Bài viết bên dưới được đăng bằng tiếng Anh. Mọi con số trong đó là con số do chính nhà cung cấp công bố, kèm ngày chúng tôi đọc được.
A free tier is a budget, not a gift, and a budget has a job. The job is not to keep you inside a product for as long as possible at no cost. It is to let you answer one question before you pay for anything: can this tool produce the thing you actually need. Of the seven products on our video ranking, five print a numeric free tier value on a page we could read: in minutes, in credits, or in a count of finished clips. One prints no number at all: Luma states that trial credits are included on its plans and publishes no quantity for them, so the grant is real but its size is not written down anywhere we could read. One prints Not available: Google Veo lists no free tier on the Gemini API surface we read. A grant that is stated but unnumbered is not the same as no grant, and treating the two as one is the mistake. Reading a published allowance as marketing is the other mistake. Reading it as a budget with a real limit, and asking what it can and cannot buy, is the useful version of the same page.
One pass, or a loop
What decides a free tier's value is not its size, it is whether it comes back. A grant spent once buys a single look at the product. A grant that refills buys repeated attempts at the same job, which is the more useful thing to plan around.
| Tool | Free tier, as the vendor states it | One pass or a loop |
|---|---|---|
| Synthesia | Usable for up to 10 minutes of video/month | A loop. |
| Descript | 60 minutes (1 hr) / month | A loop. |
| HeyGen | 3 videos per month, up to 1 minute each | A loop. |
| Runway | 125 one-time credits | One pass. The grant does not refill. |
| Pika | 0 credits per month, packs only | No grant: paid packs only. |
| Luma | Trial credits included on all plans, quantity not published | A grant with no number to plan around. |
| Google Veo | Not available | No grant at all, on the Gemini API. |
That is four distinct outcomes across seven products: a loop, one pass, no grant, and a grant without a published size. An axis that sorted all seven into the same bucket would not be worth publishing. This one does not.
Synthesia and Descript refill on a calendar: Synthesia returns 10 minutes of video a month, and Descript returns 60 minutes of media a month. HeyGen returns three clips a month of up to a minute each, which is a loop sized for judging avatars rather than for shipping. Runway grants 125 credits once, not every month, and once they are spent the account keeps working but stops generating. Pika's current page lists zero monthly credits on Free, with credit packs for sale, so it grants no loop to plan around. Luma states that trial credits come with all its plans and publishes no quantity, so there is a grant and no number to plan around. Google Veo has no grant to spend on the Gemini API, which is the surface we read, and we did not check Google's consumer products for a separate way in.
Whether a grant comes back is a related question to the one our video ranking sorts on, and not the same one. The ranking asks how much you can produce before you have to pay, which is a question about size. This page asks whether the allowance returns, which is a question about repetition. A large grant that never comes back and a small one that refills every month can sit close together on the first question and far apart on this one, so read the two pages as two cuts of the same field rather than as one verdict stated twice.
What a zero credit free tier means on Pika
Pika's pricing page lists the free tier at 0 credits per month, packs only. There is no monthly refill returning on a calendar, and no document we read states a free generation allowance. What the page does offer on the free tier is a credit pack you buy: a one off purchase that does not start a subscription. That is a paid evaluation, not an unpaid one, so there is no loop to plan around and nothing repeats on a schedule. If you need to test Pika without committing to a subscription, the question is what a bought pack can produce, not what the free tier gives back each month.
A published absence is still an answer
Google's Gemini API pricing page prints Not available in the free tier row for Veo, and that line is a stated fact about the offer on that surface, not a gap in what we could find. It removes the guessing: on the Gemini API there is no unpaid evaluation to plan around, so budget for a paid evaluation instead.
Had that row been left off the page, you would be guessing whether an unpublished free option exists somewhere, or whether we simply failed to find it. Not available, printed in a row built to carry exactly that answer, is worth more than an omission, because it tells you outright not to plan an unpaid pass on that surface. That is the third outcome on this page, distinct from a one-time grant and from a loop: not a smaller version of either, but the absence of both.
Whatever shape your free tier takes, spend it on the actual job, not on a tour of the product. Ten minutes of Synthesia video is enough for one real training module, not ten short experiments in different styles. Sixty minutes of Descript editing is enough for one real episode, cut the way you would actually cut it. Use the whole allowance on the version you would ship, and put that in front of whoever signs it off. A free tier that can produce your real deliverable once, at a quality someone is willing to approve, has already answered the only question it was ever built to answer.