Runway Just Confirmed the End of Flat Rate AI Video

Runway's Unlimited plan is gone, replaced by a Max plan at the same roughly $95 a month, $76 billed annually, but built around a fixed 9,500 monthly credit allowance with one month of rollover instead of an unmetered rate limited mode. Existing Unlimited subscribers kept their old plan through August, with everyone moving to Max on 1 September 2026.

It's part of a broader pattern worth budgeting around rather than a one off pricing tweak. Across AI video and image tools, the direction of travel is away from flat monthly subscriptions and towards metered, credit based generation. It makes sense for the vendors, unmetered plans are a bad bet against a model that keeps getting cheaper to run but also keeps getting used more, but it changes how a studio should think about AI video spend.

If your studio has been treating an AI video subscription like a fixed software cost, it's worth checking whether that's still true. Budget it as a variable line item tied to actual output instead, the way you'd budget render farm time, not as a flat fee you can forget about once it's set up.