The Production Studio That Also Hosts Its Rivals
Two people can look at the same Runway subscription and disagree about what’s inside it. Both of them can be right. That’s the strange thing about this product. Runway isn’t just a video generator any more. Gen-4.5 is the flagship. Aleph 2.0 edits footage you already shot. Studio finishes the cut. Agent 2.0 turns a brief into a whole campaign. And one subscription drops rival models from Google, ByteDance, MiniMax, xAI and Black Forest Labs into the same workspace. Two things govern how you plan around that. First, check which door a model sits behind, because the web app, the API, Runway MCP and the new Premiere Pro and After Effects plugin each publish a different model list. Second, treat the roster as a rental. Runway pulls hosted models on its own schedule, and it doesn’t always publish a date before it does.
A studio, an aggregator and a marketing agent in one
If your mental model is “Runway is where you make Gen-4 clips,” it’s out of date. In 2026 Runway is three things at once. A model maker. A shop that stocks other vendors’ best models. And an agent that produces finished campaigns. So choosing Runway isn’t choosing a generator. It’s choosing a pipeline, right? Judge it like one.
Control-first and production-leaning
Runway rewards direction. References, camera paths, motion brushes and edit-grade tools that slot into a real pipeline instead of sitting beside it. Since late August it also finishes in professional formats, with HDR output and ACEScg OpenEXR delivery. One catch. Those finishing formats are a plan entitlement, not a universal feature: Runway’s pricing page names HDR, ProRes and image sequences as studio-grade capabilities of its upper tiers.
- Repeatable shots, not just vibes
- Character and location consistency
- Web app, editor, API and an Adobe plugin
Finished, on-brand video
Campaign assets. Product and brand video. Social cut-downs, avatars and explainer beats that have to survive a review and still ship.
- Agencies and in-house brand teams
- Repeatable campaigns, not one-offs
- Generation through final export
You need the pipeline, not one clip
Reach for Runway when you want generation, a deep bench of third-party models, editing and finishing under one login. And when brand consistency matters more than novelty.
- Many models, one workspace
- Edit and finish in the same tool
- Brand systems and approvals
A deadline that moved, a flagship that didn’t, and an HDR pipeline
Three facts about Runway’s own pages set up everything below. First, Gen-4 Aleph isn’t waiting for a shutoff notice. gen4_aleph and gen3a_turbo were both declared no longer available on July 30, 2026, and neither identifier appears on the API models page or the API pricing page. Second, Seedance 2.5 does have an API identifier. It’s seedance2_5, added August 7, 2026, with full tiered pricing on both API pages. Third, runway.com/changelog is publishing normally. It carries roughly fifteen July entries, sixteen August entries and two September entries, the most recent dated September 8, 2026, and every entry is tagged with the plan tier it applies to. The Unlimited to Max migration is November 30, 2026. The article shows an August 27, 2026 update stamp, and September 1 appears nowhere in it. What’s new since early September is commercial, not generative. A self-serve Team plan on September 4. A Premiere Pro and After Effects plugin on September 8. Five API changelog items including a new enhance_frame_rate model. And a GWM Worlds 2 research post on September 3. Older than all of it, and easy to miss, is the August 20 enterprise post that publishes indemnity and licensing terms. Runway put it on Runway News rather than on the pricing or enterprise pages where a buyer would go looking.
September 1 came and went Re-read September 18, 2026
The help article “Unlimited plan is switching to Max” was edited on August 27, 2026. That’s five days before the September 1 deadline it had carried until then, and September 1 no longer appears anywhere in it. Read again on September 18, 2026, nothing has moved a second time. The article says three things. On November 30th Unlimited subscribers move to Max. Monthly subscribers move automatically at the same $95 per month price. And Runway is extending Unlimited access for eligible legacy Unlimited subscriptions through November 30th, 2026. The tense is still future, so nothing has migrated yet. And the article carries an update stamp rather than a publication date. That’s exactly why it can change without leaving a trace. Open it yourself before you act on the date.
- New date: November 30, 2026
- No announcement and no changelog entry
- Legacy Unlimited subscriptions stay active until then
Gen-4 Aleph is gone, not going Executed July 30, 2026
This is the removal with the most direct cost to a reader, and the one Runway gave no warning of. Anyone who read gen4_aleph as merely deprecated and waited for a shutoff notice was waiting for a notice that never came. The shutoff had already happened. Runway’s API changelog entry of July 30, 2026 records that Gen-3 Alpha Turbo (gen3a_turbo) and Gen-4 Aleph (gen4_aleph) are no longer available. On a September 18, 2026 read, neither identifier appears on the API models page or the API pricing page. Both of those pages are rewritten where they stand, so confirm directly before you schedule anything. And if a job, script or scheduled render still names either model, it isn’t deprecated. It’s failing.
- Both identifiers removed on the same day
aleph2is the replacement for Aleph work- Audit running jobs now, not at the next release
Gen-4.5 Flagship
Runway’s best video model for text- and image-to-video. Introduced December 1, 2025 and still the top of the line. There’s no Gen-5. Runway markets it as the world’s best video model, which is vendor positioning, so test it on your own shots. Since August 20, 2026 it can deliver straight into HDR and post-production formats.
- Text or image to video
- Supply a first frame to steer
- Vendor claim, so test on your shots
Aleph 2.0 and Edit Studio Editor
Change one frame and Aleph 2.0 changes the rest of your video to match, up to 30 seconds. Edit Studio shows the edit as an image first, so you can shape the look before you commit to generating. The API model is aleph2, and it joined Gen-4.5 in the August 20 HDR output update.
- Edit-grade video-to-video
- Preview before you generate
gen4_alephwas switched off on July 30, 2026
Agent 2.0 Campaign engine
Runway’s product page calls Agent a chat-based marketing agent that builds and scales the work: concepts, ads, full campaigns and variants. Agent Skills shipped in July 2026 to run those jobs from one command. Projects and Brand Kits came to Agent on August 11, 2026, tagged for Enterprise. Here’s the catch. The Agent product page is undated and records neither of those, so the changelog is the only place Agent’s development shows up at all.
- Brief to finished campaign
- Ad campaigns, commercials, localization
- Projects and Brand Kits in Agent, August 11, 2026, from Runway’s product changelog
Studio Finishing
A built-in timeline to trim, stitch, reorder and export a final video without leaving Runway. Generation and finishing now live in one tool.
- Real editing timeline
- One-tool round trip
- Export production-ready cuts
Characters and GWM-1 Real-time
Launched in March 2026. Real-time intelligent avatars you can talk with, running on Runway’s GWM-1 general world model. Runway quotes roughly 1.75s response, 24fps and 37ms per frame. Those are vendor figures, not independent tests.
