Timeline
Nothing here is free. It is one of five arrangements.
Generating video is expensive to run, so nothing in this category is free in the way a text tool can be. “Free” always means one of about five specific arrangements, and which one decides whether the output is usable for what you had in mind.
Five kinds of free
What the word is actually doing
Most tools combine two or three of these. The combination is the offer, and it is set out on the pricing page rather than the landing page.
Free for a while
A trial with an end date. Fine for deciding whether a tool suits you, no use at all as the basis of an ongoing workflow.
Free up to a credit allowance
The most common arrangement. Credits are consumed per second of output, so the useful question is not how many credits you get but how many seconds of finished video they buy — and since generation is stochastic, how many attempts per usable clip.
Free with a watermark
Unlimited output that you cannot publish. Genuinely useful for storyboarding and previsualisation, where the point is to see whether the shot works.
Free at reduced quality
Lower resolution, lower frame rate, shorter maximum clip, or a slower queue. The output is clean and small, and how much that matters depends entirely on where it is going.
Free for personal use only
The one that causes actual trouble. It is a licence restriction rather than a technical limit, so nothing stops you — the file has no watermark and looks finished. It is the most frequently missed condition in the category.
Whether you may use a clip commercially is a separate question from whether the tool will let you download it, and the two frequently disagree. Commercial use, client work, resale and use in a paid product are sometimes treated as four different permissions. All of it is written down by the vendor, it changes, and the vendor's own current terms are the only authority worth relying on — including over anything written here.
Before you invest time
Questions with published answers
None of these require testing. They are stated by the vendor, and checking them takes a few minutes against the hours a workflow costs to build.
| Question | Why it decides things |
|---|---|
| Do credits expire? | A monthly allowance that does not roll over cannot be saved up for one larger project. |
| Are failed generations refunded? | Output is stochastic, so this quietly changes the real cost per usable clip by a large factor. |
| What is the maximum clip length? | Decides whether a finished piece is one generation or an editing job with continuity problems. |
| Is there a seed? | Without one, a generation you liked cannot be recovered or varied deliberately. |
| What happens if you stop paying? | Whether previously generated work stays downloadable is not a given, and is worth knowing before it matters. |
House rules
How this will be written
No invented numbers
No scores out of ten, no star ratings, no tier boards. Where something is better, it gets said in words and the reason is shown.
Only claims we can stand behind
Nothing describes a test that did not happen. Pricing and feature claims are checked against the vendor's own pages.
No paid placements
Nothing here is sponsored, and outbound links carry no affiliate tracking and earn no commission. No company pays to be included or to be written about more kindly.
This site is new and there are no tool write-ups on it yet. Nothing above states any particular vendor's credits, limits or licence terms, because those change and none have been checked here. When write-ups land they will cite the page each figure came from.