5 actors, and "Length is always rounded up." Everything else is priced off that pool, so the useful way to read a plan is in finished minutes, not credits.

At the reported prices that works out to $11.00 per talking-actor minute at list on both Starter and Creator — Creator buys twice the volume, not a cheaper minute — or $7.70 on the 30% promotion. Pro is the only tier where it can improve: $9.17 a minute at list if it carries 48,000 credits, but still $11.00 if it carries 40,000. A 30-second single-actor ad therefore costs about $3.85–$5.50 before any retake.

The pool also pays for the generative side. Arcads lists Veo 3.1 at 800 credits per generation, Sora 2 at 240–1,200, Kling 3.0 at 176–560 and Seedance 2.0 at 96–1,620 depending on resolution, plus 240 to translate a video, 800 to run the hook repurposer and 80 credits per 10 seconds to upscale. One Veo 3.1 clip costs the same as a minute of a talking actor, which is why B-roll-heavy ads drain Starter far faster than the actor math suggests. Image generation on Nano Banana Pro and Seedream is free up to 100 images a day.

Running out, rollover and the retake tax

Starter and Creator stop at the limit: Arcads temporarily blocks the account until credits reset, and unused credits do not roll over. Pro is never blocked — extra usage is billed per credit — and Pro, Scale and Business credits roll over and accumulate while the subscription stays active.

The help center spells out the split. On Starter and Creator, "Your account will be temporarily blocked once you reach your monthly credit limit" and "Credits reset each cycle and do not roll over." On Pro, "Your account will not be blocked if you exceed your monthly credit limit. Any additional usage will be charged per extra credit," and unused credits "roll over to your next cycle and accumulate, as long as your subscription stays active." A busy month on Starter ends in a hard stop; a quiet one forfeits what is left.

Budget for retakes, because the refund policy will not cover them. Credits come back only when a generation fails on Arcads' side; "Poor output quality alone — for example, unsatisfying lip sync, unexpected accents, or results that don't match your creative vision — does not qualify for credit reimbursement." If one ad in three needs a second take, Starter's twenty 30-second ads become about fifteen, and the effective price per usable ad rises by a third.

One documentation wrinkle to know: the credit table prices captions at 80 credits, while Arcads' captions article says the first generation costs 8. Check the cost the app shows before you confirm a batch.

The 3-day trial, refunds and the 72-hour rule

Arcads offers a 3-day trial that auto-charges the Starter plan if you do not cancel within 72 hours. A paid period in which you used zero credits is refundable in full if you ask within 30 days; otherwise refunds are narrow, and the 30-day window is firm.

The trial is real — several third-party pricing pages say there is none, but Arcads' homepage says "Free trial available" and its refund policy describes it — and it converts on its own: "If your 3-day trial ended without you cancelling, your saved card was automatically charged for the Starter plan." Set a reminder for day two, not day three.

The refund rules are more generous than most in this category. If you were charged for a period and "used zero generation credits", Arcads refunds the full amount when you ask within 30 days. There is also a one-time courtesy refund within 24 hours of your first charge if you used no credits, and a 7-day window to recover the lower plan's price if you upgraded to reach a specific feature. After any use, money does not come back; failed generations return credits, not cash.

Renewals follow the terms, not the help center: the subscription must be cancelled "no later than 72 hours before the end of the current Period". That clause matters given Arcads' Trustpilot record — 2.7 from 179 reviews when we read it on Oct 3, 2026, where the complaints we saw most often were charges after cancelling, unanswered support emails and credits running out fast. Cancel early and keep the confirmation email.

What the licence lets you do with the ads

Arcads sells to businesses only and licenses rather than assigns the videos: a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to reproduce, distribute, broadcast and market them, with a closed list of permitted edits. Breaching the actor-use restrictions carries a €500,000 lump-sum indemnity per breach.

Arcads' terms (in force Sep 22, 2026) define the client as "a professional" acting within a commercial activity — this is not a consumer product. The video licence covers the commercial basics: the right to "reproduce and the right to fix the Video" and to "distribute, broadcast and market the Video". What you may change is enumerated: "cropping, add music, text and subtitle, emoji, B-rolls, Gifs, sound effect, changing the format of the Video, affixing the Client's name, brand and logo."

Two clauses deserve a careful read before a client campaign. Breaching the restrictions on how the actors ("Video Models") may be used makes the client liable for "a lump-sum indemnity of 500.000,00 euros (five hundred thousand euros) per breach", and if an actor withdraws and you do not take their videos down, the penalty is "a hundred (100) euros per day of delay." In the other direction, what you upload is licensed to Arcads, including "the right to train FRESHR's artificial intelligence models" — FRESHR being the company behind Arcads.

That is a narrower position than Creatify's, whose terms assign you the copyright in what you make. If ownership of the creative matters to you or your client, the Arcads vs Creatify comparison sets the two licences side by side.

Which Arcads plan fits which team

Starter fits a brand testing up to about twenty 30-second actor ads a month. Creator doubles the volume at the same per-minute rate. Pro is the tier for agencies: rollover, overage instead of a hard stop, custom voices, cloning yourself and live support. Below ten actor-minutes a month, Arcads is expensive.

Pick on monthly actor-minutes, retakes included. Up to 10 a month is Starter; 10 to 20 is Creator; past that, Pro's rollover and per-credit overage stop a campaign from stalling mid-month. Pro is also where the agency features live: custom voices and ElevenLabs import are "PRO account only", "Clone yourself" costs 1,600 credits per video and is "available exclusively on the PRO plan", and personalized guidance and live support are "fully available for pro clients".

If your volume is lower, Arcads' credit structure works against you: you pay for a 10-minute block whether you use it or not, and nothing carries over. Creatify publishes a Starter plan at $39 a month, or $19 billed annually, for 5 minutes of avatar video, with a free plan to test on first — the side-by-side cost per ad shows where each one is cheaper.

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