Runway ML guide: plans, prices and models, updated weekly

Updated 26 Sep 2026 · next update 3 Oct 2026

Key facts as of 26 Sep 2026

• Plans: Standard $12, Pro $28 and Max $76 a month billed annually ($15, $35 and $95 billed monthly); Free gives 125 one-time credits. (source)
• Gen-4.5 in the app: 12 credits a second, so Standard's 625 monthly credits buy 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 video. (source)
• Rollover: Standard and Pro credits reset each billing cycle; Max carries up to one month over; bought top-ups (minimum 1,000 credits) never expire. (source)
• Team plan (from 4 Sep 2026): $69 a seat a month, or $55 billed annually, for 2 to 9 seats; each seat adds 6,900 credits a month to one shared pool. (source)
• API price: a Runway Dev credit costs $0.01 and Gen-4.5 costs 12 credits a second, so $0.12 a second (12 x $0.01). (source)
• One credit pool (from 18 Sep 2026): credits bought from Runway work in both the web app and Runway Dev. (source)
• Inside other editors: a free Runway plugin runs in DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 or later (from 23 Sep 2026), after the Premiere Pro and After Effects plugin; generating uses paid-plan credits. (source)
• Funding: a $315 million Series E led by General Atlantic at a $5.3 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported on 10 Feb 2026. (source)
• Revenue: annual recurring revenue reached $200 million in September 2026 after doubling in five months, co-CEO Anastasis Germanidis told Bloomberg. (source)

Today's line

Runway spent September putting its models inside other companies' software, with plugins for Adobe's editors and DaVinci Resolve, and it hosts its Runway AI Summit in San Francisco on 30 September. (source)

What Runway is

Runway is a New York-based AI research company that makes generative video, image and audio tools, founded in 2018 by Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala Ortiz and Anastasis Germanidis, according to Crunchbase News. It sells those tools to creators and companies through its web app and to developers through the Runway Dev API. Its about page says Runway is building AI to simulate the world and calls world models the clearest path to general-purpose simulation.

Runway lists offices in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Paris, Tel Aviv and Tokyo on that page. On 8 September 2026 it said the team from Kinetix, a Paris lab working on 3D human motion, is joining its Paris hub; the same announcement names Germanidis as co-CEO.

The money behind it: a $315 million Series E led by General Atlantic at a $5.3 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported on 10 February 2026. Crunchbase News put the previous valuation at $3.3 billion, at the $308 million Series D, and Runway's total raised at $860 million. Bloomberg reported on 8 September 2026 that Runway's annual recurring revenue had reached $200 million, doubling over five months, citing an interview with Germanidis.

What Runway costs

Runway sells credits. Each generation spends a set number that depends on the model, the length and the resolution, according to Runway's pricing page.

• Free: $0, 125 credits once.
• Standard: $12 a month billed annually ($15 monthly), 625 credits a month.
• Pro: $28 a month billed annually ($35 monthly), 2,250 credits a month.
• Max: $76 a month billed annually ($95 monthly), 9,500 credits a month, with up to one month of rollover.
• Team: $55 a seat a month billed annually ($69 monthly), 2 to 9 seats, 6,900 pooled credits per seat a month, per the Team plan announcement.
• Enterprise: no public price; the Team announcement sends teams that need SSO or more than nine seats there.

In the app, Gen-4.5 costs 60 credits per 5 seconds and Aleph 2.0 costs 140 credits per 5 seconds. Developers buy credits at $0.01 each on Runway Dev, where gen4.5 costs 12 credits a second and gen4_turbo 5; a request sent through Model Router is billed at the rate of whichever model the router picks, according to the same page.

Since 18 September 2026, purchased credits work across both the web app and Runway Dev from one pool, and new enterprise customers who sign by 31 December 2026 get 10% more credits, according to Runway's unified pricing post.

What Runway does

Its own models. Gen-4.5 is Runway's video model, released on 1 December 2025; Runway said at launch that it ranked first on the Artificial Analysis text-to-video benchmark with 1,247 Elo points (Runway research). Aleph 2.0 restyles and edits footage that already exists, and Gen-4 Image makes stills. The pricing page also lists outside models on the same credits, including Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.0 and 2.5 and Nano Banana Pro, plus audio models such as Lyria 3 and Seed Audio 1.0 and text to speech.

Finishing tools. Enhance Frame Rate, launched on 17 September 2026, converts video up to 4K and five minutes long to 25, 30, 48, 60 or 120 fps, including 59.94, for one credit per two seconds of video.

