Arcads pricing, explained.

The facts, and where they come from

Arcads' website has no pricing page; the way to see plans is to create an account. Everything in the table above comes from the in-app pricing screen as viewed in July 2026, with prices shown in GBP for a UK account (your currency may differ).

As of that date, the plans are: Starter at about $115 per month (£85), Creator at about $225 (£170), and a custom-priced tier for higher volume. Each plan combines a monthly credit pool (8,000 to 40,000 credits) with named caps: seconds of AI avatar talking, a count of AI videos, and a count of NanoBanana image generations. The custom tier adds the enterprise features: actor cloning, ElevenLabs voice integration, team collaboration, ad performance guidance, and API access.

Two hedges worth stating. First, earlier third-party reviews described a simpler "one credit, one video" structure at different price points, so Arcads' packaging appears to have changed at least once recently and may change again. Second, we did not find a free trial, annual billing option, or refund policy on the pricing screen; if those matter to you, confirm in-app or with their support before paying. For comparison, SmartUGC's plans are public, start at $49, and never expire mid-cycle, so there is nothing to verify after sign-up.

How to read the credit system

The unit that matters most for UGC ads is the avatar-talking allowance, because talking-actor footage is the product you are here for. Starter includes up to 600 seconds a month; Creator includes up to 1,200.

In practice that works out to about $11 per video. The 600-second monthly cap on the $115 plan covers roughly ten talking-head ads, so each finished ad lands around $11 (£8.50). Hook-testing makes it worse, not better: every variation you generate spends seconds, whether or not you ship it. SmartUGC videos start from $5 by comparison, with no seconds cap to burn through.

The separate "AI videos" cap (50 on Starter, 100 on Creator) appears to cover non-avatar generation, and NanoBanana covers images. How the credit pool interacts with these caps in practice, and what a regeneration costs, is the kind of thing best verified with a small real workload during your first month.

If you want the comparison shortcut: tools that price per finished video make this arithmetic unnecessary. SmartUGC's plans state a video count outright ($49 for 5 through $249 for 50), one credit buys one finished video, and a failed generation is refunded automatically, so your budget is fixed before you start.

Why the pricing is not public

Arcads has not said why it keeps pricing in-app, so anything here is reading from the outside. Unpublished pricing is common for products that sell to teams and enterprises: it gives the vendor room to adjust packaging, run experiments, and have sales conversations before a number anchors the discussion. Arcads' positioning (agency endorsements, enterprise logos, team features on the top tier) is consistent with that playbook.

The practical consequence for you is simply that evaluation requires a sign-up, and a paid month costs about $115. That is not a criticism of the product; teams that use Arcads clearly find the output good. It just means comparison shopping takes more effort here than with tools that publish their numbers. SmartUGC lists every plan and per-video rate on one public page, and lets you test the real output for $1 over three days before any monthly commitment, which is the gap this page tries to close.

If Arcads updates its plans, this page is wrong until we notice. The "last reviewed" date at the top is honest about that, and we appreciate correction emails.

How Arcads compares to the market

On entry price, the published field looks like this: SmartUGC at $49, MakeUGC at $59, and Arcads at about $115 (£85). On trials: SmartUGC at $1 for three days, MakeUGC with a $1 trial, and Arcads with none listed. So the cheapest way to actually see finished output is a SmartUGC trial, not a paid Arcads month.

On what the money buys, the platforms differ. Arcads gates its bigger actor tiers and enterprise features (actor cloning, team collaboration, API) behind its higher and custom plans, at the time of writing. SmartUGC leads on the things most buyers price first: published per-video cost, the full actor catalogue on every plan rather than gated behind the top tier, and product-in-hand plus custom avatars from $69, where Arcads lists actor cloning only on its custom tier. The full roundup places all four tools side by side.

Per finished video, SmartUGC videos start from $5 and top out at $10, on named models (Seedance 2.0 and Veo 3). Arcads works out to about $11 per video, as the seconds math above shows, which is above SmartUGC's entire range. The tool with the public, per-video price is also the cheaper one.

Is Arcads worth it?

Arcads may suit you if you need team collaboration, actor cloning, and API access in one platform and have the budget for a custom plan. Established agencies and funded brands use it, and its public endorsements are real.

SmartUGC may suit you if you want to know your cost per video before you pay, need product-in-hand or a custom avatar without a custom-priced contract, want watermark-free output from a $1 trial rather than a $115 first month, and prefer credits that roll over on upgrade with automatic refunds on any failed generation. The full actor catalogue, Seedance 2.0, and Veo 3 are on every plan, so nothing you need is gated behind an enterprise tier.

The cheap way to decide: price one month of your real workload (ads per month times average length) against the seconds-and-credits model above, then run the same script through a $1 trial on a per-video tool and compare the finished output. An afternoon of homework beats a quarter of the wrong subscription.