Arcads Pricing in November 2026: Plans, Credits and the Real Cost per Ad

Arcads pricing is credit-based, and Arcads does not publish its dollar prices. Its help center lists five self-serve plans by monthly credits: Starter 8,000, Creator 16,000, Pro 48,000, Scale 96,000 and Business 192,000, plus custom Enterprise. A standard talking-actor video costs 800 credits. The dollar prices appear only inside the app. Reviewers who reached that screen reported Starter at $110, Creator at $220 and Pro at $550 a month in October 2026, which works out to about $11 per talking-actor generation.

That $11 is the price of one take, not one finished ad. Retakes, captions and plan limits decide the real number, and this post shows how to work it out.

Disclosure: Oakgen is our product, and it competes with Arcads. We include it because readers comparing UGC ad costs ask about it, and this post also covers where Arcads is the better buy. Every Arcads figure below is labelled with its source and date.

What are the Arcads plans and credits?

The table keeps two kinds of numbers apart. The credit columns come from Arcads' own help center article "How does Arcads pricing work?", read on 2026-11-04. The dollar column is not official. It is what one reviewer, Fieldnotes, saw on the in-app plan screen on October 22, 2026.

Two more rules in the help center are official. Plans bill monthly or yearly, and yearly billing is 20% off. The article also says "Arcads tests new pricing from time to time, so your account may use different rates or plan sizes." That sentence explains most of the disagreement between reviews.

Feature gates, per the same help article:

• Every plan gets all models up to 4K, Mark (Arcads' AI agent) and the Arcads MCP.
• Creator and above add Workflows, background removal and AI captions.
• Pro and above add the public API, team seats, custom actors, ElevenLabs voices, free voice cloning, free image upscaling and direct Slack and calls with the Arcads team.

The gate that catches people is captions. Starter has the credits for ten talking-actor videos, but no AI captions. Most paid social ads need captions, so a Starter buyer either adds them in another editor or moves to Creator.

Which Arcads prices are official, and which come from reviews?

Only the credit numbers are official. We checked arcads.ai/pricing on 2026-11-04 and it returned "Page Not Found". The help center says "Current prices are on the pricing page in the app." So every dollar or euro figure you read online, ours included, is a reviewer's screenshot from a given day.

Here is what four dated reviews reported. They do not agree, and the gaps matter.

Several independent screens put Starter at $110 (or 100 euros) and the ladder doubles at each step, so the price per credit stays flat at about $0.01375 across plans. Bigger plans buy more credits, not cheaper ones. We could not confirm three things. Only Predis reported Scale and Business dollar prices, and with older credit sizes. We do not know whether the 30% offer still runs. And we cannot tell whether your account sees the 40,000 or the 48,000 credit version of Pro.

What does each Arcads generation cost in credits?

Arcads publishes these credit costs as its standard rates. The help center, read 2026-11-04, lists them, and the Generate button in the app shows the cost on your account before you start. The dollar column is our arithmetic at the reported $110 Starter price ($0.01375 a credit), not an Arcads figure.

Three things in this table change the Arcads cost per video more than the plan price does.

Length is flat on Arcads 1.0. A 15-second hook and a 2-minute ad both cost 800 credits. That is good for long explainer ads and poor for short hooks. At $11, a 15-second hook costs about $0.73 per second of footage, and a 2-minute ad about $0.09.

Older reviews describe a different rule. Predis, checking the help center on October 7, 2026, described talking-actor video as 800 credits per minute per actor, rounded up. The current article prices Arcads 1.0 at 800 per video up to 2 minutes and keeps the per-started-minute rule only for Audio-Driven and OmniHuman 1.5. If a review quotes the per-minute rule for every talking actor, it is older than the current article.

Failed generations come back. The help center says failed generations are refunded automatically. A take that renders but looks wrong is not a failure, and it costs its full credits.

What does one finished Arcads ad really cost?

Work it out with one formula. Multiply the price per credit by the credits per take, then by the takes per keeper. A keeper is a take you would actually run. The table below is an illustrative worked example, not a measurement. We did not run Arcads ourselves. The keep rate of one take in two is an assumption, so replace it with your own.

How many finished ads does a month buy at that keep rate? Starter's 8,000 credits make 10 takes and about 5 keepers. Creator's 16,000 make 18 captioned takes and about 9 keepers. That is the number to set against a creator's fee. Our AI UGC rate card lists what human and AI UGC usually charge per video, and AI UGC vs real creators walks through the quality side.

