Three creative tools sell credits and GPU time, not images

The process wall

A working maker deciding which generative tool to put on a monthly budget line is choosing between three different pricing shapes, not just three numbers, because each vendor gates different things at different tiers. Comparing them honestly means reading what each price withholds, not only what it costs, as the three pricing pages state it on 16 September 2026 — figures a vendor can change without notice.

What the documents show

Midjourney's plans page lists Basic at $10, Standard at $30, Pro at $60 and Mega at $120 a month, gating unlimited Relax Mode generation behind Standard and above, and Stealth Mode behind Pro and Mega only. Runway's pricing page lists a free tier with 125 one-time credits, then Standard, Pro and Max plans from $15, $35 and $95 a month billed monthly, gating features such as watermark removal, 4K upscaling and custom voice clones by tier. Adobe's Firefly plans page lists Standard, Pro, Pro Plus and Premium tiers running from $9.99 up to a regular $199.99 a month, with the two higher tiers shown at discounted first-year rates the page itself marks as temporary, gating video-generation minutes and model access by tier.

Authorship and limitation

The mechanism common to all three is a credit or quota system standing in for a simple per-image price: none of these pages sells an image or a video at a flat rate, they sell a monthly allowance of a proprietary unit — generative credits, GPU time, or Runway credits — whose consumption per output is not fixed and can change as a vendor adjusts model costs. This is a vendor-side design choice worth naming plainly: it makes direct cost-per-output comparison between platforms difficult by construction, and a discounted introductory price is a marketing rate tied to a first-year window, not the plan's ongoing cost.

What survives

A maker choosing between these tools keeps whatever allowance a specific tier states for the task they do most often — video minutes, fast GPU time, or generative credits — a more useful comparison than the headline monthly number alone. Editorially, budgeting against a discounted first-year price risks a real increase at renewal, so the regular figure each page also states is the safer planning number.

• Check whether a quoted monthly price is the ongoing rate or a discounted first-year introductory rate.
• Convert each platform's credit or GPU-time allowance into the specific output used most before comparing cost.
• Re-check these pages on the date of any purchasing decision, since all three are living documents that change.

None of the three companies prices a creative tool the way a print shop prices a page, and that difference in unit — credits and GPU-hours rather than outputs — is itself part of what a maker is buying into.