- Conversational avatars
- API model gwm1_avatars
- Consent and likeness rules apply
Veo 3: sunset, executed August 4, 2026
Runway’s API model guide said Veo 3 was deprecated and would be officially sunset on August 4th, 2026. It was. Re-checked on September 18, 2026, veo3 appears on neither the API models page nor the API pricing page. The same holds for the July 30 removals, though those were recorded on the day rather than published ahead of it. So Veo 3 is the one removal Runway dated in advance and then executed on that date. That’s the instructive contrast with the Unlimited migration. A technical sunset published in the docs held. A commercial date published in a help article moved. veo3.1 and veo3.1_fast are unaffected and remain the upgrade path, and veo3.1_fast is a lot cheaper at 15 credits per second with audio and 10 without.
veo3calls hit a model that’s goneveo3.1_fastis the cheap half of the pair- A sunset date published in advance held; not every removal gets one
Hosted third-party models Rented
One subscription, a lot of outside models. Google Veo 3.1 and Veo 3.1 Fast. ByteDance Seedance 2.5 and Seedream 5.0. MiniMax H3 and, since September 3, H3 Max. xAI Grok Imagine video and image. FLUX.2, GPT Image 2 and the September 8 GPT Image 2.5 pair. ElevenLabs audio. And since August 26, Alibaba WAN 3.0. Two traps in that list. Muse Image is an API-side model. It’s priced on the API pricing page at 1 credit per image and doesn’t appear on Academy at all. So it’s easy to file on the wrong side of the app-versus-API split. And the Seedance 2.5 identifier, published on the API pages rather than in the app, is seedance2_5. The roster still moves in both directions. Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro went on April 3, 2026. Veo 3 went on August 4. And the whole Kling family, still priced in the app and still offered in the Adobe plugin, is on neither API page.
- Best model per shot
- Muse Image is API-only, not app-side
- Models can be pulled, so name a fallback
What arrived in late August API changelog
Five dated additions inside eleven days. August 20 brought ruby, which Runway describes as converting any SDR video, whether uploaded or generated by any model, into true HDR (paraphrase). Its price isn’t a range. It’s a two-step conditional. The API pricing page sets it at 20 credits per second, rising to 40 credits per second when the source is larger than 4 megapixels, which is roughly 4K. So budget 40 for a 4K plate. The same day brought HDR output formats for Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0. August 26 added WAN 3.0 as wan3 and Muse Image as muse_image. August 31 added ACEScg OpenEXR delivery. And Runway’s product changelog tags the Ruby entry for Pro and above, which makes it a plan entitlement as well as a line item.
ruby: 20 credits per second, 40 above 4 megapixelswan3: up to 30 seconds with native audio- Ruby is tagged Pro and above, so Standard can’t run it
Solaris is research, not a product September 1, 2026
Runway published a research post called “Solaris: Towards Interfaces That Are Generated, Not Coded,” on an interface world model. Research only. No product, no API model, no pricing, and it’s explicitly not a Gen-5 announcement. Read it as a direction of travel, not as something you can put into a workflow this quarter.
- Research post, September 1, 2026
- Not a product and not Gen-5
- Nothing to integrate yet
GWM Worlds 2 September 3, 2026
The second research post of the month, and again not a product. Runway describes GWM Worlds 2 as extending the GWM Worlds work shown in December, now with generated audio and richer subject and scene control. It delivers interactive worlds generated in real time as continuous 720p video at 24 frames per second, with audio at 48,000 Hz that responds to your inputs as you explore. Those are vendor figures. There’s no API model, no pricing and, again, no Gen-5.
- Research, not a product
- Real-time interactive worlds with audio
- Nothing to procure and nothing to integrate
The product changelog is the buyer’s changelog Read September 18, 2026
Runway runs two changelogs, and the one at runway.com/changelog is the one a buyer needs. Read on September 18, 2026 it carries roughly fifteen July entries, sixteen August entries and two September entries, the most recent dated September 8. It beats the API changelog for a buyer, because each entry carries a plan-tier tag: All Plans, Paid Plans, Pro and above, or Enterprise. That’s where the HDR, ProRes and Ruby gating described here comes from. It’s a rolling page rewritten in place, so it can’t be cited as a stable article. Read it yourself before you rely on a tag.
- Two changelogs, different scopes
- Per-entry plan-tier tags
- Rolling page, so confirm directly
The Team plan September 4, 2026
A self-serve tier between Pro and Enterprise, and the biggest pricing change of the quarter for a small studio. Runway prices Team at $69 per seat monthly, or $55 per seat on annual billing, for 2 to 9 seats. Every seat adds 6,900 credits a month into one shared pool with monthly rollover. You also get 1TB of storage, up to 100 shared projects, shared Brand Kits, up to 20 agent skills, and Agent Connectors for Figma, Dropbox and Notion. The catch isn’t the price. It’s discovery. On runway.com/pricing, read September 18, 2026, Team sits behind a Team and Enterprise tab rather than in the default Individual table, so a buyer comparing tiers can miss the tier that fits them.
- $69 per seat monthly, $55 annual
- 6,900 credits per seat into a shared pool
- Hidden behind a tab on the pricing page
Runway for Premiere Pro and After Effects September 8, 2026
A third access surface beside the web app and the API, with a model list of its own. Runway describes generating images and video, restyling the footage on your timeline, and dropping every result straight into your comp or sequence. Aleph 2.0 is the restyle path: select a clip, restyle its anchor frames, and Aleph 2.0 re-renders the full clip to match. The installer is free for macOS and Windows. Generating from the plugin works on all paid plans and spends your existing plan credits. The detail that matters for procurement is the model list: Gen-4.5, Seedance 2.5, Kling 3.0 Pro and Veo 3.1 for video, and Gen-4 Image, Nano Banana and GPT Image 2 for stills.
- Free installer, paid plans to generate
- Spends your existing plan credits
- Kling 3.0 Pro is reachable here and not in the API
Enterprise: indemnity, training and security August 20, 2026
The most useful Runway post of the quarter for a procurement team, and the easiest to miss, because it sits on Runway News rather than on the pricing or enterprise pages. Runway commits to uncapped IP indemnification, third-party models explicitly included, and to no training on your data. Alongside that sit the security standards an enterprise buyer expects: SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and CCPA, zero data retention and SSO. Runway’s undated enterprise page adds full ownership of your outputs and customizable access and permissions. Read the indemnity line as the direct answer to the rental problem. The models are rented. The legal exposure of using them is contracted.
- Uncapped IP indemnification, third-party models included
- No training on customer data
- SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and CCPA, ZDR, SSO
Workspace and admin features only the changelog records August 2026
Runway’s product changelog, read September 18, 2026, carries a run of workspace and governance items Runway announced nowhere else. Model Router Routing History on August 3. Comments on Assets on August 7, tagged Enterprise. Projects and Brand Kits in Agent on August 11, tagged Enterprise. Compositing Nodes on August 18. And on August 24, both Default SSO for New Workspaces and Org Config Alerts, Enterprise again. None of them changes a model or a price, which is exactly why they stay invisible outside the changelog. All of them are the kind of thing an administrator gets asked about in a security review. The changelog is rewritten in place, so confirm the entries and their plan tags yourself.
