10 AI Marketing Tools and What They Really Cost

Read the billing toggle before you read the price

Checking all ten pricing pages on the same afternoon turned up a pattern worth more than the list itself. Almost every vendor loads its pricing page with the annual toggle already selected, so the big number you see is the discounted yearly rate, not what leaves your account each month.

A roundup quoting "AdCreative.ai from $20" is quoting a twelve-month commitment. If you are testing a tool for one campaign, the number that matters is $39.

The full comparison

The second thing worth knowing: two of these changed category

Writesonic and Surfer are no longer content-writing tools. Both have repositioned around AI search visibility, which the industry is starting to call GEO.

Writesonic's own pricing page now opens with "Find which prompts recommend your competitors instead of you." Its tiers are sold on prompts tracked across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews — 50 prompts at Starter, 100 at Basic, 200 at Growth — with AI articles listed underneath as a secondary feature. Surfer's page says it is for teams that want to "win AI search, not guess it," and its cheapest tier is called AI Search Analytics.

If you last evaluated either of these as an SEO content tool, you are comparing against a product that no longer exists. Whether the pivot is worth $79 or $82 a month depends entirely on whether you believe tracking your brand inside chatbot answers is a budget line yet.

Video: three tools, one underlying model, very different prices

HeyGen Pro at $49/mo and Creatify Standard at $10/mo both give you access to ByteDance's Seedance 2.0. Creatify Pro at $38/mo goes further, listing Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1 and Kling 3.0 Pro.

So the generation model is not what you are paying the difference for. What HeyGen charges for is the avatar layer: a custom avatar speaking in your own voice with lip sync, 175+ languages, and at Pro, 4K export and videos up to 30 minutes. What Creatify charges for is volume and ad-specific templates: 1,500 AI actors, 500+ AdFlow templates, five generations in parallel.

Pick on the wrapper, not the model. If you need the same recognisable person across every ad, HeyGen. If you need fifty ad variants this week, Creatify.

Tool by tool

1. Creatify — $10/mo annual, $15 monthly

Verdict: the cheapest serious entry point on this list, and the only one under $20 that includes frontier video models.

Standard gives 55 credits a month, 300 realistic AI actors, 200+ AdFlow templates and 50+ premium models including Seedance 2.0 and Kling 3.0 Standard, with one generation at a time. Pro at $38/mo annual ($55 monthly) raises that to 280 credits, 1,500 actors plus 3 custom avatars, 500+ templates, Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1 and Kling 3.0 Pro, and five parallel generations. Max is $66/mo annual ($95 monthly) for 730 credits.

Limitation: 55 credits at Standard disappears quickly once you are iterating. The real working tier is Pro.

Best for: performance marketers producing ad variants at volume.

2. Opus Clip — $15/mo

Verdict: the one tool here with an honest monthly price, because its entry tier is monthly only.

Starter is $15/mo for 150 credits, AI clipping with a virality score, animated captions in 20+ languages, auto-posting to YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram Reels, one brand template, and filler and silence removal. Pro is $14.50/mo but that is $174 billed annually — against $29 if you pay monthly — and adds 300 credits with two-month rollover, two seats, AI B-roll, export to Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, speech enhancement and video dubbing.

Limitation: it repurposes existing footage. It does not generate video.

Best for: anyone already producing long-form video who is not cutting it down.

3. Synthesia — free tier, then $18/mo annual or $29 monthly

Verdict: the most usable free tier in this category at 500 credits a month.

Basic is $0 with 500 monthly credits, pre-built libraries and templates, and a Synthesia watermark. Starter at $18/mo annual ($29 monthly) gives 15,000 credits a year, roughly 150 minutes of video and 197 minutes of dubbing. Pro at $64/mo annual ($89 monthly) gives 72,000 credits a year, about 720 minutes of video and 947 of dubbing. Enterprise adds unlimited minutes, 1-click translation into 140+ languages, 240+ stock avatars and SAML/SSO.

Limitation: credits are annual, not monthly, so a heavy month borrows from later ones.

Best for: training, internal comms and localised product video.

