Runway Gen-4: Credits, Turbo, References and Free Plan

Runway Gen-4 is Runway's image-to-video model, released on March 31, 2025. You give it a starting image and a short motion prompt, and it returns a 5- or 10-second clip at 24fps (1280x720 in 16:9). It costs 12 credits per second. The faster Gen-4 Turbo costs 5 credits per second.

Runway's newer flagship, Gen-4.5 (December 1, 2025), costs the same 12 credits per second as Gen-4 and also accepts text-only prompts. Runway's help center now labels Gen-4 "an older generation" of its models, but Gen-4 and Gen-4 Turbo are still available in the app and on the pricing page.

Last verified: October 13, 2026, against runway.com/pricing, Runway's help center and Runway's API docs.

Gen-4 vs Gen-4 Turbo vs Gen-4.5

The practical takeaway: Gen-4 and Gen-4.5 cost the same per second, and only Gen-4.5 takes text-only prompts. For a new project, plain Gen-4 mainly makes sense when you need to match footage you already made with it. Gen-4 Turbo is the cheapest model in the Gen-4 family, which makes it the natural place to test motion.

Gen-4 specs

From Runway's "Creating with Gen-4 Video" help article:

• Durations: 5 or 10 seconds per generation.
• Input: an image is required on both Gen-4 and Gen-4 Turbo. It becomes the first frame of the video.
• Prompt limit: 1,000 characters.
• Frame rate: 24fps.
• Where: web app and iOS app.
• Output sizes:

After a clip renders, you can upscale it to 4K or retime it: trim, change speed, add handheld shake, or reverse. Retiming does not spend credits. A fixed seed option lets you reuse the motion style of an earlier generation.

How much does Runway Gen-4 cost?

Runway sells monthly credit allowances. These are the plans on runway.com/pricing as of October 13, 2026. Clip counts are our arithmetic from Runway's per-second rates, rounded down.

Rules worth knowing before you subscribe:

• Rollover: Standard and Pro credits reset on your billing date and do not roll over. Max rolls over up to one month of unused credits. Extra credits you buy never expire.
• Top-ups: paid plans can buy more credits, with a minimum of 1,000. Free users cannot buy credits.
• Watermarks: "No watermarks" is listed as a feature from Standard upward.
• App vs API: credits bought in the Runway app and credits bought for the Runway API are completely separate.

How much does Gen-4 Turbo cost?

Gen-4 Turbo uses 5 credits per second: 25 credits for a 5-second clip and 50 for a 10-second clip. What that costs in dollars depends on how you buy credits. Assuming you use your whole allowance:

A 10-second Gen-4 or Gen-4.5 clip (120 credits) costs 2.4 times as much as a Turbo clip on any plan.

Is Runway Gen-4 free?

Partly. The Free plan gives a one-time 125 credits that never expire, and Runway describes them as "25s of Gen-4 Turbo, or 25 image generations." That is about five 5-second Turbo clips. The credits do not refresh, Free users cannot top up, and watermark-free output is listed as a paid feature.

Runway's pricing page describes the Free plan as "a selection of generative creative models to test concepts." It does not say whether plain Gen-4 or Gen-4.5 is included, so check the model selector in the app before relying on it.

What are Runway Gen-4 References?

References is a Gen-4 image feature. You give it one or more photos, and it creates new images that keep a character, object, location or style from them. Runway says it "excels at generating consistent characters across different lighting conditions, locations, and treatments, all from just a single reference image." It is how you keep the same person or product across shots before animating them.

How it works, per Runway's help center:

1. Open Tool mode, select the Image tab, and toggle on References.
2. Drag in an image or pick one from your Assets. Hover over it and tag it with a name so it is saved across sessions. Untagged images last only for the current session.
3. Select up to three references for one generation, and call them in your prompt with @name (for example, "@maya standing on a rooftop at dusk").
4. Optionally sketch on an image, or draw a new one, to control composition, gaze direction or object placement.
5. Animate the result: send your best still to Gen-4, Gen-4 Turbo or Gen-4.5 as the input image for image-to-video.

Runway's tips: use a well-lit photo with even, natural lighting and a neutral expression. For complex changes, change one element at a time and reuse the new image as a reference. If an image already contains a person, cover their face with a black box before uploading it as a scene reference.

Cost: References runs on Gen-4 Image, which Runway's pricing lists at 8 credits per 1080p image (Gen-4 Image Turbo: 2 credits per image).