- Default SSO for new workspaces, August 24
- Org Config Alerts for administrators, August 24
- Comments on Assets and routing history for auditability
Model licensing changes the shape of the deal August 20, 2026
The same post announces something in a different category from every other way of buying Runway. Under a model licensing program, Runway delivers closed model weights and a proprietary training and inference framework straight to a customer. That customer hosts the model inside their own environment and fine-tunes it on their own data. Every other commercial shape here’s a rental. A model you reach over an API or inside an app, on terms Runway can change, on a roster Runway can shorten. This one isn’t. So if your objection to Runway has been that a hosted model can be withdrawn, this is the published answer. It’s an enterprise conversation, not a plan you can buy on the pricing page.
- Closed weights delivered to the customer
- Hosted in your environment, fine-tuned on your data
- Not a self-serve tier, so pricing is unpublished
What arrived in September API changelog
Five dated API items between September 3 and September 17, read on September 18, 2026. September 3: MiniMax H3 Max as h3_max, 5 to 15 second durations at 5 credits per second for 480p and 8 for 768p, and a distinct identifier from hailuo3, which is still live. September 8: GPT Image 2.5 as gpt_image_2_5_flare and gpt_image_2_5_sunburst. Up to 16 reference images, 30 aspect ratios and 1 to 10 outputs per call, billed 1 to 76 credits per image plus 1 credit per reference. September 11: Ruby now preserves a source video’s alpha channel on the video-to-HDR route, writing alpha as the EXR A channel and using ProRes 4444. September 12: the ACEScg EXR sequence outputs are now built from the source plate, with colorimetry metadata updated to match. September 17: a new model, enhance_frame_rate, converting a video to a target frame rate of 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60 or 120 at 1 credit per 2 seconds.
h3_maxisn’thailuo3- Ruby gained alpha and plate-referenced ACEScg
enhance_frame_rate: a second finishing tool
Runway-native models, the rivals it hosts, and the API that hosts fewer
Four lists matter now, not three. Runway’s own models. The third-party models exposed inside the web app. The different set you can reach through the API. And, since September 8, 2026, the set offered inside Runway’s Premiere Pro and After Effects plugin. Picture one restaurant with four doors and a different menu pinned inside each one. The lists really are separate, and not in a tidy way. Eight Kling entries sit on the app-side Academy table and none on either API page, while Kling 3.0 Pro appears in the plugin. Meta’s muse_image runs the same split in reverse, priced on both API pages and absent from Academy. Sharpest of all, Academy still prices Gen-4 Aleph at 15 credits per second, and the API changelog retired that model on July 30, 2026. Picking the right model per shot is the craft. Knowing which list your workflow actually lives on is the procurement question. Pick the wrong list and a team commits to a model it can’t ship with.
Gen-4.5
The highest-quality Runway video. Reach for it when the shot ships, now with HDR and post-production output formats.
- Text or image to video
- First-frame conditioning
Gen-4 Turbo
Faster, cheaper Runway video for iteration and look-finding before you commit credits.
- Image to video
- Test cheap, then upgrade
Act-Two
Motion-capture performance with head, face, body and hand tracking. Drive a character from a reference performance.
- Performance capture
- Consent required
Gen-4 Image and References
Runway’s image model with reference-driven characters and locations, plus Layout Sketch for composition control.
- Consistent characters
- Draw to compose
Aleph 2.0
Prompt-driven editing of footage you already have, up to 30 seconds, with an image preview in Edit Studio before you generate.
- API model aleph2
- Preview then commit
Ruby
Added August 20, 2026. A conversion model, not a generator. It takes SDR video, uploaded or generated by any model, and produces HDR (paraphrase of Runway’s wording). Since September 11 it preserves a source video’s alpha channel, writing alpha as the EXR A channel and using ProRes 4444. The API pricing page, read September 18, 2026, sets the rate at 20 credits per second, and 40 credits per second when the source is larger than 4 megapixels, which is roughly 4K. The product changelog tags Ruby for Pro and above.
- API model
ruby - 20 credits per second, 40 above 4 megapixels
- Pro and above, so Standard can’t run it
Enhance Frame Rate
Added September 17, 2026. A second conversion model: it retimes a video to a target frame rate of 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60 or 120. Priced at 1 credit per 2 seconds on the API pricing page, read September 18, 2026. It isn’t yet listed on the API models page, so confirm before you build on it.
- API model
enhance_frame_rate - 1 credit per 2 seconds
The rest of the native bench
These are the native identifiers easiest to overlook, because the app never names them. All of them were on the API models page, read September 18, 2026: act_two, gen4_image, gen4_image_turbo, ruby and, on the pricing page only, enhance_frame_rate. If you’re scoping an integration, start from this list rather than from the app.
- Native IDs, not third-party ones
gen4_image_turbois the cheap image seat
Characters and GWM-1
Real-time conversational avatars built on Runway’s general world model, available on the web and through the API.
- API model gwm1_avatars
- Rights and consent first
| Category | Hosted in the app · Runway Academy’s models-and-pricing table, a rolling and undated page, read September 18, 2026 · confirm any rate directly before you rely on it | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| Video | Kling O3 (4K 43 credits per second, Pro 17, Standard 13); Kling 3.0 Pro (12 credits per second without audio, 17 with); Kling 3.0 Std; Kling 3.0 Turbo; Kling 3.0 Motion Control; Kling 2.6 Pro; Kling 2.5 Turbo Pro; Kling 2.5 Turbo (no Kling model appears on either API page, though Kling 3.0 Pro is offered inside Runway’s Premiere Pro plugin); Google Veo 3.1; ByteDance Seedance 2.5 (30 per second base plus per-resolution input charges, which is not how the API prices it), Seedance 2.0, 2.0 Fast and 2.0 Mini; Alibaba WAN 3.0 (480p 5, 720p 10, 1080p 20), WAN 2.6 and WAN 2.6 Flash; MiniMax H3 (768p 10, 2K 15, rates that match neither hailuo3 nor h3_max); Lightricks LTX 2.5 Fast (720p 9, 1080p 13, 1440p 19, 4K 30) and LTX 2.5 Pro (720p 12, 1080p 17); Black Forest Labs FLUX 3 (17 per second); Alibaba HappyHorse 1.0; xAI Grok Imagine; and Gen-4 Aleph, still priced at 15 per second seven weeks after the API retired it | A shot needs motion, audio or a look Gen-4.5 is not giving you |
| Image | ByteDance Seedream 5.0 Pro and Lite, plus Seedream 5.0 Pro Layers (18 per run) and Characters (2 per 6 seconds); Ideogram 4 (Turbo 4, Default 7, Quality 11) and Ideogram P-Image; Google Nano Banana, Nano Banana Pro, Nano Banana Pro 2 and Pro 2 Lite (Runway’s labels for this family are not Google’s: what Runway calls Pro 2 and Pro 2 Lite is Google’s Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana 2 Lite, the gemini-3.1-flash-image line, rather than a second generation of Nano Banana Pro, which is Google’s gemini-3-pro-image); OpenAI GPT Image 2.5 Flare and Sunburst (1K and 2K 16, 4K 19), GPT Image 2, 1.5 and 1 Mini; Black Forest Labs FLUX.2 Max and Klein; xAI Grok Image Quality and Grok Imagine Image 2.0; Magnific Style Transfer (Meta’s Muse Image is not here: it is API-only) | You are building stills, first frames or style references |
| Audio | ByteDance Seed Audio 1.0; Google Lyria 3 Pro and Lyria 3 Clip; ElevenLabs text-to-speech, sound effects, dubbing, isolation and speech-to-speech, plus Eleven 3v; Fish Audio (1 credit per 250 characters) | Voice, music, sound design, dubbing or cleanup |
| Upscale | Topaz 4K; Magnific Precision | A finished cut has to hit delivery resolution |
| Language | Google Gemini 2.5 Flash; Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.5 and Opus 4.8 | Scripting, briefs and copy inside the same workspace |
Veo negative prompts
The API added an optional negativePrompt field on the Veo models, for both text-to-video and image-to-video, up to 1,000 characters. Useful for killing a recurring artifact without rewriting the whole brief. Since the August 4, 2026 sunset it applies to the veo3.1 pair only.
