Choose Runway if you want its own Gen-4.5 model, one of the best-rated text-to-video models, precise reference control, 4K upscaling, ProRes export on Max and a developer API, and you are comfortable building a film clip by clip. Choose Yeşilçam Studios if you want to paste a story and receive an assembled film (screenplay, consistent cast, video, narration, dialogue and music) with the exact price shown before production and failed jobs refunded automatically. For raw video on Runway's Max plan the price per second is lower than Yeşilçam's Standard and Cinema tiers; Yeşilçam's figure covers the complete film.
At a glance
| Question | Yeşilçam Studios | Runway |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan (250,000 tokens); Basic $30/mo (5M tokens); Pro $99/mo (15M tokens, costs ×0.8); token packs that do not expire while the account is active | Free (125 credits once); Standard $15, or $12 annual (625); Pro $35, or $28 annual (2,250); Max $95, or $76 annual (9,500, roll over one month) |
| What a 4-minute film costs | All-in on Pro: Draft $33.99, Standard $44.83, Cinema $58.88, Cinema Pro $151.28 of tokens, including screenplay, cast, keyframes, video, narration, music and assembly (lip sync extra) | Raw video only, one take per shot: Gen-4 Turbo 1,440 credits (Pro, $35); Gen-4.5 2,880 credits (Max, $95) |
| Story-to-film workflow | Story to film wizard, or the manual Flow Studio route with a Cinema Studio timeline | No dedicated script-to-film pipeline on the official pages; an "Agentic creative collaborator" exists, scope unverified |
| Character consistency | Up to five cast sheets per film, keyframe from the sheets before every clip, reusable character bibles | Characters and Gen-4 references; reviewers call it one of the clearest reference systems |
| Audio | Narration, voiced dialogue, lip sync where available, generated music, mixed into the film | Music, voice and SFX generation on paid plans; voice clones (Pro 1, Max 3); native audio in Gen-4.5 unverified |
| Max clip length and resolution | Draft and Standard 5 or 10 s; Cinema 4, 6 or 8 s; MP4 film | Gen-4.5 2 to 10 s at 24 or 25 fps; 4K upscaling on paid plans; HDR and ProRes on Max |
| Languages | Six-language interface including Turkish; narration in the story's language | English interface |
| Refunds on failure | Failed jobs refunded automatically | Not stated on the pages we checked; reviewers report cancellation and billing complaints |
| Automation | CLI and MCP server, same wallet and prices as the app | Developer API (Dev platform, Model Router) |
| Best for | Finished, narrated story films from a text | Filmmakers and agencies crafting individual shots with top-tier motion |
How each one works
Runway is a video lab first. It develops its own models (Gen-4.5, Gen-4 Turbo and Aleph 2.0 for editing existing video) and also resells others, such as Seedance 2.0 and Kling 3.0. You generate shots from text or reference images, upscale them to 4K, and on Max export HDR, ProRes or PNG sequences. Paid plans add generated music, voice and sound effects, plus custom voice clones. Runway's official pages do not describe a pipeline that turns a script into a finished film, and whether its current product includes a full timeline for assembly is unverified.
Yeşilçam Studios starts from a written story. In Story to film you paste the text and choose a style (eight options, from Anime to 1960s Yeşilçam), a length and a quality tier. A director writes the screenplay and casts up to five characters as reference sheets; only those steps are charged up front. On the Ready screen you see the exact production price and can edit any scene before confirming. The studio then renders a keyframe per scene from the cast sheets, animates it, records narration and dialogue, generates music and edits one MP4. The manual route (Flow Studio for screenplay and storyboard, Cinema Studio for the multi-track timeline) gives you each step yourself.
Pricing, with the arithmetic
Runway prices by credit: Gen-4.5 costs 12 credits a second and Gen-4 Turbo 6. The figures below cover raw video only, for 30 shots of 8 seconds (240 seconds), with every shot working first time.
- Gen-4 Turbo: 6 × 240 = 1,440 credits, inside Pro's 2,250. Cost: $35 a month ($28 annual). Credits used are worth 1,440 × ($35 ÷ 2,250) = $22.40, about $0.09 per second.
- Gen-4.5: 12 × 240 = 2,880 credits. Pro's 2,250 is too small, so the plan is Max at $95 ($76 annual), or Pro plus a top-up of at least 1,000 credits (top-up price not shown). On Max the credits used are worth 2,880 × ($95 ÷ 9,500) = $28.80, about $0.12 per second; on Pro's rate it would be about $0.19 per second.
