Type “free AI video generator” into a search box and you’ll get a page of tools that are free in the loosest sense of the word. Most of them hand you a few credits, stamp a watermark on the clip and keep the commercial rights for paying customers. We went through the pricing and help pages of six generators that still let you make a video for nothing as of September 2026 (Google Flow, Kling, Hailuo, Runway, Adobe Firefly and Higgsfield), and we also note three big names that quietly stopped being free this year. We checked everything below against the vendors’ own pages on 28 September 2026. For still images rather than video, see the best AI image generators.
- Google Flow has the most generous free tier we could verify. Every account gets 50 credits a day and a Veo 3.1 Lite clip costs 10, so you can make up to five short Veo clips daily without paying.
- Kling and Hailuo give you daily or sign-up credits, but the downloads are watermarked and commercial rights only come with a paid membership.
- Runway’s free plan is 125 credits, once. They never refresh. Adobe Firefly and Higgsfield both offer a few free generations, but neither publishes a number.
- Sora is gone, Pika’s free tier has zero monthly credits and Luma lists no free plan at all. Any guide that still calls them free hasn’t been updated.
How free tiers work now
Two years ago a free tier meant a fixed bundle of credits when you signed up, and a paywall once they ran out. That has mostly given way to daily allowances that reset each day and don’t roll over. The details that matter tend to sit on three different pages, though. You need to know whether the allowance is per day, per month or a one-off, whether the download carries a visible watermark, and whether the licence lets you use the clip commercially. For free generations, several vendors say in plain words that it doesn’t. We haven’t run a quality shoot-out and we don’t rank these tools on how their footage looks. What follows is what each vendor documents.
The free tiers compared
Prices are the vendors’ list prices. Google and Adobe showed us EU pricing, so those two are in euros including VAT. Everything else is in US dollars.
| Tool | Free allowance | Watermark on free | Commercial use on free | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Google FlowVeo 3.1, Gemini Omni Flash | 50 credits a day Veo 3.1 Lite 10, Fast 20, Quality 100 | SynthID only (invisible) | Not stated | AI Plus €4.99 / month, +200 credits |
 Kling AIKling 3.0 and 3.0 Omni | Daily credits amount shown in-app; 1080p | Yes, visible | No members only | Standard $10 / month list, 660 credits |
 Hailuo AIMiniMax, Hailuo 2.3 and H3 | 3-day unlimited trial then sign-up and login credits | Yes, visible | No watermark-free downloads only | Standard $14.99 / month list ($7.99 promotion), 1,000 credits |
 RunwayGen-4.5, Gen-4 Turbo | 125 credits, once never refresh, never expire | “No watermarks” listed from Standard | Not stated | Standard $15 / month ($12 annual), 625 credits |
 Adobe FireflyFirefly Video, Luma Ray3.14, Veo 3.1 | Free daily generations number not published | Not stated; Content Credentials | Firefly models “safe for commercial use” | Standard €11.35 / month, 2,000 credits |
 HiggsfieldKling, Seedance, Veo, Wan models | “Limited use”, 0 credits a few free generations | Not stated | No “not included” | Starter $19 / month billed annually, 270 credits |
Google Flow
Flow is Google’s video studio and, unusually, its help centre spells the free tier out: “With or without a subscription, you receive 50 Google Flow credits per day.” The refresh kicks in with your first generation of the day and unused credits don’t carry over. There’s one caveat: during peak hours, “roughly 2 PM to 5 PM UTC, you may not be able to generate videos without a subscription”.
How far 50 credits go depends on the model you pick. Veo 3.1 Lite costs 10 credits for a 4-, 6- or 8-second clip, Veo 3.1 Fast costs 20, and Veo 3.1 Quality costs 100 for an 8-second clip, so Quality is out of reach on a single day’s allowance. Google’s newer Gemini Omni Flash is cheaper at 720p, at 7 credits for 4 seconds and 15 for 10, and its 360p draft mode costs roughly half that. The Veo 3.1 variants handle text to video, first-frame and first-and-last-frame image to video, and reference “ingredients”; Lite and Fast can also extend clips. 1080p upscaling is for subscribers only, which means free output stays at 720p.