- Text-to-video and image-to-video
- Up to 1,000 characters
veo3.1andveo3.1_fast
Seedream 5.0 Lite in the API
seedream5_lite joined the API: prompts up to 4,000 characters, up to 14 reference images, 4 credits per image. The cheap end of the image bench is now reachable from code, not just from the app.
- 4,000-character prompts
- Up to 14 reference images
- 4 credits per image
gen4_aleph is gone, with nothing published ahead of it
Runway’s API changelog entry of July 30, 2026 states that Gen-3 Alpha Turbo (gen3a_turbo) and Gen-4 Aleph (gen4_aleph) are no longer available. Neither identifier is on the API models page or the API pricing page as read on September 18, 2026. No deprecation window came first. The changelog recorded the removal on the day it took effect, so anyone treating gen4_aleph as deprecated and waiting for a shutoff notice was waiting for something Runway never published. Aleph work moves to aleph2. Gen-3 Alpha Turbo has no like-for-like successor, so re-scope rather than re-point. Beyond that, no new deprecation, sunset or removal was published on either API page or in any API changelog entry between August 19 and September 18, 2026.
- Executed July 30, 2026, not pending
- Move Aleph work to
aleph2 - No new deprecations published through September 18
The one model with a date on it kept the date
Runway’s API model guide gave Veo 3 an August 4, 2026 sunset and recommended Veo 3.1 or Model Routers. The model is still absent from that guide and from API pricing. Worth recording as evidence rather than trivia: the published technical date was accurate to the day, so a team that keeps a deprecation watchlist migrated calmly.
- The published technical date held
veo3.1is the upgrade- Model Routers are Runway’s other suggestion
Four models, a resolution addition, and two changelogs that disagree
The API changelog surfaced Seedance 2.5 as seedance2_5 and Grok Imagine Video 1.5 on August 7, and Seedance 2.5 at 1080p on August 15, where Runway notes that 4K stays on Seedance 2.0. MiniMax H3 arrived as hailuo3 and Grok Imagine Image 2 as grok_imagine_image_2. Now the part worth a line of its own. Runway’s two changelogs date the same arrivals differently. The product changelog lists MiniMax Hailuo 3.0 on August 5, Seedance 2.5 on August 11 and Ideogram 4.0 with Grok Imagine 1.5 Video on August 13. The API changelog puts Seedance 2.5 and Grok Imagine Video 1.5 on August 7. Neither is wrong so much as differently scoped. But if you’re rebuilding a timeline for an audit, say which changelog you used. The unlimited Hailuo 3.0 promotion for new Max plans expired on August 23, 2026 and no longer appears anywhere.
seedance2_5exists, dated August 7 in the API- App and API changelogs date arrivals differently
- The Hailuo promotion has expired
An HDR pipeline, not just a model
Two entries on the same day. A new model, ruby, converts SDR video into HDR, and Runway says it accepts uploads or generations from any model (paraphrase). The API pricing page bills it at 20 credits per second, and at 40 credits per second when the source is larger than 4 megapixels, which is roughly 4K. Academy quotes a flat 20 with no 4K step, so estimate from the API page. Separately, Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0 gained HDR output formats. Runway’s product changelog tags the Ruby entry for Pro and above, which is the detail a Standard subscriber needs before planning an HDR deliverable.
ruby: 20 per second, 40 above 4 megapixels- HDR output on Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0
- Tagged Pro and above on the product changelog
WAN 3.0 and Muse Image
WAN 3.0 arrived on Runway Dev as wan3. Runway describes it as generating up to 30 seconds of video with native audio, from a text prompt or a start-frame image. Pricing is 5 credits per second at 480p, 10 at 720p and 20 at 1080p. Muse Image arrived the same day as muse_image: text to image with optional reference images, prompts up to 4,000 characters and eight aspect ratios, at 1 credit per image. One trap. Muse Image is API-only, despite reading like an app-side model. It doesn’t appear on Academy’s models-and-pricing table at all, which is the app-versus-API split running in the direction buyers rarely check.
wan3: 30 seconds with native audio- Resolution is the cost lever, 5 to 20 credits per second
muse_imageis API-only, not app-side
ACEScg OpenEXR delivery
HDR outputs can now be delivered as scene-referred ACEScg OpenEXR sequences, in both ACES 1.3 and ACES 2.0 variants (paraphrase of Runway’s wording). If that sentence means nothing to your team, it isn’t for you. If it means something to your colorist, it’s the most consequential thing Runway shipped in August.
- Scene-referred ACEScg
- ACES 1.3 and ACES 2.0
- Aimed at finishing pipelines
MiniMax H3 Max
A new identifier, h3_max, with durations from 5 to 15 seconds, billed at 5 credits per second at 480p and 8 at 768p. Read it carefully. This isn’t hailuo3, which is still live, and neither rate matches the MiniMax H3 rates Academy shows on the app side.
h3_max, nothailuo3- 5 at 480p, 8 at 768p
- Academy quotes different rates again
GPT Image 2.5
Two identifiers, gpt_image_2_5_flare and gpt_image_2_5_sunburst, taking up to 16 reference images across 30 aspect ratios, with an output count of 1 to 10. Billing runs from 1 to 76 credits per image. At 1K and 2K: 1 for low, 5 medium, 16 high, 28 xhigh and 63 max. At 4K or auto: 2, 11, 19, 34 and 76. Add 1 credit per reference image, then multiply by the output count.
