Every "best AI video editor" list gives you a monthly price and calls it a day. That number tells you almost nothing about what you will actually spend, because these tools do not charge by the month in any way that matters — they charge by the generation. What you need to know is what one finished video costs. That is the number this piece is built around.

“The number that matters is not the monthly plan — it is what one finished video costs.

"AI video editor" describes three genuinely different products. Picking the wrong category wastes more money than picking the wrong brand inside the right one.

A podcaster with four hours of recorded interview needs the first. A marketer with a product brief and no camera needs the second. A training team that needs the same explainer in nine languages needs the third. None of these tools is better than the others; they answer different questions.

Monthly price is the wrong unit. A $20 plan that burns its allowance in six generations is more expensive than a $50 plan that covers sixty. What you want is cost per second of usable output.

Here is that figure on Ekly, at its best credit rate, for an 8-second clip. These are live per-second model costs, not estimates:

• Veo 3.1 Lite — $0.49 per 8-second clip
• Veo 3.1 Fast — $0.74
• Seedance 2.0 Mini — $0.80
• LTX Video 2.3 Fast — $0.83
• LTX Video 2.3 — $1.25
• Kling Video Pro — $1.46
• Seedance 2.0 — $1.60
• Veo 3.1 — $1.97
• Sora 2 — $2.78
• Luma Ray 2 — $3.20
• Veo 3.1 at 4K — $8.32

Two things follow from this table. First, the spread is roughly seventeen to one between the cheapest and the most expensive model for the same clip length. Second, and more usefully: most work does not need the expensive end. A social cutdown, a background plate, a b-roll insert — these look fine from a model at the top of that list. Reserve the $8 clips for the hero shot that carries the piece.

Most tools price in credits, and credits are deliberately hard to translate into money. Two things to check before you commit to any platform:

⚠️ What does one credit cost in currency? If the pricing page will not tell you plainly, that is a signal.

⚠️ What does one generation consume? A tool advertising "1,000 credits" means nothing until you know whether a video costs 8 credits or 400.

⚠️ Do unused credits roll over, or expire? Expiry converts your unused allowance into pure margin for the vendor.

For reference, Ekly's rate runs from 42 credits per dollar on the entry plan to 50 on the top one — so a credit costs between 2.0 and 2.4 cents, and every model's per-second cost is published. You should expect that level of clarity from any tool you are evaluating, not just this one.

If you have footage already, the AI features that save real time are narrow and specific:

✅ Transcript-based editing — deleting a sentence in the transcript deletes it in the video. This is the single biggest time saver for interview and podcast work.

✅ Silence and filler-word removal — reliably worth an hour on a long recording.

✅ Accurate auto-captions — accuracy matters more than styling. Correcting 40 mistimed captions is slower than writing them.

✅ Multi-track timeline with keyframes — the moment you need anything precise, you need a real timeline underneath the AI.

❌ Effect libraries measured in the thousands — a number that sounds impressive and predicts nothing about your output.

Different job, different checklist:

✅ More than one model — models have distinct strengths. Locking to a single one means paying its weaknesses on every project.

✅ Image-to-video, not just text-to-video — starting from a frame you control is the difference between directing and gambling.

✅ First and last frame control — the practical route to shots that cut together.

✅ Native audio generation — models that produce synchronised sound in one pass save an entire round trip.

❌ Watermarks on paid tiers — check this before subscribing, not after.

Transcript-first editors (Descript and similar) are built for spoken-word content. If your raw material is people talking, this is the right shape of tool, and the transcript workflow genuinely changes how fast you work.

Professional creative suites (Runway, Adobe with its AI features) give you depth and control at the cost of a learning curve. Right if editing is your job. Overkill if you need one video a week.

Free social editors (CapCut and similar) are genuinely capable for short-form and cost nothing. The tradeoffs are export limits and less control, not quality.

Avatar platforms (Synthesia, HeyGen and similar) do one thing well: a presenter delivering a script in many languages. Priced for teams rather than individuals.

Multi-model studios (Ekly) put many generation models behind one interface, so you choose the model per shot instead of per subscription.

Prices across all of these change often. Check the current figure on the vendor's own pricing page rather than trusting any comparison article, including this one.

Ekly is a multi-model studio. The honest description of what it is for: you have an idea and need finished video, image, or audio, and you do not want to learn an edit bay or subscribe to four tools to get there.

The two things that are genuinely different:

Every plan unlocks every model. There is no tier that withholds the good models. A $9 plan and a $99 plan reach the same 30+ video models, 4K output included. You pay for volume, not for access.

Daily bonus credits. Each plan grants bonus credits every day on top of the monthly allowance. On the $9 entry plan that adds up to 750 credits a month — worth about $18 at that plan's own rate. The bonus is larger than the subscription.

Full plan-by-plan numbers, and a calculator that prices your actual project, are on the pricing page.

Work out what you are starting from. If it is footage, get a transcript-based editor. If it is a script and you need a face, get an avatar tool. If it is an idea and nothing else, get a generator — and choose one that gives you several models and publishes its per-second costs, because that is the number that decides your bill. Then run one real project through it before subscribing annually. Every tool demos well; the second project is where you learn the truth.