On rights, Google says every generated video carries SynthID, an imperceptible watermark, and nowhere does it mention a visible logo. The paid plans on Google’s EU pricing page are AI Plus at €4.99 a month with 200 extra Flow credits, Pro at €21.99 with 1,000, and Ultra from €99.99 with 10,000 or 25,000 depending on tier. Veo 3.1 and Flow are available in more than 140 countries. The same Google AI plans also cover the Gemini app, which we set against Claude and ChatGPT in Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.
Kling
Kling’s Basic plan costs nothing, and its own pages describe the deal without much spin: “you can start generating videos for free with daily credits”, “free generations include a watermark”, and free users “can generate high-quality 1080p videos”. You’ll only find the number of daily credits inside the app, not on the public pricing page, and Kling’s credits policy says amounts are “subject to platform announcement”. We’d treat it as a small allowance that can change.
The plan comparison is clear about where the free tier stops. You get one video per generation, whereas paid plans get four, no 4K and no video extension, and both “brand watermark removal” and “generated content is for commercial use” sit in the subscriber column. The current models are Kling 3.0 and 3.0 Omni with synchronised audio, plus a native 4K model for members. Standard is listed at $10 a month ($6.99 for the first month, then $8.80 on the monthly discount) for 660 credits, and Pro at $37 for 3,000.
Hailuo
Hailuo, made by MiniMax, opens with an offer none of the others make: “As a welcome gift for new users, we’re giving you 3 days of unlimited access.” Once the three days are up you drop to the free plan, where “the number of videos you can generate will depend on your remaining credits”, and those credits come from sign-up rewards and from logging in. Hailuo says the video quality is the same whether you pay or not. What you pay for is speed, volume and getting rid of the watermark.
The credit table is public. A 6-second, 768p clip on Hailuo 2.3 costs 25 credits, the same clip at 1080p costs 80, and 2.3 Fast is 15 credits at 768p. On rights the FAQ doesn’t hedge: “any videos you can download without watermarks are yours”. Watermark-free downloads are a paid feature, so a free download is watermarked and you can’t use it commercially. Standard is listed at $14.99 a month ($7.99 on promotion) for 1,000 credits and 6-second 1080p clips.
Runway
Runway still works the old way. The free plan gives you “125 one-time credits to explore Runway’s AI tools”, “a selection of generative creative models to test concepts” and 5 GB of storage. The help centre confirms those credits don’t expire, but they don’t refresh either, and free users can’t buy top-ups. To put that in perspective, Runway’s flagship Gen-4.5 costs 12 credits per second, so a 5-second clip is 60 credits. Whichever models the free plan opens up, you’re looking at roughly ten seconds of footage in total.
Runway’s pricing page doesn’t use the word watermark anywhere near the free plan. It does list “No watermarks” as a feature of Standard, at $15 a month or $12 billed annually, along with 625 credits, every model including Kling 3.0, and 4K upscaling. We’d take that as a fair hint about what happens on the free plan.
Adobe Firefly and Higgsfield
Adobe’s plans page says: “You don’t need a plan to get free daily generations across image, video, and audio, with access to popular models like Nano Banana and Luma Ray3.14. Limits refresh every day.” What it doesn’t say is how many video generations that means. The paid ladder is easier to read. Firefly Standard at €11.35 a month including VAT gives you 2,000 generative credits and “up to 20” 5-second videos, Pro at €22.73 doubles both, and Premium (regularly €227.38) adds unlimited use of the Firefly Video Model. Adobe’s promise that “outputs from Adobe Firefly AI models are safe for commercial use” applies to its own models; the partner models carry their own terms.
Higgsfield is an aggregator: one interface sitting over Kling, Seedance, Wan, Veo, Hailuo and its own models, priced per clip in credits. Its free plan is labelled “Limited use” with 0 monthly credits and commercial use “not included”. What you actually get are occasional free generations on selected models, for example three on its Genjutsu model at 720p when we looked. Paid plans are billed annually only, with Starter at $19 a month for 270 credits, Plus at $59 and Ultra at $99. A 5-second Kling 3.0 clip at 720p costs about 7 credits. The pricing page says nothing about watermarks on the free tier.