- Two quality families, one model
- Up to 16 references, 30 aspect ratios
- Cost scales with quality and output count
Ruby gains alpha and a plate-referenced build
On September 11 Ruby began preserving the alpha channel of a source video on the video-to-HDR route, writing alpha as the EXR A channel and using ProRes 4444 for ProRes output. On September 12 the two ACEScg EXR sequence outputs became plate-referenced, built from the source plate with colorimetry metadata updated to match. That amends the August 31 entry above. So if your colorist tested against the August behavior, retest.
- Alpha survives the HDR conversion
- ACEScg sequences built from the plate
- The August 31 description is superseded
A second finishing model
A brand-new model, enhance_frame_rate, converting a video to a target frame rate of 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60 or 120, billed at 1 credit per 2 seconds. It’s the second post-production conversion tool Runway has shipped in a month, after Ruby. That reinforces the pattern: Runway is buying its way into the finishing stage, not only the generation stage. Note that it’s priced on the API pricing page but isn’t yet on the API models page.
enhance_frame_rate, 1 credit per 2 seconds- Seven target frame rates
- Priced before it’s documented
The web app
Generation, Edit Studio, Studio and Agent, with the roster Runway Academy prices. The broadest bench, including families the API can’t reach, and the place most evaluation happens.
- Widest model roster
- Academy is the price list
- Where a wrong assumption starts
The API
A different list, not a shorter one. It carries identifiers that never appear in the app, leaves out whole app-side families, and imposes its own legal terms, including an attribution requirement the app doesn’t.
- Different roster, not a subset
- Its own changelog and pricing page
- A Powered by Runway mark is required
Runway MCP
Named as an entitlement on both Pro and Max on the pricing page, read September 18, 2026, with workflow support added on August 20, 2026 for all plans. A third automation path beside the app and the API, and the one Runway announces least.
- Listed on Pro and Max
- Workflow support since August 20
- Confirm scope on the pricing page
The Adobe plugin
Released September 8, 2026 for Premiere Pro and After Effects. Free to install on macOS and Windows, generation on any paid plan, billed to your existing credits. Its model list includes Kling 3.0 Pro.
- Generate inside the timeline
- Aleph 2.0 restyles the clip
- Reaches Kling, which the API doesn’t
From a clip generator to a campaign engine
The biggest change at Runway in 2026 isn’t a model. It’s Agent. Runway describes it as a chat-based marketing agent that builds and scales the work: concepts, ads, full campaigns and variants. Agent Skills, shipped in July 2026, collapse those jobs into single commands. So the human job moves. From prompting, to briefing and reviewing. That’s a different skill, right? And most teams haven’t trained anyone for it.
A marketing agent, not a prompt box
Agent works up the direction with you, produces finished video, and builds and scales campaigns across platforms, formats and markets from the same concept.
- Concepts, ads, campaigns and variants
- Multi-format and multi-market output
- Chat-based, so the brief is the interface
Agent Skills
Runway’s framing: build an ad campaign, create a commercial, localize your ads and more, with one command. Skills turn repeated campaign work into named, callable jobs instead of freehand prompting. Agent has moved since July, though only the changelog says so. Projects and Brand Kits came to Agent on August 11, 2026, tagged for Enterprise, and the new Team plan bundles up to 20 agent skills per workspace. The product page itself is still undated.
- Named jobs, repeatable output
- Projects and Brand Kits in Agent, August 11, 2026
- Up to 20 agent skills on the Team plan
Projects and Brand Kits reach Agent
Runway’s product changelog records Projects and Brand Kits arriving inside Agent on August 11, 2026, tagged Enterprise. It matters more than it sounds. An agent that can see the brand system and the project it’s working in is an agent whose output needs less correcting. It moves Agent from a standalone generator toward something that inherits your workspace context. The changelog is a rolling page rewritten in place, so confirm the entry and its plan tag before you plan around it.
- Agent inherits brand context
- Tagged Enterprise on the changelog
- Read the changelog entry yourself
Agent on the new Team plan
Team is the first self-serve tier to put real numbers on Agent capacity. Up to 20 agent skills. Shared Brand Kits across the workspace. Agent Connectors for Figma, Dropbox and Notion. Up to 100 shared projects, and a shared credit pool of 6,900 credits per seat per month. If Agent is why you’re buying Runway, this is the tier to price. It’s also the one a buyer is most likely to miss, because the pricing page keeps it behind a Team and Enterprise tab rather than in the default Individual table.
- Up to 20 agent skills
- Connectors for Figma, Dropbox and Notion
- Behind a tab on the pricing page
The controls that separate direction from luck
Most people treat a generator like a slot machine. You don’t have to. When brand, character or composition matters, these are the features that make a shot repeatable instead of a lucky roll.
References
Reference-driven characters and locations, so they stay consistent across shots and scenes. This is the key to brand and narrative continuity.
- Consistent characters
- Reusable locations
- Brand-safe recurrence
Layout Sketch
Draw on a blank canvas, or over an image, to control composition and place new elements before you generate.
- Compose deliberately
- Guide placement
- Less trial and error
Camera and motion brush
Say how the camera and individual objects move through a scene, rather than hoping the model guesses what you meant.
- Camera paths
- Per-object motion
- Intentional movement
Keyframes
Set first, middle and last frames to control how a shot evolves across its duration. Kling O3 extends the idea with timed keyframe guidance and multi-shot output with audio, up to 4K, and Academy still lists it. That capability isn’t API-reachable: no Kling model appears on either API page. It isn’t app-only either, because Runway’s Premiere Pro plugin offers Kling 3.0 Pro. So decide which door you’re building on before you design a workflow around it.
- Start and end control
- Timed guidance in Kling O3, outside the API
- Predictable arcs
Negative prompts
On the Veo 3.1 API models you can pass an optional negative prompt of up to 1,000 characters, naming what must not appear, instead of overloading the positive brief. Write everything against veo3.1 and veo3.1_fast. veo3 was sunset on August 4, 2026 and is gone.
veo3.1andveo3.1_fast- Text-to-video and image-to-video
- Added July 10, 2026
Aleph 2.0 editing
Change one frame and Aleph 2.0 changes the rest of the video to match, up to 30 seconds. This is edit-grade transformation, not a filter, and you see an image preview first.
- Prompt-based edits
- Preview in Edit Studio
- Up to 30 seconds
HDR and ACEScg finishing
Since August 20, 2026 Gen-4.5 and Aleph 2.0 output HDR directly. ruby converts existing SDR footage to HDR at 20 credits per second, and 40 above 4 megapixels. Since August 31, HDR output can be delivered as scene-referred ACEScg OpenEXR sequences in ACES 1.3 and ACES 2.0. September refined it further: Ruby preserves a source alpha channel from September 11, and from September 12 the ACEScg sequences are built from the source plate. Two things to settle before the run rather than after. The delivery format, because a conversion pass is a second bill. And the plan, because Runway lists HDR, ProRes and image sequences as studio-grade features of Max, and tags Ruby and ProRes export for Pro and above. On Standard, this whole card is out of reach.
