What Runway builds and what it resells
Runway plays two parts in this reference. It builds its own video model, and on the same API it resells ByteDance, Google and xAI. The second part matters to us more than the first, because its price list is the only place rival models are priced in one unit.
- Gen-4.5 is its own
- rivals on the same API
- one credit is one cent
Last checked: This is a reference page. It is re-checked against the vendor sources and updated when a new version ships. What changed
Model families
Runway own model line.
Versions
| Versions | Released | Status | Model families |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runway Gen-4.5 | current | Runway Gen |
Why this page matters in a reference about models
Because Runway is the only place several competing video models are priced in one unit. Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1, Grok Imagine 1.5, Hailuo 3 and Runway own model all sit in one table, all in credits per second. The page itself says a credit is bought at one cent, so converting to dollars is not a guess. When every vendor uses its own unit and some publish no price at all, a shop that sells them all becomes a source.
The number that gets odd once you read the table
Runway own model, Gen-4.5, is twelve credits per second, which is $0.12. The Seedance 2.0 it resells is thirty six credits at 480p and 720p, and a hundred and fifty credits at 4K, which is $1.50 a second. So the most expensive video in the shop costs twelve times the cheapest one Runway makes, and neither of them is Runway.
Gen-4 Turbo sits at five credits a second, the cheapest video on the whole list. Runway beats its rivals on price and finishes last in our ranking table, because that table measures capability rather than cost.
Something Runway sells that Google does not
On Runway list, Veo 3.1 carries two prices: forty credits a second with audio and twenty without. Google own pricing page prices only video with audio and has no silent row at all, because audio in Veo is always on. So a reseller is offering an option the maker never printed. We are writing this down because we ran into it ourselves while building the video table.
A line this page does not cross
Runway also has a consumer app and we write nothing about it. Everything here comes from the API documentation and the terms of use. Consumer plan prices, in-app limits and whether any of it opens from Iran do not come out of those two pages, and we do not guess.
What it is good at
- the only place several rival video models carry a price in one unit and one currency
- prices by second of output, which is a unit you can actually compare
- Gen-4 Turbo at five credits a second is the cheapest video on the whole list
- its OpenAPI schema is public, so real model ceilings can be read rather than taken from marketing
Where it falls short
- Runway own model finishes last in our video ranking, and not narrowly.
- The price list does not cover everything: Kling is absent, so a dollar comparison of our four candidates stays incomplete.
- It publishes no country list and its terms cite US export control, so the Iran column on this page reads unknown.
- Nothing here describes the consumer app or its plans, because none of that comes out of the API docs.
Our take
If you want to try several video models without opening accounts at several vendors, the Runway API is the most sensible place to start. If you are after the best output quality, Runway own model is not what you are buying there.
Questions people actually ask
Does Runway build its own model or resell other people models?
Both. Gen-4.5, Gen-4 Turbo and Aleph 2 are its own. Seedance, Veo, Grok Imagine, Hailuo and the image and audio models on its list belong to other vendors.
What is a Runway credit worth?
Its own pricing page says credits are bought at $0.01 each in the developer portal. So twelve credits per second is $0.12 per second.