You don't need to pick a monthly plan just to find out whether you'll even like this. Here's what each tool actually gives you for free, no card required, and what it costs the moment you want more than that.
Free generations across every tool here are watermarked, typically capped at lower resolution than the paid tiers, and restricted from commercial use. That's a deliberate limit, not a bug — free tiers exist so you can evaluate whether a tool's style and quality suit what you're going for before paying, not as a way to produce finished, shareable clips indefinitely. If you're just trying to answer "is this actually fun / does this do what I think it does," the free tiers are genuinely enough to find out.
Once you're past the free allowance, Kling and Hailuo are the two realistic candidates for cheapest ongoing subscription, and which one actually wins depends on current promotions. Kling's Standard plan lists at $10/month (660 monthly credits, enough for roughly 11-22 clips depending on resolution/audio), commonly discounted to around $7/month for first-time subscribers. Hailuo's Standard plan has run as low as $7.99/month against a $14.99 list price (1,000 monthly credits, enough for dozens of clips at lower settings) — but that tier caps clips at 6 seconds; 10-second clips need Hailuo's $24.99/month Pro plan. Both tools shift their promotional pricing often enough that it's worth comparing current rates before committing rather than assuming one is always cheaper. If you'd rather not commit to a subscription at all and are comfortable with a slightly more technical setup, Seedance's pay-per-clip pricing (no monthly plan required) can end up cheaper for occasional, low-volume use. See the full pricing comparison for every plan and what it actually gets you.
You don't strictly have to choose a single tool up front. Each one's free tier is a real, no-commitment way to sample it, and Runway's dashboard now also hosts Kling and Seedance generations alongside its own models — so trying a Runway free credit grant is, in effect, a way to sample more than one underlying model without three separate signups.
Once you've made a clip you like
Every one of these tools exports a full video with its rendered background baked in — none of them have a "transparent export" option. If you want to lift just the subject out afterward, RemoveGifBG processes the exported MP4 frame by frame and hands back a transparent result, and it has its own free tier too (any file under 100 MB, no signup needed for a preview). See the AI video background remover guide.
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Not among the current major tools. Runway, Pika, Kling, Hailuo (MiniMax), and Veo all offer some free generations, but free-tier output is consistently watermarked, capped at lower resolution, and blocked from commercial use — the tradeoff for free access, not a bug. If a clean, watermark-free download matters, budget for at least the cheapest paid tier on whichever tool you pick.
Runway, Pika, Kling, Hailuo, and Veo's free tiers are all reachable with just an account signup — no card required to get your first credits. A card is only needed once you choose to subscribe to a paid plan.
Kling and Hailuo (MiniMax) are the two realistic answers, and which one actually wins depends on current promotions — Kling's Standard plan lists at $10/month (often ~$7/month for first-time subscribers), while Hailuo's Standard plan has run as low as $7.99/month against a $14.99 list price, though Hailuo caps clip length at 6 seconds on that tier (10-second clips need its $24.99/month Pro plan). Both change promotional pricing often enough that it's worth comparing current rates rather than assuming one is always cheaper. See our full pricing comparison for what each plan actually gets you.
To some extent, yes. Each tool's own free tier lets you sample it without commitment, and Runway's dashboard has expanded to host other companies' models (including Kling and Seedance) alongside its own Gen-4.5, so a single Runway subscription can reach more than one underlying model. It's not a universal free pass across every tool, but it reduces how many separate signups you need.