- Audio on Runway: text-to-speech costs 1 credit per 50 characters and a Lyria 3 Pro song 8 credits, so four minutes of narration at roughly 2,160 characters adds about 43 credits. Audio is cheap there; assembly and lip sync are not included in these numbers.
- Retakes: at two to four takes per shot, Gen-4.5 needs 5,760 to 11,520 credits, which is Max or more.
Yeşilçam's cost for a 4-minute anime film with automatic scenes and music, estimated from our published per-operation prices, is $33.99 (Draft), $44.83 (Standard), $58.88 (Cinema) or $151.28 (Cinema Pro) of tokens on Pro, covering screenplay, cast sheets, keyframes, video, narration, music and assembly. With a Power Pack: $25.47, $33.59, $44.11 and $113.33; on Basic: $38.63, $50.95, $66.91 and $171.91. One Pro month (15 million tokens) covers about 2.9 Draft, 2.2 Standard or 1.7 Cinema films of this length. The Draft film uses about 6.44 million tokens on Basic, more than Basic's 5 million a month, so on Basic it takes the $30 plan plus a pack. Lip sync adds 29,167 tokens per spoken line (about $0.15 on Pro). Regenerating a scene is charged; failures are refunded.
Per raw second, Runway is competitive. A Yeşilçam Standard 10-second clip on Pro is $1.74 ($0.17 a second) and a Cinema 8-second clip $1.85 ($0.23 a second), above Gen-4.5 on Max at about $0.12. Yeşilçam's Draft tier, at $0.13 a second, is closer to Gen-4 Turbo.
Where Runway is better
- Its own frontier model. Gen-4.5 ranked first on the Artificial Analysis text-to-video leaderboard with 1,247 Elo as of 30 November 2025.
- Delivery formats. 4K upscaling on all paid plans, HDR and ProRes on Max. Yeşilçam does not claim native 4K video.
- Editing existing footage. Aleph 2.0 edits video you already have; Yeşilçam generates new clips.
- Voice clones. One on Pro, three on Max.
- Developer API. A full API with a model router; Yeşilçam offers a CLI and MCP server, not a separate API.
- Price per raw second on Max, as shown above.
Where Yeşilçam is better
- A whole film from one text. Screenplay, cast, scenes, voices, music and edit in one run, with nothing to stitch together.
- Exact price before production. Only the screenplay and cast are charged before you approve; the Ready screen shows the real figure.
- Automatic refunds on failure, and token packs that do not expire while the account is active. Runway's Max credits roll over for one month.
- Consistent cast by default. Every scene with a character is animated from a keyframe built from that character's sheet.
- Six-language interface including Turkish. None of the competitor pages we checked listed a Turkish interface.
Who should choose which
Runway suits filmmakers, editors and agencies who want the best possible individual shot, need ProRes or 4K delivery and will cut the film themselves in an editor. Yeşilçam suits writers, educators, marketers and small studios who have a story and want a watchable, narrated film with the same characters throughout, at a price they can see before committing.
Frequently asked
Is Runway cheaper than Yeşilçam for a 4-minute film? For raw video, Gen-4 Turbo fits Runway Pro at $35 and Gen-4.5 needs Max at $95. Yeşilçam's $33.99 to $151.28 on Pro is more than the raw-video credits those films use on Runway (about $22.40 on Gen-4 Turbo, $28.80 on Gen-4.5 at the Max rate), because it covers the full production, including screenplay, cast sheets, keyframes, voices, music and editing.
Does Runway turn a script into a finished film? Not on the official pages we checked. It has an agentic collaborator whose scope we could not verify; assembly is usually done in an editor.
Which has longer clips? Both top out around 10 seconds: Runway Gen-4.5 runs 2 to 10 seconds, Yeşilçam Draft and Standard clips 5 or 10 seconds and Cinema clips up to 8.
Can I automate Yeşilçam like Runway's API? Through the CLI and the MCP server, yes, with the same wallet and prices as the app. There is no separate REST API.
Sources
- Runway: Pricing (checked 2026-09-26)
- Runway Help Center: Creating with Gen-4.5 (checked 2026-09-26)
- Runway: Introducing Runway Gen-4.5 (checked 2026-09-26)
- The Rundown AI: Runway Gen-4.5 (checked 2026-09-26)
- Techpresso: Is Runway worth it? (checked 2026-09-26)
- LTX: AI video generation cost (checked 2026-09-26)