Licences and watermarks
What stopped being free
Free tier or paid plan
+Reasons to stay on a free tier
- You want to learn prompting. Flow’s 50 credits a day is enough to practise on Veo 3.1 every day
- The clips are for personal use, social posts or storyboards, where a watermark or 720p doesn’t matter
- You’re comparing models. Higgsfield, Hailuo and Firefly put third-party models under one login
- You only need a few seconds of footage and can wait for the daily reset
+Reasons to pay
- Anything commercial. Kling, Hailuo and Higgsfield keep those rights for members
- 1080p or 4K, longer clips and several videos per generation are paid features almost everywhere
- Peak-hour access. Flow may refuse free video generation in the afternoon UTC, and Kling and Hailuo put members first in the queue
- Entry plans are cheap. Google AI Plus is €4.99, Kling Standard $10 list, Runway Standard $12 on annual billing
Verdict
If you want to make AI video without paying, start with Google Flow. It’s the only tool here that publishes its free allowance as a number, refreshes it every day, runs a current model and doesn’t put a visible logo on the result. Fifty credits a day is a modest budget, but it’s a real one, and you can plan around it.
Use Kling or Hailuo to try their models and put up with the watermark. Treat Runway‘s 125 credits as a one-off trial. And treat Adobe Firefly and Higgsfield as samplers until they say what “free daily generations” and “limited use” actually mean. Once a clip is worth money to you, the cheapest paid plan on the tool you like is the sensible next step. If the clip needs narration, our guide to AI voiceover tools starts with ElevenLabs, whose $6 Starter plan includes a commercial licence.
Frequently asked questions
Which AI video generator is completely free with no watermark?
Google Flow comes closest. Of the tools we checked on 28 September 2026, it gives you 50 free credits a day, a Veo 3.1 Lite clip for 10 credits, and only an invisible SynthID mark. Pika has no watermark on any plan, but its free tier has zero monthly credits.
Is Sora free in 2026?
No. OpenAI’s help centre says the Sora web and app experiences were discontinued on 26 April 2026 and the API on 24 September 2026. Hailuo and Higgsfield still list Sora 2 as a paid model option. Grok makes short video clips inside its chat on paid plans, which we cover in Grok vs ChatGPT.
Can I use free AI video clips commercially?
Only on some tools. Kling and Higgsfield mark commercial use as a paid feature, and Hailuo says only watermark-free downloads, which are paid, are yours. Adobe says outputs from its own Firefly models are safe for commercial use. Google’s pages don’t restrict Flow output, though its terms still apply.
How many videos can I make for free on Google Flow?
Between two and seven short clips a day. You get 50 Flow credits daily; Veo 3.1 Lite costs 10 per clip, Veo 3.1 Fast 20, and Gemini Omni Flash at 720p costs 7 for 4 seconds. Veo 3.1 Quality costs 100, more than a day’s allowance.
What resolution do free AI video generators give you?
Mostly 720p to 1080p. Kling says free users can generate 1080p, with 4K for members. Google Flow generates at 720p and keeps 1080p upscaling for subscribers. Hailuo’s cheapest clips are 768p. Runway makes no resolution promise on Free, and 4K upscaling starts at Standard.
Sources and method
We took free allowances, credit costs, prices and licence wording from the vendors’ own pricing, help and terms pages on 28 and 29 September 2026. Google and Adobe showed us EU pricing, quoted in euros; all other prices are US dollar list prices as shown. We haven’t run our own quality comparison and don’t rank output. Where we describe capabilities, we describe what the vendor documents. Promotional prices are marked as such and may have ended by the time you read this.
- Google Flow Help, Manage your Google Flow credits: 50 daily credits, subscriber credits, per-model costs, peak-hour limit
- Google Flow Help, models and supported features: Veo 3.1 Lite, Fast, Quality and Gemini Omni Flash capabilities
- Google One, Google AI plans: Plus, Pro and Ultra prices and Flow credits; country availability
- Google Gemini, video generation overview: SynthID watermark statement
- Kling AI, membership plans: Basic vs paid benefits, prices, credits
- Kling AI, free daily credits page and Kling AI credits policy: watermark on free generations, 1080p on free, $1 = 66 credits
- Hailuo AI, pricing and FAQ: three-day trial, plan prices, credit costs per clip, watermark and commercial-rights wording, terms on watermark removal
- Runway, pricing and Runway Help, How do credits work?: 125 one-time credits, Gen-4.5 at 12 credits per second, plan prices
- Adobe, Compare Firefly plans: free daily generations wording, plan prices and video allowances, commercial-use statement
- Higgsfield, pricing plans: free plan limits, annual plan prices, per-model credit rates
- OpenAI Help Center, What to know about the Sora discontinuation
- Pika, pricing and Luma, pricing: current free-tier status and paid plans
