Arcads AI Pricing and Arcads AI Price Per Video in 2026

Arcads holds a 2.6 TrustScore from 183 Trustpilot reviews (read 12 October 2026), and the distribution is the most extreme in this category: 47.5% one-star against 42% five-star. More people gave it the lowest possible score than the highest. Arcads prints no dollar price on its public site: its /pricing URL still returns a 404 (re-checked 21 October 2026) and there is no pricing link in the navigation. What it does publish, in its help center, is the meter, 800 credits per minute for each actor on screen. The homepage now advertises a free trial, which lasts 3 days, needs a card and converts to a paid Starter plan unless you cancel in time. Two clauses in its terms decide whether it suits you. The license on your finished video is "non-exclusive, personal and non-transferable", which is a problem if you make ads for clients, and the subscription renews automatically unless you cancel at least 72 hours before the period ends.

We read Arcads' live site, its help center, its terms of use and its Trustpilot page on 29 September 2026. Below is what is actually verifiable, what is being repeated online without a source, and the three things worth checking before you enter a card. For the scored verdict, the full Trustpilot breakdown and the contradictions between Arcads' terms and its help centre, read our Arcads AI review.

Arcads reviews at a glance

That Trustpilot shape is the first thing to understand, because averages hide it. A 2.6 from 183 reviews does not describe a mediocre product that everyone finds adequate. It describes two populations: 77 people who gave five stars and 87 who gave one, with barely anyone in between (8 four-star, 3 three-star, 8 two-star). Products land like this when they work extremely well for one use case and fail badly at something structural, usually billing or support.

What do Arcads AI reviews say?

The five-star reviews are about the core idea, and they are genuinely enthusiastic. Reviewers like the library of AI actors, say a usable talking-head ad arrives in minutes rather than days, and several single out support as responsive when they reached it. For a solo marketer who needs a face reading a script to camera, the product does the thing it says it does.

The one-star reviews cluster around four themes, and only one of them is about the video itself.

The first is quality against expectation: reviewers describe output arriving "blurry, low quality, and completely different" from the material they uploaded, with lip-sync drifting and character details changing between clips. The second is cost against that quality, with repeated variations on paying a lot for a small number of clips that were not usable. The third is support silence, with reviewers reporting multiple emails over weeks and no reply, particularly on refund requests. The fourth is billing: charges landing on automatic renewal that the reviewer had not intended to continue.

Read together, this is not a verdict that Arcads cannot make a good ad. It is a warning about the shape of the purchase. The thing to protect yourself against is not bad video, it is paying again before you meant to.

How much is Arcads? Arcads AI pricing per video

Arcads AI pricing works out to about $11 per actor minute on the reported $110 Starter plan, and a 30-second single-actor ad costs the same full minute, about $11, because Arcads rounds every clip up to the next minute. Arcads publishes the meter (800 credits per actor minute) and the credit allowance of each plan, but not the dollar prices, so the price column below is what third parties report from in-app screens.

The rate does not improve as you move up: Starter, Creator and Pro all land on about $11 a minute at the reported list prices. A 30% promotion reported at $77, $154 and $385 brings a minute to about $7.70. If one render in three is good enough to run, a usable 30-second ad costs closer to $33 on Starter list pricing, or about $23 at the promotional rate.

Arcads does not print a dollar figure, and that is a verifiable statement rather than a complaint. On 29 September 2026, a request to arcads.ai/pricing returns HTTP 404, and so does arcads.ai/llms.txt. The navigation has Features, Industries, Login/Sign up and Book a demo, and no Pricing item. The homepage prints no figure and no "starting at". Its commercial language is "Free trial available" in the hero and a promotion for 7 days of unlimited generations in Arcads Studio on Seedance 2.5, under fair use.

