How to price an AI video product with credits
Why credits work better than unlimited plans for AI video, and a simple way to set credit prices so every video earns more than it costs.
Kamal, . 4 min read
Every AI video your customer makes costs you money at the moment it is made. That one fact shapes how an AI video product has to be priced, and it is why most of them, including Scripts Viral, use credits.
Why "unlimited" does not work for video
A normal software subscription costs you roughly the same whether a customer logs in once or every day. AI video does not. Each video is billed to you by the provider that generated it, and longer or higher quality videos cost more.
So an unlimited plan quietly means your best customers are your least profitable ones. The person who makes 300 videos a month pays the same as the person who makes three, and you pay for all 303.
Credits fix that. Each video costs a number of credits, each plan buys a number of credits a month, and your margin is decided before anyone signs up.
A simple way to set credit prices
You need three numbers.
1. What a video costs you
Start from the provider's own price list or your bill, not an estimate. Work out the cost of each format you offer at the length you allow. A 10-second clip and a 45-second video with a voice are different products with different costs.
Include everything that runs for that video: the generation itself, any voice, any images made along the way, and storage. Leave hosting out; that is a fixed cost you cover across all customers.
2. What a credit is worth to the customer
Pick a credit price on your cheapest plan. For example, if your entry plan gives 2,000 credits a month, divide that plan's monthly price by 2,000: that is what one credit is worth to that customer.
3. How many credits each format costs
Now set each format's credit price so that, even on the plan where credits are cheapest, the customer pays clearly more than the video costs you. The margin you choose has to cover the videos that fail and get refunded, your hosting, support and your own time, so leave real room.
A quick check: take your most expensive format, multiply its credit price by the credit value on your cheapest-per-credit plan, and compare that with what the video costs you. If it does not leave a comfortable margin there, it will not leave one anywhere.
Plans: give people a reason to move up
Higher plans should make each credit cheaper. How many plans you offer, and at what prices, is your call; there is no right number. What matters is that each step up buys more credits for the money. That gives a growing customer a reason to upgrade instead of leaving, and it rewards the customers who use the product most without giving them unlimited use.
Refunds belong in the price
Some videos will fail. A model times out, a provider has a bad hour, an input does not work. When that happens, give the credits back automatically. Customers who never had to ask for a refund stay longer.
Plan for it in your margin rather than treating each refund as a loss. A platform where failed videos refund on their own is one customers trust with their money.
Watch the real numbers every month
Prices change, on both sides. Providers update their prices and release new models; your customers change what they make. The only defence is a view of money in against money out each month, down to what each video cost and what the customer paid for it.
If that view does not exist, you are guessing whether your plans make money. On Scripts Viral it is one of the screens we look at most.
Getting this right from day one
Pricing is easier to set at launch than to fix later, because changing the credit cost of a format your customers already use feels like a price rise. When Picturewright builds a platform, we set the credit prices with you, before launch, from the real cost of each format in your niche.
If you are planning an AI video product and want to talk through the numbers, get in touch.