- HDR output on the flagship models
rubyfor footage you already have- Pro and above only, so check the plan first
Slow handheld close-up of a ceramic coffee cup on a wooden cafe table, morning light through large windows, shallow depth of field, soft filmic grade, gentle steam rising. Five-second product hero shot for a social ad, 9:16.
Use these character and location references for every shot in this sequence. Keep the character’s face, wardrobe and the set consistent across all six clips; vary only the action and camera.
Take this existing 8-second clip and change the time of day to golden-hour sunset while preserving the subject’s motion and the camera move. Don’t alter the composition.
Habits that protect your credits and your brand
The biggest wins here are behavioral, not technical. Treat generation as a budgeted, staged process. Design for the edit, not for the one magic clip. And never assume a hosted model, a per-second rate or a plan price will still be there next quarter. Three dated items sit behind that advice. The Veo 3 sunset executed on August 4, 2026 exactly as Runway published it. Gen-4 Aleph and Gen-3 Alpha Turbo were switched off on July 30, 2026 with no date published ahead of them, so a migration you still think of as upcoming is already overdue. And the Unlimited to Max migration is November 30, 2026, not September 1. There’s a new tier to price too. Team launched September 4, 2026, and the pricing page doesn’t show it by default.
Storyboard before you spend
Lock the shot list and the look before you commit credits to long, high-quality runs.
Test cheap, then commit
Find the look with Turbo or short durations. Upgrade to Gen-4.5 only for the shots that ship.
Think in shots, not films
Design 3 to 10 second clips you’ll cut together later. Don’t force a whole narrative into one run.
Pick the model per shot
Match Veo 3.1, Veo 3.1 Fast, Seedance 2.5, WAN 3.0, MiniMax H3 or H3 Max, or Gen-4.5 to the shot, instead of defaulting to whatever opened. Then check which door the winner is reachable through before you build on it. The app, the API, Runway MCP and the Adobe plugin are four different model lists.
Budget = seconds × model
Duration times the model’s per-second credit rate is your cost lever, so plan runs against it. Two traps. Some models carry a per-generation minimum, including 80 credits on seedance2_5. And a finishing pass is a second bill on top of the first: Ruby costs 40 credits per second, not 20, once the source is larger than 4 megapixels.
Exploit references
Use References and Layout Sketch whenever brand or character consistency matters.
Edit, don’t regenerate
When you almost have it, reach for Aleph 2.0 instead of rolling a fresh generation.
Re-read the dates, don’t file them
Runway published the August 4, 2026 Veo 3 sunset in advance and executed it on the day. The July 30 removal of gen4_aleph and gen3a_turbo was recorded on the day it happened rather than announced ahead of it, so advance warning isn’t something to count on. The Unlimited migration moved three months by a silent edit to a help article on August 27, 2026. Kling is the third failure mode: absent from both API pages while Academy lists eight variants and the Adobe plugin offers one. And Academy is still quoting 15 credits per second for Gen-4 Aleph, seven weeks after the API retired it, which is the fourth. So re-read the API models page, the API pricing page, both changelogs and any help article carrying a date, on a monthly cycle. And name a fallback for every hosted model in a standing workflow.
| API model | Credits per second | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Enhance Frame Rate (enhance_frame_rate) | 1 per 2 seconds | Added September 17, 2026; a retime pass billed on top of the generation |
| Gen-4 Turbo | 5 | The cheap seat, so find the look here first |
| MiniMax H3 Max (h3_max) | 5 at 480p, 8 at 768p | Added September 3, 2026; a distinct model from hailuo3, which is still live |
| WAN 3.0 (wan3) | 5 at 480p, 10 at 720p, 20 at 1080p | Up to 30 seconds with native audio; resolution is the whole cost lever |
| Gen-4.5 | 12 | Flagship rate; reserve it for shots that ship |
| Veo 3.1 Fast (veo3.1_fast) | 15 with audio, 10 without | The cheap half of the Veo pair, so price it before defaulting to full Veo 3.1 |
| Seedance 2 Mini | 16 | 64-credit minimum per generation |
| Ruby (SDR to HDR) | 20, or 40 above 4 megapixels | Not a range: it is a two-step conditional. Assume 40 for a 4K plate. Pro and above only |
| Seedance 2.5 (seedance2_5) | 20 at 480p, 30 at 720p, 68 at 1080p, plus half as much again on input | 80-credit minimum. Academy quotes a flat 30, so an app-side estimate understates a 1080p API run by more than double |
| Aleph 2.0 (aleph2) | 28 | 56-credit minimum per generation |
| Seedance 2 (720p) | 36 | Rate is quoted at 720p |
| Veo 3.1 | 40 with audio, 20 without | Audio doubles the rate, so turn it off when you will score the cut yourself |
| Plan | Annual, per month | Billed monthly | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 125 one-time credits, not a monthly allowance, plus 5GB of asset storage and a selection of models to test concepts. A trial, not a production seat |
| Standard | $12 | $15 | 625 credits per month. Note what is not here: Ruby, ProRes and image-sequence export are tagged Pro and above, so the HDR finishing pipeline described here cannot be run on Standard |
| Pro | $28 | $35 | 2,250 credits per month, the common team tier, and the lowest tier that lists Runway MCP and can run Ruby and ProRes export |
| Team | $55 per seat | $69 per seat | Launched September 4, 2026 for 2 to 9 seats. 6,900 credits per seat per month into one shared pool with monthly rollover, 1TB storage, up to 100 shared projects, shared Brand Kits, up to 20 agent skills and Agent Connectors for Figma, Dropbox and Notion. It sits behind a “Team & Enterprise” tab rather than in the default Individual table, so a buyer comparing tiers can miss it |
| Max | $76 | $95 | 9,500 credits per month with rollover of unused credits for 1 month, and a feature line naming HDR, ProRes and image sequences as studio-grade. A “Best value” badge on Max did not surface on this read and is neither confirmed nor disproved |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Contract terms, contact Runway. No figures are published anywhere first-party, and none can be inferred. This is where indemnification, no-training commitments and model licensing live |
| Unlimited | Not sold | Not sold | Absent from the pricing page, so it cannot be bought, but legacy subscriptions stay active until the November 30, 2026 move to Max |
Before the final run, tell me the plan: how many seconds at which model and resolution, whether we are delivering SDR or HDR and what the conversion adds, the estimated credit cost including any per-generation minimum, and which shots are cheap tests versus final deliverables.
For each shot in this list, recommend the single best model currently available in Runway and why, choosing among Gen-4.5, Veo 3.1, Seedance 2.5, WAN 3.0, MiniMax H3, Kling or another, given the motion, realism and audio needs. Flag any recommendation that’s app-only and not reachable through the API, including anything from the Kling family.
Assemble the approved clips in Studio in this order, match durations to the storyboard, and export a 4K master plus a 9:16 social cut. Tell me whether the delivery spec needs HDR or an ACEScg EXR sequence before we render.