What Arcads does publish is the meter. Its help center says a talking actor video costs 800 credits per minute per actor, rounded up, and the app lists Starter at 8,000 credits a month, Creator at 16,000, then Pro at 40,000, Scale at 80,000 and Business at 160,000. So Starter buys 10 one-actor minutes and Creator 20. Third parties report list prices of $110 for Starter, $220 for Creator and $550 for Pro, a limited-time 30% promotion at $77, $154 and $385, and a $29 Lite plan with 1,800 credits. Arcads has not published any of those figures, and its paywall is A/B tested, so treat them as reported. They do fit together: $110 for 10 actor minutes is about $11 a minute, and the $77 figure is the promotion on the same list price. The sections below work through the credit rate for every output type, the trial terms and the API.

The practical point for a buyer is the trial. It lasts 3 days, includes 1,000 credits, requires a card (one trial per card) and converts automatically to Starter unless you cancel before the 72 hours end, with a reminder sent 24 hours before. Ask for the current rate in writing before you commit, and ask specifically whether the price you are shown is a promotional rate and what it renews at.

What one Arcads video costs in credits

Arcads' help center article "How are credits counted", updated on 29 April 2026, lists the burn rate for each kind of output. This is the conversion that lets you turn a credit allowance into a number of ads.

The actor rate is the one most buyers care about, and the "per actor" part matters. A two-person conversation ad burns credits twice as fast as a single presenter. Add-ons stack on top: translating a 30-second ad costs 720 credits, almost a full actor minute, and captions on the same clip cost another 240.

The Arcads free trial and how it becomes a Starter bill

The homepage hero now says "Free trial available", which is new since earlier checks when no trial was offered. The terms are specific, and they come from Arcads' own help center refund article (updated 16 September 2026) and the app itself.

The trial lasts 3 days and includes 1,000 credits, which is one and a quarter actor minutes. It requires a card, and each card gets one trial. When the 72 hours end, it converts automatically into a paid Starter plan unless you have cancelled. Arcads says it sends a reminder 24 hours before the trial ends.

That is a short window, and it is the trap. Three days is less time than most teams need to write scripts, test actors and get a second opinion, and the conversion is to a plan that third parties report at $110 a month. If you start a trial, cancel as soon as you have seen enough rather than on day three, and keep a screenshot of the cancellation confirmation. Arcads' refund article makes that proof the deciding factor if a charge lands anyway.

The homepage also runs a promotion for Seedance 2.5: 7 days of unlimited generations in Arcads Studio, subject to fair use and for a limited time. The promo generations do not apply in Workflows, Agent, the API or MCP, and each client gets one grant. The terms define unlimited narrowly, with no guarantee of generation speed, processing priority, simultaneous generations, resolution or duration, and a right to throttle usage that is "automated, or materially exceeds ordinary professional use". Treat it as room to explore, not as production capacity.

What third-party sites report about Arcads pricing

The most detailed recent figures come from a Creatify blog post citing an in-app screen dated 24 August 2026 and a Wireflow write-up from 14 July 2026. Treat this table as reported, not published: these are other people's screenshots, not Arcads' rate card, and one of the sources sells a competing tool.

The shape holds up against what Arcads documents itself. Credits double from Starter to Creator, and so do the reported prices, and the ratio stays at about $11 per actor minute into Pro. The absolute numbers are still unconfirmed, and a price that swings by 30% depending on the week and the paywall variant is not one to plan a quarter around. If you need a firm figure, get the current rate in writing, including what any promotional rate renews at.

Does Arcads have API pricing?

Arcads has a real API, documented at external-api.arcads.ai/docs, and an MCP server at mcp.arcads.ai. The app lists API access as a feature of the Pro, Scale and Business plans, and API generations draw on the same credit balance as the app, at the same burn rates. The terms add a condition: the API is accessible only on a Customized offer, so expect a conversation with sales rather than a self-serve checkout. There is still no public per-call rate. How credentials work, the endpoints and the licence clauses are on our Arcads API page.

That puts Arcads at one end of a spread we mapped across the category. MakeUGC sells API access self-serve at $99 a month for 2,000 credits, which is 34 percent cheaper per credit than the same allowance in its own app. HeyGen lets you top up an API wallet from $5 with no monthly commitment, on a balance that is completely independent of your subscription. Creatify lists API plans in its developer docs at $99 a month for 500 credits and $299 for 2,000, with an avatar ad at 5 credits per 30 seconds. HeyGen's per-minute rates changed in September and are set out in HeyGen API pricing. Our breakdown of AI UGC video generator API pricing works through all five, with the arithmetic.

