Looking for a Pika Alternative? Plan Credits vs Coins, Priced per Clip

Pika is where a lot of people make their first AI video, and the reason they go looking for an alternative is rarely the pictures. It is the calendar. A plan renews every month, and the credits in it are gone at the end of the month whether you made anything or not. This is a side-by-side for someone deciding where this month's video budget goes, and it is dry on purpose.

Everything about Pika below was read on their pricing page, their FAQ and their terms of service on 27 September 2026. They price in US dollars and we sell in euros. We have not converted one into the other, because an exchange rate would add a number that moves every day. If their page says something different by the time you read this, their page is right.

How Pika charges, as of 27 September

Monthly plans measured in credits. Free has no monthly credits at all, only the option to buy packs. Starter is $10 a month for 900 credits, Creator $35 for 3,150, and Fancy starts at $95 for 8,550 and scales up from there; paying yearly takes 20% off. On any plan, Free included, you can also buy one-off packs at a flat 60 credits per dollar, from $50 up to $1,000. Two rules matter more than the list: plan credits refresh each billing period and do not roll over, and bought credits expire 365 days after purchase. Payments are non-refundable. A commercial licence starts at Creator; Free and Starter do not include one.

The useful part is a table on the same page that prices four example models per generation. A five-second 720p clip costs 122 credits on the dearer of its two video models and 33 on the cheaper one. One 1K image costs 8 credits on one image model and 2 on the other.

How we charge

The Fellowi studio has no plan. You buy coins in packages, and every clip in the video studio or picture in the image studio costs a fixed number of them, set by the model, the resolution and the length. The current list is on the product page, which is built from the code that charges, and the figures below come from that same code rather than from anyone's typing. Bigger packages carry more bonus coins, so the price per coin falls as the package grows. Coins do not expire. A generation that fails on our side refunds its coins in full, without a ticket (what a failed generation costs you), and commercial use comes with every purchase (the commercial-use clause).

Price per output, side by side

The fairest unit on both lists is a 5-second clip at 720p without sound, and a single image near the 1K tier. Our clip is priced on the turbo model, our cheapest route to 720p. Our Standard image is not rendered at exactly their 1K tier, so read the image lines as close rather than identical.

• Pika clip, plan credits used in full: $0.37 on the cheaper model, $1.36 on the dearer one.
• Pika clip, from a credit pack: $0.55 to $2.03.
• Fellowi clip: €3.77 at the Starter package rate, €1.94 at Creator, €1.55 at Scale.
• Pika image: $0.02 to $0.09 on plan credits, $0.03 to $0.13 from a pack.
• Fellowi Standard image: €0.24 at Starter, €0.12 at Creator, €0.10 at Scale.

Read plainly: on video, Pika is cheaper per clip when you spend the plan, and on its cheaper model by a wide margin. We are not going to argue with arithmetic. On images their plan credits are cheaper too; only against their packs on the dearer image model do the two lists land close together. Our smallest package on its own does not hold enough coins for one such clip; it is sized for pictures.

What volume does to both

• You spend the whole plan every month. Take the plan. Starter covers 7 clips a month on their dearer model and far more on the cheaper one, and no coin package of ours matches that rate.
• 3 clips this month, none next month. On Starter those clips use 366 credits and the other 534 disappear at the end of the period, so each clip really cost $3.33, and the plan bills again unless you cancel. The same clips with coins cost €5.81 at the Creator rate, and whatever is left in the package waits for you.
• 20 clips once, for one project. One month of Creator ($35, about 25 clips on the dearer model) and a cancellation is the cheaper route; the same 20 clips with coins come to about €38.73. Our advantage there is only that there is nothing to remember to cancel.

What Pika does better

• Price per clip on a used plan, as the list above shows.
• Range. Their menu has video and image models from several makers under one account, and you pick per job. Ours is a shorter list, chosen by us.
• Sound as its own tool. Speech, music and sound effects are separate apps there. We generate a soundtrack with a clip (video with sound) and nothing standalone.
• Job-shaped video apps such as extending a clip, motion transfer or a product ad template.
• A pricing page that does the budgeting for you. It prints how many generations each plan buys on each model. We think that is the right way to show a credit price, and we say so without irony.

What we do differently

• No plan and no reset.Coins stay until you spend them; Pika's plan credits reset monthly and its pack credits expire after a year.
• Failures refunded automatically. The pages we read on their site do not say either way what happens to credits spent on a generation that fails.
• Commercial use on every purchase, including the smallest package. Theirs starts at the $35 plan.
• Adult content for verified adults.Pika's terms prohibit pornographic content. Ours allow it, with hard refusals for anything involving minors or non-consent.

The limits of both

Ours first. A clip costs us more than it costs a Pika subscriber who uses the plan. The model list is shorter. Finished files are kept for a limited time and then deleted (the period is on the product page), so download what you keep. Filters screen prompts before they run, but nobody reviews the finished file. Theirs: credits that vanish if unused, no refunds on payments, no commercial licence below Creator, no adult content, and prices in dollars that a European buyer pays through a card's exchange rate. Both of us change prices; this page carries its date for that reason. For the wider picture of what clips cost across the market, see how much AI video costs, and for the same comparison against an image subscription, the Midjourney alternative post.

So which one this month

If you will make video every week, buy the Pika plan and use all of it. If your video arrives in bursts, for a project or a mood, the credits you would let expire are the whole price difference, and then coins are the cheaper habit. Open the video studio, price one clip, and decide with the number in front of you.