Here is where the Starter plan breaks for testing. A common first test is 5 hooks across 2 actors, which is 10 talking-actor videos and exactly 8,000 credits. One retake and you hit the limit. Generation stops, the upgrade offer opens, and an upgrade charges the new plan that day and resets your billing date, per the help center. If you plan a structured test, size it first with how many ad creatives to test on Meta.

Who is Arcads pricing a good fit for?

Arcads pricing suits a team that makes many talking-actor ads every month and wants a large actor library in one tool. It suits a solo creator testing a few hooks much less.

• Performance teams on Pro or above. Rollover with no cap removes the end-of-month rush, and the API and team seats fit an agency workflow. Extra usage is billed rather than blocked, so a busy week does not stop production. Set the optional daily, weekly or monthly spending limits the help center mentions.
• Brands that need long talking ads. A 90-second testimonial costs the same 800 credits as a 15-second hook on Arcads 1.0.
• Multilingual campaigns. Translate Video is 240 credits per started 30 seconds per language, and the Starter card Fieldnotes saw listed 74 languages.
• A poor fit for small tests. Starter at a reported $110 gives about ten takes and no captions. If you need five finished ads a month, the cost per keeper is high, and unused credits reset.

How does Arcads compare with Oakgen on cost?

Oakgen prices UGC ad takes in credits too, from one balance shared with image, video, voice and music models. Its numbers are on a public page. On 2026-11-04, Oakgen's pricing page listed Basic at $9 a month with 2,000 credits and 2 UGC ad takes a month, and Pro at $15 a month billed yearly ($19 monthly) with 5,000 credits and unlimited UGC ad takes. Ultimate was $25 a month billed yearly with 10,000 credits, and Creator $79 a month billed yearly with 40,000 credits. "Unlimited" there means no monthly cap on takes. Each take still uses credits.

Where Arcads is better, plainly. Its talking-actor flat rate is cheaper than per-second pricing for long ads. It has more stock actors, custom actors cloned from a real person, video translation and rollover. Oakgen's Natural takes on Seedance 2.5 Reference choose the voice themselves, so you cannot pick or clone a voice in that mode. If those matter more than price, Arcads may be the right buy.

Where Oakgen is better for cost. The prices are public, the entry plan is $9, and short hooks are billed by the second instead of as a flat 800-credit video. The same credits also make the B-roll, product images and voiceovers an ad needs. Seedance 2.5 is available directly too, so you can make cutaways without a separate subscription. Agencies that run work from Claude or ChatGPT can use the same balance through Oakgen MCP for creative agencies.

We have not run the same script through both tools, so we make no claim about which presenter looks more real. Test that yourself.

Arcads cost per video checklist

Use this before you pay for any credit-based UGC tool, Arcads included. It takes ten minutes and turns a plan price into a cost per finished ad.

1. Screenshot the plan screen. Monthly tab, Yearly tab and the credit size of each plan, with the date. Arcads says your account may differ from others.
2. Write down the credit cost of your usual take. Read it from the Generate button, not from a review.
3. Decide whether you need captions. On Arcads they start at Creator.
4. Count takes per keeper from the trial. With 1,000 trial credits you get one 800-credit talking-actor video, so also try cheaper generations to judge quality.
5. Run the formula. Price per credit times credits per take times takes per keeper.
6. Check the limit behaviour. On Starter and Creator, generation stops. On Pro and above, overage goes on the next invoice. Set a spending limit either way.
7. Check the rollover rule. Credits reset on Starter and Creator. If your volume is uneven, that is wasted money.
8. Put the trial end in your calendar. It converts to Starter monthly after 72 hours. YourAiSoft's EU account saw no first-month discount on a converted trial on October 29, 2026, while Fieldnotes saw $77 on November 1. Check which one your checkout shows.

The same method works for any tool. Our guide to AI video credits vs unlimited plans applies it to video clips.

Common mistakes when budgeting Arcads credits

• Quoting a reviewer's price as Arcads' price. Arcads publishes none. Say "reported" and give the date, or check your account.
• Counting videos, not keepers. "Starter covers ten videos" is true in credits. Ten takes rarely means ten ads you would run.
• Forgetting captions. A Starter plan cannot add AI captions, so the cheapest plan may not fit your format.
• Using old credit rules. Per-minute rounding for every talking actor, "1 credit equals 1 video" and a $29 Lite plan all appear in older reviews. None is in the current help article.
• Letting the trial convert unplanned. A card is on file, and cancelling during the trial ends access right away.
• Pricing only the presenter. An ad also needs B-roll, product shots and sometimes music. Add those costs. Our breakdown of SaaS UGC ad costs shows the full stack for one product type.