Inside editing software. Runway's plugin puts a panel in Premiere Pro and After Effects (from 8 September 2026) and in DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 or later (from 23 September 2026). Its Edit Studio sends the clip under the playhead to Aleph 2.0 and brings the restyled version back at the same length.

For developers. Runway Dev sells Runway's models and outside models by the credit, and Model Router picks a model per request. In Runway's own test of 250 image-to-video prompts, a quality router capped at $1.00 a clip produced 74% usable clips at $0.61 each, against 78% at $1.80 for always using Seedance 2.5. Every figure in that test is Runway's own.

Research. GWM Worlds 2, shown on 3 September 2026 as a research preview, generates an explorable world as continuous 720p video at 24 fps with 48,000 Hz audio, steered by text actions and camera moves.

Who Runway is for

Individual creators buy Standard, Pro or Max; groups of 2 to 9 buy Team; larger companies buy Enterprise; developers buy Runway Dev credits. Runway's head of operations and partnerships, Michelle Kwon, told Crunchbase News that its customers include every major film studio, along with advertising, gaming and architecture firms, and named companies such as Chime, Robinhood and PayPal.

For people who want to work with Runway rather than buy it, Runway launched DIFFUSE on 22 September 2026, a platform where brands, agencies and studios find and hire AI-native creative talent. Runway said 17% of the more than 1,000 creative job postings it studied mention AI skills or generative tools.

The Runway diary

Dated entries, newest first. Each entry is added once and never rewritten; corrections are made in a new entry.

26 Sep 2026

The hub opens. This first entry records the three weeks of Runway news the page starts from. Runway published a cost-versus-quality test of Model Router on 24 September: a quality router capped at $1.00 a clip kept a 74% usable rate at $0.61, against 78% at $1.80 for Seedance 2.5 alone. Source: Runway.

On 23 September Runway released a free plugin for DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 and later, on macOS and Windows, with generation on paid-plan credits. Source: Runway.

On 22 September Runway launched DIFFUSE, a hiring platform for AI-native creative talent. Source: Runway.

On 18 September purchased credits became usable in both the web app and Runway Dev, with 10% more credits for new enterprise customers who sign by 31 December 2026. Source: Runway.

On 17 September Enhance Frame Rate arrived, converting video to 25 to 120 fps for one credit per two seconds. Source: Runway.

On 8 September Bloomberg reported that Runway's annual recurring revenue had reached $200 million. The same day Runway shipped its Premiere Pro and After Effects plugin and said the Kinetix team was joining. Sources: Bloomberg, Runway, Runway.

On 4 September the Team plan launched at $55 to $69 a seat, and on 3 September Runway showed GWM Worlds 2 as a research preview. Sources: Runway, Runway.

What changed this week

First edition, so there is no earlier edition to compare against. In the seven days to 26 Sep 2026, Runway published its Model Router benchmark (24 Sep), shipped the DaVinci Resolve plugin (23 Sep) and launched DIFFUSE (22 Sep); each is sourced in the diary above. The 3 Oct 2026 edition will be measured against this one.

SLOP TV's Runway coverage

• The AI video model is not the product any more (26 Sep 2026)
• Runway's test: a $1 cap cut per-clip video cost 66% (26 Sep 2026)
• Runway Labs demos video that redesigns itself to fit the frame (22 Sep 2026)
• 5 Real-Time AI Video Systems Ranked, From Shipped API to Research Preview (21 Sep 2026)
• Runway Wants AI Video to Stream as You Prompt It, Frame by Frame (21 Sep 2026)
• This week in Theoretically Media: The GPT-6 & Runway Workflow That Remade an AI Short Film in About a Day and a Half (21 Sep 2026)
• Runway Unifies Credit Pools Across Web App and API, Adds Enterprise Sign-Up Bonuses (20 Sep 2026)
• Sora's API Is Shutting Down as Higgsfield Hits $5.4 Billion: The AI Video Model Isn't the Product Anymore (19 Sep 2026)
• Runway's API Adds Enhance Frame Rate, Converting Video Up to 120 fps for $0.05 Per 10 Seconds (19 Sep 2026)
• Runway's Adobe Plugin Puts Gen-4.5, Veo 3.1 & Aleph 2.0 Inside Premiere Pro and After Effects (19 Sep 2026)
• Runway Reaches $200 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue, Doubling Since April, & Adds Kinetix (19 Sep 2026)