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 features of Max, and the product changelog tags the Ruby converter for Max and above.

• Repeatable shots, not just vibes
• Character and location consistency
• Six access surfaces, six model lists

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. One condition. Runway trains on self-serve accounts, so work you cannot let into a training set belongs on an Enterprise contract.

• Many models, one workspace
• Edit and finish in the same tool
• Enterprise contract if training is a problem

Runway trains on self-serve inputs and outputs Terms of Use, September 15, 2026

Read this before anything else about Runway. Section 4.4 of the Terms of Use says inputs and outputs may be used to train and improve Runway’s models, with labeling and content moderation named too. No opt-out switch. No paid-tier carve-out. Free, Standard, Pro, Max and Team all sit inside that sentence. The no-training commitment is a contract line instead of a plan feature. Runway’s Enterprise Services Terms say Runway may not use Customer Content as training data for the Services. So the question isn’t which plan you buy. It’s whether you’re on a contract at all. If client footage, unreleased product or a face under NDA goes into Runway on a credit card, assume it can be trained on. · Source: Runway Terms of Use, Section 4.4, last updated September 15, 2026, and Runway Enterprise Services Terms, last updated June 1, 2026
· Section 4.4, verbatim: “You acknowledge that Inputs and Outputs may be used by the Company to train and improve its AI models, algorithms and related technology, products and services (including for labeling, classification, content moderation and model training purposes).”

• Every self-serve plan is trained on
• No opt-out published on any first-party page
• The exemption lives in the Enterprise contract

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 an October 1, 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
• aleph2 is the replacement for Aleph work
• Audit running jobs now, not at the next release

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_aleph was switched off on July 30, 2026

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

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. On October 1, 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.

• veo3 calls hit a model that’s gone
• veo3.1_fast is the cheap half of the pair
• A sunset date published in advance held; not every removal gets one

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 Max and above, which makes it a plan entitlement as well as a line item. Pro does not reach it.

• ruby: 20 credits per second, 40 above 4 megapixels
• wan3: up to 30 seconds with native audio
• Ruby is tagged Max and above, so Pro can’t run it

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 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 October 1, 2026, the default view is the Individual table and Team sits behind a Team & Enterprise tab, so a buyer comparing tiers can miss the tier that fits them. Every Team figure here comes from the September 4 announcement, which is the dated record.

• $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 DaVinci Resolve September 23, 2026

A second editor door, four months after the first. Runway describes generating images and video, restyling the clip under your playhead, and importing every result straight into your Media Pool and onto your timeline. Aleph 2.0 is the restyle path again, with more control than the Adobe version advertises: restyle the anchor frames, or set up to five keyframes, and Aleph 2.0 re-renders the clip to match at the same duration as your source. The installer is free for macOS and Windows and needs DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 or later. Generating is available on all paid Runway plans and uses your existing plan credits. Same gap as the Adobe plugin: no model list is published, so Aleph 2.0 is the only model Runway names.

• Free installer, Resolve Studio 19 or later
• Up to five keyframes on an Aleph 2.0 restyle
• Paid plans only, billed to plan credits

What the API costs, and how fast you can call it Developer docs, checked October 1, 2026

Runway publishes an API credit price the marketing site never mentions, and there is no standalone API pricing page on runway.com at all. Credits can be purchased for $0.01 per credit in the developer portal for a project, and a minimum payment of $10 is required to get started. So a 10-second Gen-4.5 generation is 120 credits, which is $1.20. Then throughput, which is where most integration plans go wrong. There are five spend tiers. Tier 1 allows 1 to 2 concurrent generations against a $100 monthly spend cap. Tier 5 allows 20 against $100,000. Advancement is automatic on cumulative spend at $50, $100, $1,000 and $5,000, and Runway says the tier upgrade applies with no waiting period. The part worth repeating to an engineer: there is no maximum requests-per-minute limit, as long as requests stay inside the maximum daily generations limit. Those daily caps run from 50 to 200 at Tier 1 up to 25,000 to 30,000 at Tier 5, depending on the model class. · Source: Runway Dev pricing, setup and tiers pages, rolling and undated, checked October 1, 2026

• $0.01 per credit, $10 minimum to start
• Concurrency 1 to 2 at Tier 1, 20 at Tier 5
• No requests-per-minute cap, only a daily generation cap

Workspace and admin features only the changelog records August 2026

Runway’s product changelog, read October 1, 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

What arrived in September API changelog

Five dated API items between September 3 and September 17, read on October 1, 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, retiming a video to any of ten target frame rates at 1 credit per 2 seconds, with inputs of at most 300 seconds.