4. AdCreative.ai — $20/mo annual, $39 monthly

Verdict: the steepest annual-versus-monthly gap on this list, and the thinnest entry tier.

Starter is $20/mo billed yearly ($39 monthly) for 20 credits, one brand and one user, with unlimited generations, ad platform integrations, Ad Creative Insight AI and competitor insights. Professional at $125/mo billed yearly ($249 monthly) jumps to 300 credits, 10 brands, 10 users and adds custom templates, product videos, batch creatives, Compliance Checker AI, Creative Scoring AI, ad videos and storytelling ads. Ultimate at $500/mo billed yearly ($999 monthly) adds fine-tuning and raises brands to 25.

Limitation: Starter has 20 credits and one brand. For an agency it is not a working tier, which makes the real entry price $125 or $249.

Best for: in-house teams running paid social on one brand.

5. Copy.ai — $29/mo for 5 seats

Verdict: the best seat economics here by a wide margin.

The Chat tier is $29/mo billed monthly with five seats, unlimited words, unlimited chat projects and access to OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini models. Annual billing saves 20%. Enterprise is quoted separately.

Limitation: Copy.ai has moved towards GTM workflows, so the self-serve tier is the thin end of a product aimed at larger deployments.

Best for: small teams wanting multiple seats without per-seat pricing.

6. HeyGen — free tier, then $29/mo

Verdict: the strongest free tier for trying avatar video, and the identity layer is what you pay for.

Free gives three watermarked videos a month, one minute each, with Avatar IV, Video Agent, one custom avatar and 500+ stock presenters across 30+ languages. Creator at $29/mo gives 600 credits, 1080p, no watermark, a custom avatar using your own voice and appearance, 175+ languages and credit rollover. Pro at $49/mo gives 1,000 credits, 4K export, Seedance 2.0 access, Avatar V, VEO 3.1 and Nano Banana, and videos up to 30 minutes. Annual billing gives two months free.

Limitation: the free tier watermarks everything, so it tests quality rather than producing usable output.

Best for: founders who want to appear in video content without filming.

7. Jasper — $69/month per seat

Verdict: the most expensive per-person option here, and priced per seat rather than per account.

Pro is $69/month/seat with one seat included, the Canvas platform, agents for core marketing workflows, and smart customisation with 2 Brand Voices, 5 Knowledge assets and 3 Audiences. A 7-day free trial is offered. Business is custom-priced and adds agents for complex workflows including GEO, translations and deep research, a no-code Custom AI Agent builder, Jasper Grid, unlimited brand voices and audiences, API access and enterprise governance.

Limitation: at $69 per seat, a five-person team is $345/month against Copy.ai's $29 for five seats. You are paying for brand-voice control.

Best for: teams where off-brand copy costs more than the subscription.

8. Writesonic — $79/mo annual

Verdict: no longer a writing tool. It is an AI search visibility platform now.

Starter at $79/mo billed annually tracks 50 prompts and 50 answers daily across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, with ads monitoring, 15 AI articles a month, 10 site audits at 100 pages each, and one user. Basic at $199/mo tracks 100 prompts and 300 answers daily with 25 articles and 20 audits at 1,200 pages. Growth at $399/mo tracks 200 prompts and 600 answers, adds sentiment analysis and an Action Center trial, with 50 articles and 50 audits at 2,500 pages. Enterprise tracks all nine AI platforms.

Limitation: you are buying prompt tracking. The AI articles are a secondary feature at every tier.

Best for: brands that already know they are being mentioned in chatbot answers and want to measure it.

9. Surfer — $82/mo annual

Verdict: the same pivot as Writesonic, sold in a cleaner package.

AI Search Analytics at 82 USD/mo billed yearly tracks brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and other models. Standard at 99 USD/mo adds a unified content workflow. Pro at 182 USD/mo covers technical conflicts and AI perception at scale. Peace of Mind at 299 USD/mo adds uncapped optimisation, API access and VIP support.

Limitation: the content-scoring workflow Surfer built its name on now starts at the 99 USD tier, not the cheapest one.

Best for: content teams who want optimisation and AI visibility in one subscription.

10. Clay — free tier, then $167/mo

Verdict: the most expensive entry on this list and the only one priced on actions rather than seats.