Before this ships, list for each asset: which model generated it and through which surface, the app, the API, Runway MCP or the Adobe plugin; whether that surface requires a Powered by Runway mark; whether any likeness, voice or brand asset needs written consent; and which plan tier the finishing format we promised actually requires.
Range and speed don’t equal cleared, finished or affordable
Range is the product. Range is also the risk. Credits burn fast. Models get deprecated and swapped on published dates. Hosted third-party models can be pulled outright. Plans get retired on dates that themselves move. The API covers a different set than the app. Finishing formats are gated by tier. And generated people and generated claims carry rights and truth obligations. Some of that now has an answer rather than just a worry. Runway publishes uncapped IP indemnification, no-training commitments that reach third-party providers, and per-model admin controls for enterprise accounts. So this section separates the risks Runway has answered from the ones it hasn’t.
A published date isn’t a promise, and the help center proves it
The Veo 3 sunset in the API docs held to the day. The Unlimited to Max migration in the help center didn’t. On August 27, 2026 Runway edited the article, deleted every mention of September 1 and put November 30 in its place. Same vendor, same quarter, two different levels of reliability. Technical deprecation notices in the developer docs have earned trust. Commercial dates in help articles haven’t. Diary both. Re-read the second kind.
Two Runway pages, two answers, and one of them prices a dead model
The Veo 3 version of this contradiction resolved. Two replaced it, and the new one is worse. Runway Academy, read September 18, 2026, still lists Gen-4 Aleph at 15 credits per second, and Runway’s own API changelog declared that model no longer available on July 30, 2026. One first-party page is quoting a purchase price for a model another first-party page formally retired. Alongside it, Academy lists eight Kling entries with per-second rates: Kling O3, Kling 3.0 Pro, 3.0 Std, 3.0 Turbo, 3.0 Motion Control, 2.6 Pro, 2.5 Turbo Pro and 2.5 Turbo. No Kling model appears on either API page. So don’t treat any single vendor page as the vendor’s position. And don’t assume a contradiction you resolved last month stays resolved.
Hosted models can be removed, and advance notice isn’t guaranteed
Sora 2 and Sora 2 Pro were removed on April 3, 2026 at 12:00 pm ET. Gen-4 Aleph and Gen-3 Alpha Turbo went on July 30, 2026. The notice you get isn’t uniform. Runway gave Veo 3 an August 4, 2026 sunset date in its API model guide and executed it on that date. The July 30 pair is the other case: the only evidence for it’s the API changelog entry of July 30 itself, recording that both models are no longer available. That’s a record of a removal already done, not a date published ahead of it. So there are two failure modes, not one. The first is a date published on a page nobody on the buyer side is watching. The second is a removal you learn about afterwards. A standing watchlist of vendor deprecation pages really does work against the first, but only if somebody reads it. Against the second it shortens the gap rather than closing it. Two evidence notes. The Sora removal is confirmed here by the absence of any Sora identifier from the API models page, the API pricing page and Academy. The further claim that the Sora 2 Pro model page returns a 404 wasn’t re-fetched on this read and is unverified. A hosted model is a vendor relationship, not a permanent feature, so name a fallback anyway.
The API is different from the app, not just narrower
No Kling model is available through the API and neither is Sora, yet Academy prices eight Kling variants and Runway’s own Premiere Pro plugin offers Kling 3.0 Pro. So a creative team can standardize on a family no developer can automate from code. The traffic runs the other way too: ruby, enhance_frame_rate and muse_image are API-side and never appear in the app roster. Add Runway MCP and the Adobe plugin and there are four surfaces with four model lists. Confirm coverage on the surface you’ll actually ship from.
Deprecations
Models move, and one of them has moved further than its own documentation suggests. gen4_aleph isn’t deprecated in favor of aleph2. It’s gone. Runway’s API changelog recorded gen4_aleph and gen3a_turbo as no longer available on July 30, 2026, and neither appears on either API page. Anything you standardize on can be retired, and Kling shows a family can be prominent in the app while unreachable from the API. No new deprecation or sunset was published between August 19 and September 18, 2026, which is a quiet window rather than a policy change. Keep a migration path, and read both changelogs: the API changelog for identifiers and dates, the product changelog for which plan tier a feature lands on.
Credit burn, now with a second bill
Long, high-quality, high-resolution runs eat credits fast. Some models also carry a per-generation minimum on top of the per-second rate, including 80 credits on seedance2_5 and 56 on aleph2. Then finishing adds its own line items. ruby is billed at 20 credits per second, and 40 once the source is larger than 4 megapixels, on footage you’ve already paid to generate. And enhance_frame_rate adds another 1 credit per 2 seconds. Test cheap, lock the look, and decide the delivery format before you commit.
Plan and region gates
Some models and features are paid-only or limited by region, and since August the gating reaches the finishing pipeline. Runway lists HDR, ProRes and image sequences as studio-grade features of Max, and tags Ruby and ProRes export for Pro and above, so Standard can’t deliver an HDR master. Verify availability before you promise a client a specific model or a specific format. Plans move too, and their dates move. Unlimited can’t be bought, legacy subscriptions hold until November 30, 2026, and that date replaced September 1 five days before September 1 arrived. The new Team plan is a discovery risk of its own, because the pricing page keeps it behind a Team and Enterprise tab.
Likeness and voice
Act-Two and Characters capture performance and can clone voices. Get explicit consent and clear rights before anything ships.
The published answer to the rental problem
A hosted third-party model is a rental. The mitigation is stronger than most buyers assume. Runway’s Enterprise FAQ on third-party models states that third-party models run under the same enterprise terms, data protections and security standards that govern your account. It states that Runway has secured contractual commitments from all third-party model providers that they won’t train on customer content, inputs and outputs included. It states that the indemnification obligations in your enterprise terms cover third-party models on Runway. And it states that admins can enable and disable individual third-party models, with no data sent to a provider whose model is disabled. That doesn’t stop a model being withdrawn. It does mean the legal and data exposure of using one is contracted rather than inherited. It’s an undated page, so have counsel read the actual terms. · Source: Runway Help Center, Enterprise FAQ on third-party models, carrying only a Last Updated April 29th, 2026 stamp, read September 18, 2026
Ownership and commercial use
Runway’s usage rights help article states that, as between you and Runway, you retain ownership and all your rights to content you upload and generate on Runway. There’s no tier differentiation. Commercial use is permitted across plans, including monetized and non-monetized video uploads and product advertising. Runway’s enterprise page repeats full ownership of your outputs and adds that Runway doesn’t train on your data. One limit to keep in mind. Ownership as between you and Runway isn’t the same as clearance against a third party. It settles the vendor question, not the rights question on a likeness, a track or a trademark. · Source: Runway usage rights help article, which carries no date at all, read September 18, 2026
Attribution is required on the API and optional in the app
Runway says there’s no formal requirement to credit it in work made in the product. The API documentation, read September 18, 2026, requires a Powered by Runway mark with a link to Runwayml.com from the user interface, and supplies the lockups. So a team that evaluates in the app and ships through the API inherits an obligation it never saw during evaluation. Neither page is dated. Check both before the integration is signed off.