What is the Arcads refund policy?

Narrower than it looks, and the help center article (updated 16 September 2026) is precise about it. If you were charged after cancelling, Arcads refunds the full amount provided you can show proof of the cancellation. Otherwise only the latest charge can be refunded. Dissatisfaction with the quality of the output is not a reason for a refund. The 30-day window is firm, and approved refunds take 5 to 10 business days to arrive.

Read that alongside the trial terms. The case Arcads covers generously is the one where you did cancel and were charged anyway, which is why the screenshot of your cancellation is worth more than any argument about the videos.

Is Arcads AI legit?

Yes. Arcads is an operating product from a named company with published terms of use, a multilingual marketing site, a real actor library and an active user base leaving reviews on both sides. The searches that pair it with the word scam trace back to billing surprises and unanswered refund requests, not to a product that does not exist.

That said, "legit" and "safe to buy without reading the terms" are different questions, and the terms are where the two decisions actually sit.

The license clause that matters if you make ads for clients

Arcads' terms grant the client "a non-exclusive, personal and non-transferable license on the Video", covering worldwide use including distribution and public exhibition. That wording sits in article 13.3.1 of the terms that entered into force on 22 September 2026, issued by FRESHR SAS in Rouen, for professional users only, under French law with the Paris courts as the forum.

The same terms narrow what you may do to the file. Allowed edits are cropping, music, text, subtitles, emoji, B-roll, GIFs, sound effects, a format change and a logo, and anything beyond that needs Arcads' written approval. Misusing a Video Model and not curing it within 30 days carries a lump sum of 500,000 EUR per breach. If an actor withdraws consent, you must delete the videos featuring them, at 100 EUR per day of delay. And Arcads may use your scripts and uploads to train its models, which matters if those scripts contain unreleased product claims.

Read the word non-transferable carefully if you are an agency, a freelancer or a studio. It means the license sits with the account holder. Handing finished files to a client as their asset, to run from their ad account under their ownership, is not obviously covered by a personal, non-transferable license, and that is exactly what agency work involves.

The contrast with the nearest comparable tool is stark, and we checked both on the same day. Higgsfield's terms state that the company "does not claim ownership of any of your Inputs or Outputs, nor does it restrict your commercial use of Outputs", that those rights survive cancellation, and that "you may transfer or sublicense your rights in Outputs to your clients or other third parties". One vendor explicitly permits the thing an agency needs; the other explicitly describes the license as non-transferable. If you resell creative, that single difference outranks any price comparison, and it is covered in more detail in our Higgsfield AI review.

The practical move is to settle usage rights at the point you agree the engagement rather than after the files exist. Whatever tool you use, the deliverables and rights conversation belongs in the discovery call where you scope the work, not in an email three weeks later when a client's legal team asks who owns the actor.

The 72-hour cancellation rule behind the billing complaints

Arcads' terms say subscriptions are "tacitly renewed, for successive periods of the same duration as the initial period", and that to stop that you must terminate "no later than 72 hours before the end of the current Period".

Tacit renewal on its own is normal. The 72-hour deadline is not, and it explains a large share of the one-star reviews directly. Cancelling on the last day of your month is too late. Cancelling two days before the renewal date is too late. You have to decide three days early, every cycle, or you have bought another period.

If you are trialling Arcads, the clock is even shorter. The 3-day trial converts to a paid Starter plan unless you cancel before its 72 hours end, and Arcads says it sends a reminder 24 hours before. On a paid plan, put a calendar reminder four days before the renewal date on the day you subscribe. Either way, screenshot the cancellation confirmation: Arcads' refund article (updated 16 September 2026) gives a full refund for a charge taken after cancelling only with proof of the cancellation, otherwise refunds only the latest charge, excludes dissatisfaction with quality, and holds a firm 30-day window. That one habit removes the most common complaint on its Trustpilot page.