Free includes 6,000 actions a year and 1,200 data credits, with unlimited seats and tables, up to 200 rows per table, Claygent enrichment and bring-your-own API key. Launch at $167/mo starts at 180,000 actions a year and 30,000 data credits, adding phone enrichment, unlimited Audiences search, job-change signals and sending email via Clay. Growth at $446/mo starts at 480,000 actions and 72,000 data credits with CRM auto-sync, data warehouse sync, web intent signals and unlimited ad audiences. Annual billing saves 10%.

Limitation: actions are consumed per enrichment step, so a complex waterfall burns through an allowance faster than row counts suggest.

Best for: outbound teams who have already outgrown manual list building.

Decision framework

• If you have under $50/month total → Creatify Standard at $15 monthly plus Synthesia free tier. Two capabilities, no annual lock-in
• If you already publish long video → Opus Clip Starter at $15, monthly, no commitment. Highest output per dollar here
• If you need one recognisable face across every asset → HeyGen Creator at $29, or Pro at $49 for Seedance 2.0 and 4K
• If more than two people write copy → Copy.ai at $29 for five seats, not Jasper at $69 each
• If off-brand copy is the actual problem → Jasper, and accept the per-seat cost
• If you are running paid social on one brand → AdCreative.ai, but budget $249 monthly rather than the advertised $125
• If you need to know how chatbots describe you → Surfer AI Search Analytics at 82 USD, or Writesonic Starter at $79 if you also want the articles
• If outbound is the bottleneck → Clay, starting on the free 6,000 actions before committing to $167

A workflow stack that works

Four tools, roughly $73/month on monthly billing, covering content through to distribution:

1. Copy.ai ($29, 5 seats) writes the campaign copy and the variants
2. Creatify ($15 monthly) turns the best-performing copy into video ads using Seedance 2.0
3. Opus Clip ($15) cuts any long-form video you record into shorts with captions and auto-posts them
4. Synthesia (free, 500 credits) handles the explainer and onboarding video that does not need an ad budget

Deliberately missing: an AI search visibility tool. At $79 to $82 a month that is more than this entire stack, and it measures rather than produces. Add it when you have enough output to be mentioned in the first place.

What is not on this list, and why

Semrush, Ahrefs, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Brevo, Buffer, Hootsuite, Later and Canva are all absent. They are good products that have added AI features. They are not AI tools, and a list that mixes the two is not answering the question you asked.

The test applied here: if you removed the model, would the product still exist? Remove generation from Creatify or AdCreative.ai and there is nothing left. Remove AI from Mailchimp and you still have an email platform.

Frequently asked questions

Which is cheapest to start with?

Synthesia at $0 with 500 credits a month, or HeyGen at $0 for three watermarked videos. For paid, Creatify at $15 monthly or Opus Clip at $15.

Why do the prices here differ from other lists?

Because most lists quote the annual-billing figure the vendor shows by default. Every price above states which basis it is on, taken from the vendor's own page on 22 October 2026.

Do I need both Jasper and Copy.ai?

No. They solve the same problem differently — Jasper on brand-voice control at $69 per seat, Copy.ai on seat economics at $29 for five.

Is Surfer still an SEO tool?

Partly. Its cheapest tier is now AI Search Analytics at 82 USD/mo, and the content optimisation workflow starts at the 99 USD Standard tier.

What does Seedance 2.0 access actually mean?

It is ByteDance's video generation model, available through HeyGen Pro at $49/mo and Creatify Standard at $10/mo annual. Creatify Pro at $38/mo annual adds Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1 and Kling 3.0 Pro.

Which tool has no annual lock-in?

Opus Clip Starter and Copy.ai Chat are billed monthly. Clay bills monthly with a 10% annual discount. Everything else advertises an annual rate.

Sources

All pricing taken from each vendor's own pricing page on 22 October 2026: AdCreative.ai, Jasper, Copy.ai, Writesonic, Opus Clip, HeyGen, Synthesia, Surfer, Clay and Creatify. Figures state whether they are monthly or annual-billing rates. Pricing in this category changes frequently - verify before purchase.