An app-side estimate can understate the API bill
Academy prices Seedance 2.5 as a flat 30 credits per second plus per-resolution input charges. The API pricing page tiers it: 20 credits per second of output at 480p with 10 per second of input, 30 and 15 at 720p, and 68 and 34 at 1080p, with an 80-credit minimum. Only the 720p output rate matches Academy’s headline number. So a 1080p budget built from the app-side figure understates the API cost by more than a factor of two. Ruby runs the same trap on a smaller scale, flat 20 on Academy against 20 or 40 on the API page. Build cost models from the surface you’ll bill on.
Model licensing is a different contract, not a bigger plan
Runway’s August 20, 2026 enterprise post announces a licensing program. Runway delivers closed model weights and a proprietary training and inference framework to a customer, who hosts the model in their own environment and fine-tunes it on their own data. Treat that as a separate commercial shape, not a premium tier. Different negotiation. Different security review. Different exit position. And no published price. If the reason you hesitate over Runway is that a hosted roster can change under you, this is the conversation to have, and it starts with sales rather than with a checkout page.
Which Runway page you read decides what you believe
Runway publishes across runway.com, runwayml.com, Academy, two changelogs and a help center, and freshness varies between them. The marketing changelog at runway.com/changelog is active. Read September 18, 2026, it carries roughly fifteen July entries, sixteen August entries and two September entries, the most recent September 8. Each one is tagged with the plan tier it applies to. The problem isn’t that some pages are dead. It’s that the same fact is stated differently on different pages. Two changelogs date the same model arrivals differently. Academy and the API pricing page disagree on Ruby and on Seedance 2.5. And Academy still prices a model the API retired. One open point. The redirect from runwayml.com to runway.com couldn’t be observed on this pass. So nothing is asserted here about its current behavior, and links to runwayml.com are cited in the form they were verified in.
| Task type | Minimum check | Human responsibility |
|---|---|---|
| Client deliverable video | Watch the full render at target resolution and delivery format; check artifacts and on-screen text | Approve the final cut |
| Character or avatar | Confirm likeness rights and voice consent | Legal sign-off |
| Hosted third-party model | Confirm it is still offered on your plan and region, and reachable in the API if you automate it | Own the tool decision |
| Agent-built campaign | Fact-check every claim, statistic, logo and localized line | The brand owner approves |
| Credit-heavy run | Estimate seconds × per-second rate, plus any per-generation minimum and any HDR conversion pass | Own the budget |
| Anything shipped through the API | Confirm a Powered by Runway mark and link are present in the interface, using Runway’s supplied lockups | Own the attribution obligation |
| An HDR or ProRes deliverable | Confirm the plan tier supports it before the spec is agreed, not after the render fails | Own the format promise |
| Anything with a vendor date on it | Re-read the source page in the week before the date, not the note you took last month | Own the migration window |
First-party evidence behind this guide
Runway ships weekly, removes models on real dates, and moves commercial dates by editing a support article in place. So this section splits what can be cited from what can only be read. Every entry below is a dated first-party article. A great deal of the material above isn’t. These are all rolling or undated pages, rewritten where they stand. The API models page and the API pricing page. The API changelog at docs.dev.runwayml.com and the product changelog at runway.com/changelog. Runway Academy’s models-and-pricing table. runway.com/pricing and runway.com/enterprise. The Premiere Pro plugin page, the API attribution page, and four Runway Help Center articles. None of them can anchor a dated claim. They’re named inline instead, and every one of them was read on September 18, 2026. Here’s what rests on them, all of which you should confirm directly before you act. The July 30, 2026 removal of gen4_aleph and gen3a_turbo. Every other API changelog item from August 7 through September 17, including seedance2_5, Ruby, WAN 3.0, Muse Image, ACEScg delivery, MiniMax H3 Max, GPT Image 2.5, Ruby alpha and plate-referenced sequences, and enhance_frame_rate. Every per-second credit rate, per-generation minimum and model identifier quoted above. The plan prices, the Free plan’s 125 one-time credits, the Team plan sitting behind a Team and Enterprise tab, and the per-tier feature lists including the HDR, ProRes and image-sequence entitlement. The plan-tier tags on product changelog entries, which is where the Ruby and ProRes gating comes from. The app-side model roster and its rates, including Academy still pricing Gen-4 Aleph. The Unlimited to Max wording and the November 30 date, from an article showing only an August 27, 2026 update stamp. The April 3, 2026 Sora removal, from an article with no date at all. The Powered by Runway attribution requirement. The Enterprise FAQ on third-party models, stamped Last Updated April 29th, 2026. Output ownership and commercial use, from an undated usage rights article. And the plugin model list including Kling 3.0 Pro. Five things this pass couldn’t settle, recorded rather than smoothed over. One, the claim that the Sora 2 Pro model page returns a 404 wasn’t re-fetched and is unverified, though the removal itself is confirmed by absence. Two, the runwayml.com redirect to runway.com couldn’t be observed, so the seven runwayml.com links below are cited in the form they were verified in, and nothing is asserted here about their current behavior. Three, the sentence sometimes quoted from the Unlimited help article, about the annual refund option being available only ahead of the deprecation date, didn’t surface on this read. Four, the Best value badge on Max didn’t surface either, and is neither confirmed nor disproved. Five, the app-only status of Ideogram, LTX 2.5, FLUX 3, Magnific Style Transfer, Fish Audio, Lyria 3, Topaz 4K, Nano Banana and the legacy GPT Image models. That rests on the API models page alone, with no individual cross-check against the API pricing page, which is why no count is given. One last note for anyone rebuilding a timeline. Runway’s product changelog and its API changelog date three August model arrivals differently, so say which one you used.
gen4_aleph was removed on July 30, 2026, so aleph2 is now the only Aleph identifier↗Runway AgentRunway · the chat-based marketing agent, Agent 2.0 and Agent Skills · undated product page · the product page has not moved, but Projects and Brand Kits arrived in Agent on August 11, 2026 according to the product changelog, so an undated product page is not a reliable record of what Agent can do↗Kling O3Runway · multi-modal, timed keyframes, multi-shot with audio, up to 4K · no dated announcement exists · Academy still lists it while neither API page does, and Runway’s Premiere Pro plugin carries Kling 3.0 Pro, so the family is reachable from two Runway surfaces and not from the documented API↗Runway CharactersRunway · real-time avatars, launched March 2026 · undated product page · the latency and frame-rate figures are vendor claims↗Introducing Runway GWM-1Runway Research · the general world model behind Characters, and the lineage behind the September 3, 2026 GWM Worlds 2 post↗Introducing Act-OneRunway Research · the performance-capture lineage behind Act-Two, which the API carries as act_two↗AI Mindset