How to make a video with Gen-4, step by step

1. In your Runway dashboard, choose Generate Video.
2. In the model selector (bottom left), open the Runway group and pick Gen-4 Turbo to test, or Gen-4 for the final render.
3. Upload or select your input image. If it does not match the aspect ratio you choose, Runway asks you to crop it.
4. Write a prompt that describes only the motion (see the next section).
5. Set the duration (5 or 10 seconds), the resolution, and optionally a fixed seed.
6. Click Generate. Finished clips appear in your session and in Assets, under the Sessions folder.
7. Upscale to 4K, retime for free, or reuse the clip as a character or performance input in Act-Two.

Prompting Gen-4: what Runway recommends

Runway's Gen-4 Video Prompting Guide boils down to a few rules:

• Describe motion, not the picture. The image already sets the subject, colors and lighting. Repeating those details "can lead to reduced motion or unexpected results."
• Use positive phrasing only. Write "locked camera," not "no camera movement." Runway says negative prompts are not supported and can produce the opposite result.
• Be literal. "The woman smiles and waves" works. Abstract language about feelings does not.
• One scene per clip. A 5- or 10-second generation is a single shot. Do not stack transformations and location changes.
• Refer to subjects generally. Use "the subject," "she," or positional cues such as "the man on the left."
• Build in layers. Start with the essential motion, then add camera motion, scene motion and style descriptors one at a time, so you can see which change helped.

A layered prompt might grow like this:

1. The subject turns toward the window.
2. The subject turns toward the window. Slow dolly in.
3. The subject turns toward the window. Slow dolly in. The curtains drift in the breeze.
4. The subject turns toward the window. Slow dolly in. The curtains drift in the breeze. Cinematic live-action.

Is Runway Gen-4 good?

It depends on the job, and Runway's own positioning is a useful guide:

• Where it is strong: Runway built Gen-4 around consistency. It keeps characters, objects and locations coherent across scenes from reference images, without fine-tuning. Turbo makes iteration cheap.
• Where it is limited: it needs an input image, generates at 1280x720 (4K only through upscaling), caps each generation at 10 seconds, and Runway's spec lists no audio output. Runway sells music, voice and sound-effects generation as separate tools on paid plans.
• Runway's own view: its help center calls Gen-4 an older generation and points users to Gen-4.5 for text-to-video and image-to-video, and to Aleph 2.0 for editing existing footage. Aleph 2.0 costs 140 credits per 5 seconds on the pricing page.
• An independent view: Curious Refuge's review (September 18, 2025) scored Gen-4 4.3 out of 10 across five categories. Prompt adherence scored highest (5.6) and style and cinematic realism lowest (3.3). The reviewers said Gen-4 "does pretty well" with simple scenarios, struggles with small details, and praised Runway's wider toolset more than Gen-4 itself.

If you need finished vertical videos rather than raw clips, FluxNote's paid plans include Runway in AI Studio alongside Veo 3.1 and Kling 3.0, with 350+ voices and 25 animated caption styles for turning clips into Shorts or Reels. If you are moving off OpenAI's video model, see what happened to Sora 2 and what replaced it.

Using Gen-4 through the Runway API

Runway's API pricing (October 13, 2026) charges $0.01 per credit and lists gen4_turbo at 5 credits per second ($0.05 per second) and gen4.5 at 12 credits per second ($0.12 per second). Plain Gen-4 video does not appear in the API pricing table, so developers building on the Gen-4 family today use Turbo or Gen-4.5. API credits are bought separately from app plans.

Runway Gen-4 FAQ

Can Gen-4 make a video from text only?

No. Gen-4 and Gen-4 Turbo both require an input image. For text-only prompts, use Gen-4.5. Alternatively, make a still first with Gen-4 Image or References, then animate it.

Does Gen-4 generate sound?

Runway's Gen-4 spec lists video output only. Add sound with Runway's separate audio tools or in your editor.

Where is the official Runway website?

runway.com. The older runwayml.com address redirects there, and the help center is at help.runwayml.com. Third-party sites that advertise Runway Gen-4, such as Picsart, sell access through their own plans and pricing, which differ from Runway's.

Do Runway credits roll over?

Only on Max (up to one month), and purchased top-up credits never expire. Standard and Pro monthly credits reset on your billing date.

Sources

• Runway, Pricing (plans, credits, free plan, rollover, Gen-4 Image and Aleph 2.0 rates)
• Runway Help Center, Creating with Gen-4 Video (credit costs, durations, resolutions, steps)
• Runway Help Center, Creating with Gen-4 Image References and Gen-4 Video Prompting Guide
• Runway Help Center, How do credits work? (top-ups, rollover, app vs API credits)
• Runway Research, Introducing Runway Gen-4 and Gen-4.5
• Runway Dev, API pricing
• Curious Refuge, Runway Gen-4 review