• h3_max isn’t hailuo3
• Ruby gained alpha and plate-referenced ACEScg
• enhance_frame_rate: ten targets, including drop-frame

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

Act-Two

Motion-capture performance with head, face, body and hand tracking. Drive a character from a reference performance.

• Performance capture
• Consent required

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

Enhance Frame Rate

Added September 17, 2026. A second conversion model: it retimes a video to a target frame rate. Ten targets, and the three a broadcast deliverable usually needs are the drop-frame ones. The full set is 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60, 120, 23_98, 29_97 and 59_94, with inputs of at most 300 seconds. Priced at 1 credit per 2 seconds, and documented with its parameters on the API models page under Upscaling and Enhancement, checked October 1, 2026. One wrinkle: the app-side changelog entry advertises a shorter list than the API carries, so the door decides the targets you get.

• API model enhance_frame_rate
• 1 credit per 2 seconds, inputs up to 300 seconds
• Drop-frame targets 23_98, 29_97 and 59_94

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

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
• veo3.1 and veo3.1_fast

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 checked on October 1, 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 October 1, 2026. The API changelog’s most recent entry is the September 17 Enhance Frame Rate addition.

• Executed July 30, 2026, not pending
• Move Aleph work to aleph2
• No new deprecations published through October 1

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 carried an August 23, 2026 expiry, so treat it as gone and don’t price a plan around it.

• seedance2_5 exists, dated August 7 in the API
• App and API changelogs date arrivals differently
• The Hailuo promotion expired on August 23

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_image is API-only, not app-side

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, not hailuo3
• 5 at 480p, 8 at 768p
• Academy quotes different rates again

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

The web app

Generation, Edit Studio, Studio and Agent, with the roster Runway Academy prices. The broadest bench, including families the REST API can’t reach, and the place most evaluation happens.

• Widest model roster
• Academy is the price list
• Where a wrong assumption starts

Runway MCP

The automation path people forget, and the one that answers the Kling question. Runway MCP lists Gen-4.5, Seedance 2.5, GPT Image 2, Kling 3.0, Veo 3.1, Nano Banana Pro and Gen-4 Turbo, and four more Kling models arrived on September 18, 2026. No separate API key is required and generations are tied to your existing Runway plan. The pricing page names it as an entitlement on Pro and Max.

• Reaches Kling, which the REST API doesn’t
• Billed to your plan, no separate key
• Listed on Pro and Max

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 plan credits. Aleph 2.0 restyles the clip on your timeline. Runway publishes no model list for it.

• Generate inside the timeline
• Aleph 2.0 restyles the clip
• Model roster unpublished

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

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

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.

• veo3.1 and veo3.1_fast
• Text-to-video and image-to-video
• Added July 10, 2026

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, though only an ACES 1.3 output identifier is published. 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, tags the ProRes and PNG sequence export entry Pro+ Plans, and tags Ruby Max+ Plans. On Pro you get the export formats and not the converter. On Standard, none of this card is in reach.