When does another tool fit better than Arcads?

If you test many short hooks and want public prices, a per-second tool usually costs less per keeper. Compare the options in our Arcads alternatives page and the wider best AI UGC ad generators list.

If you buy Meta ads at scale, check what the ad platform already generates. Meta Advantage+ video generation vs AI UGC compares Meta's built-in video generation with presenter-led AI UGC. For a brand film rather than a talking presenter, Higgsfield Marketing Studio vs Runway ads compares two other ad-focused tools. And if your agency reports on creative variety, read about Meta's creative diversity score before you budget for twenty near-identical takes.

How we checked this

We read Arcads' help center article "How does Arcads pricing work?" on 2026-11-04 and took every credit figure, plan rule and trial rule from it. We loaded arcads.ai/pricing the same day and got "Page Not Found". Dollar and euro prices come from three dated third-party reports, Fieldnotes (October 22 and November 1, 2026), YourAiSoft (October 29, 2026) and Predis.ai (October 12, 2026), and we label them as reported. Predis.ai sells a competing product, and so do we. Dollar conversions are our arithmetic. We did not open an Arcads account or run a test generation for this post. Oakgen figures come from the public pricing page and the UGC studio's code on 2026-11-04.

If your next step is comparing tools side by side, start with our Arcads alternatives comparison.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Arcads cost per month?

Arcads does not publish dollar prices. Its help center, read 2026-11-04, says current prices are on the pricing page inside the app. Reviewers who reached that screen reported Starter at $110, Creator at $220 and Pro at $550 a month (Fieldnotes, October 22, 2026). A YourAiSoft account opened from the EU on October 29, 2026 saw Starter at 100 euros and Business at 2,000 euros. Treat every dollar figure as a dated report and check your own account.

How many credits does an Arcads video cost?

Per Arcads' help center, read 2026-11-04, an Arcads 1.0 talking-actor video up to 2 minutes costs 800 credits. Audio-Driven and OmniHuman 1.5 cost 800 credits per started minute. A Veo 3.1 clip of 8 seconds is 800 credits, and Kling 3.0 Pro is 240 or 400 credits for 5 or 10 seconds. The help center adds that your account may use different rates, so read the Generate button before you start.

What is the Arcads cost per video in dollars?

At the $110 Starter price reviewers reported, one credit is about $0.01375, so an 800-credit talking-actor video is $11.00. That is the cost of one generation, not one finished ad. If you keep one take in two, a finished ad costs about $22.00 at that rate. Arcads itself publishes no dollar figure.

Do Arcads credits roll over?

Only on Pro, Scale and Business. Arcads' help center, read 2026-11-04, says those plans roll unused credits over in full with no cap and no expiry, and bill extra usage on the next invoice. On Starter and Creator, unused credits reset each cycle and generation stops at the monthly limit.

Is there an Arcads free trial?

Yes. Per Arcads' help center, read 2026-11-04, the trial lasts 72 hours and gives 1,000 credits with every feature open. A card is required but not charged during the trial. After 72 hours the Starter monthly plan starts automatically, and cancelling during the trial ends access right away. 1,000 credits cover one 800-credit talking-actor video.

Is yearly Arcads billing cheaper?

Arcads' help center says yearly billing is 20% off. Fieldnotes reported the yearly tab at $88, $176 and $440 a month for Starter, Creator and Pro on October 22, 2026. A monthly promotion of 30% off has also been reported, so compare both tabs in your account before you choose.

What is a cheaper alternative to Arcads for UGC ads?

It depends on how many ads you test and what else you need. Oakgen, our product, listed paid plans from $9 a month on its pricing page on 2026-11-04, with one credit balance for UGC ad takes, images, video and voice. Arcads has a larger actor library, custom actors and video translation. Our Arcads alternatives page compares the options.

Sources

1. Arcads Help Center, How does Arcads pricing work? (read 2026-11-04)
2. Arcads, /pricing returns Page Not Found (read 2026-11-04)
3. Fieldnotes, Arcads Pricing 2026, published 2026-10-22, checked 2026-11-01 (read 2026-11-04)
4. YourAiSoft, What Changed in AI Video and Image Tools, 2026-10-29 (read 2026-11-04)
5. Predis.ai, Arcads AI Review, pricing checked 2026-10-12, competitor-published (read 2026-11-04)
6. Oakgen pricing (read 2026-11-04)