Do Arcads credits roll over?

It depends on the plan. On Starter and Creator, no: the terms state that on standard plans "unused Credits are not refunded or carried forward", and reaching the monthly limit blocks generation until renewal. On Pro, Scale and Business, Arcads' help center (updated 30 July 2026) says unused credits roll over and accumulate, and going past the allowance is billed as overage per extra credit rather than blocked. Top-up packs are available on top of any plan.

Promotional credits are stricter again. They have "no monetary or exchange value", are non-refundable, and expire automatically at the end of their usage period rather than joining your normal balance. So the credits that arrive with a discount offer are the ones most likely to evaporate unnoticed.

What does "unlimited generations" actually mean on Arcads?

Arcads defines it in the terms, and the definition is narrower than the word suggests. "Unlimited" refers to access without consuming your credits. It explicitly does not guarantee generation speed, processing priority, the number of simultaneous generations, or any particular resolution or duration. The company also reserves the right to apply delays or restrict access where usage is "automated, or materially exceeds ordinary professional use".

That is a fair-use clause rather than a capacity promise, and it is standard across this category. What matters is not to plan a production sprint around it. An unlimited window will let you explore; it will not reliably let you render a campaign's worth of finished ads in a weekend, and a team pushing volume through it is the exact usage the clause is written to throttle.

Who should buy Arcads, and who should not

Buy Arcads if you want a large library of AI actors reading scripts you have already written, you are one person or one account rather than an agency delivering to clients, and you are comfortable entering a card for a 3-day trial that turns into a paid plan unless you cancel. The actor performance is the product and the enthusiastic reviews are about exactly that.

Think harder if any of these apply. You produce creative for clients, in which case the non-transferable license is a real question to resolve first. You need to compare costs across a shortlist before committing, which Arcads only lets you do by starting a 3-day card trial that converts to a paid plan. You want a low-friction cancellation, given the 72-hour rule. Or you are testing a dozen hooks against one offer, where a plan metered at 800 credits per actor minute, with no rollover on Starter or Creator, makes every losing test cost the same as a winning one.

For the middle case, the scored verdict in our Arcads review collects everything currently checkable, and the Arcads alternative comparison sets it against tools that publish their plans. If you are choosing between Arcads and a multi-model platform rather than a UGC-specific tool, Arcads vs Higgsfield covers that decision.

How AdsGen approaches the same job differently

We make UGC-style video ads, so we are a competitor here and you should read this section with that in mind.

The difference is what you start with. Arcads starts with a script you write and an actor you pick. AdsGen starts with your product URL: we read the page for the product, its claims and its images, write a batch of up to 20 UGC-style scripts across six angles, and render the ones you pick as vertical videos with presenters and burned-in captions. Plans are published before you sign up and start at $49 a month billed yearly. Each plan covers script batches plus a fixed number of rendered videos (1 a month on Starter, 2 on Growth, 6 on Scale), with no per-second credit meter, which is the part that matters when eleven of your twelve hooks are going to lose, because you find the losers as scripts rather than as paid renders.

Our limits are worth stating just as plainly. Output is 9:16 vertical with captions burned in, so it suits paid social and not a landscape pre-roll. A thin product page gives the model less to work with. The presenters are generated, so they are not real customers and must never be passed off as named testimonials. And we do not offer a browsable actor library to cast from, which is a genuine reason some people prefer Arcads.

You can check the output on your own product before deciding anything. Paste a URL into the generator at the top of this page and the real engine runs on it.

The three things to check before you pay

Get the current price in writing, including what a promotional rate renews at, because no dollar figure is published and the paywall is A/B tested. Confirm in writing that your intended use is permitted if you are delivering videos to a client, because the license is described as non-transferable. And set a reminder four days before your renewal date, because 72 hours before the period ends is the last moment you can stop it.

None of those three is a reason on its own to avoid Arcads. All three are things the enthusiastic reviews never mention and the angry ones are entirely about.