• HDR output on the flagship models
• ruby for footage you already have
• Ruby needs Max, so check the plan first

Your work trains the model unless you’re on a contract

This is the risk most Runway buyers never price. Section 4.4 of the Terms of Use, last updated September 15, 2026, says inputs and outputs may be used to train and improve Runway’s AI models. Labeling, classification and content moderation are named too. No opt-out setting is published on any first-party page. No paid tier carves itself out. Free, Standard, Pro, Max and Team are all inside it. The reverse commitment exists in exactly one document, the Enterprise Services Terms, last updated June 1, 2026. They say Runway may not use Customer Content as training data for the Services, and that the customer owns all rights, title and interest in it. So if a client contract, an NDA or a works council agreement forbids your material entering a training set, a credit card subscription doesn’t satisfy it. Get on a contract, or keep that material out of Runway. · Source: Runway Terms of Use, Section 4.4, last updated September 15, 2026, and Runway Enterprise Services Terms, last updated June 1, 2026

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, checked October 1, 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. That’s 63 days of a purchase price on a model another first-party page formally retired. There’s a second instance now, and it’s inside the developer docs. Read October 1, 2026, the billing page at docs.dev.runwayml.com rendered pricing for gen3a_turbo alone, switched off on the same July 30 date. The canonical API price list is the pricing guide, and that one is correct. 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.

Six surfaces, six model lists, and two of them publish none

No Kling model is callable from the REST API, and neither is Sora, yet Academy prices eight Kling variants. The automation half of that has changed, though. Runway MCP lists Kling 3.0 and took four more Kling models on September 18, 2026, billed to your plan with no separate API key. So the question was never app versus API. It’s which of six surfaces: the web app, the REST API, Runway MCP, Runway Dev MCP, the Adobe plugin and the DaVinci Resolve plugin. The traffic runs the other way too, and only one model travels alone: muse_image is API-side and absent from Academy, while Ruby and Enhance Frame Rate are priced on both. Two of the six, the Adobe and Resolve plugins, publish no model list at all. Confirm coverage on the surface you’ll actually ship from.

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. One conversion that helps: if you bill through the developer portal rather than a plan, a credit costs $0.01, so 100 credits is a dollar and a 10-second Gen-4.5 shot is $1.20. Test cheap, lock the look, and decide the delivery format before you commit.

Likeness and voice

Act-Two and Characters capture performance and can clone voices. Get explicit consent and clear rights before anything ships.

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, but that page is selling the Enterprise contract. Don’t read it as a product-wide promise. Two limits to keep in mind. Ownership is not the same as no training: Section 4.4 of the Terms of Use lets Runway train on content you own, and owning an output doesn’t keep it out of the training set. And ownership as between you and Runway isn’t 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, checked October 1, 2026, and Runway Terms of Use, Section 4.4, last updated September 15, 2026

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.

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. Checked October 1, 2026, it carries 13 July entries, 11 August entries and 6 September entries, the most recent September 23, each tagged with the plan tier it applies to. Watch the counts, not just the content. July and August have both gone down over time, which means entries are being removed as well as added. The problem isn’t that some pages are dead. It’s that the same fact is stated differently in different places. Two changelogs date the same model arrivals differently. Academy and the API pricing page disagree on Ruby and on Seedance 2.5. Academy still prices a model the API retired. And the domain question has an answer with a catch: runwayml.com returns a 302 Found to https://runway.com/. A 302 is temporary. So runway.com is canonical in practice while Runway has not committed to it with a permanent redirect, and a runwayml.com link you save today is a link whose destination Runway can change without breaking anything.

No published model list

Runway’s September 8, 2026 Adobe announcement names Aleph 2.0 as the restyle path and no other model. Any specific model attributed to the plugin has no first-party page behind it.

One ACES identifier, not two

Runway’s August 31 ACEScg wording reads as more than one ACES variant. The API models page publishes only hdr_exr_acescg_sequence_1_3. No ACES 2.0 identifier appears on any first-party page.

A developer page pricing a retired model

Read October 1, 2026, the developer billing page rendered pricing for gen3a_turbo alone, a model retired on July 30, 2026. Nothing on the page separates stale content from a rendering fault. The pricing guide is the canonical list, and it’s correct.

No cross-reference between rosters

Ideogram, LTX 2.5, FLUX 3, Magnific Style Transfer, Fish Audio, Lyria 3, Topaz 4K, Nano Banana and the legacy GPT Image models carry Academy rates and don’t appear on the REST API models page. Runway publishes no cross-reference to the API pricing page, so the size of the app-only bench is unpublished.