How many credits does a video ad cost on Polaris?
Exact credit costs for a video ad on Polaris, costed on top up credits: 41 to 200 credits per clip, a full ad at $1.38, and how the cost per video compares to Higgsfield.
A single video ad on Polaris costs between 41 and 200 credits, depending on which model you pick and how long the clip runs. Most ecommerce teams work in the 41 to 76 range. Bought as a credit pack, that is roughly 41 to 76 cents a clip. There is no per-seat fee and no charge for a render that fails.
This page gives the exact numbers, because "it depends" is not a useful answer when you are trying to work out a monthly budget.
What one credit is worth
Credits come from your monthly plan or from a one off top up pack. The pack rate is the one to use when you are costing individual ads, since it is what an extra credit actually costs you once a plan is in place.
| Source | Price | Credits | Cost per credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top up pack | $15 | 1,500 | $0.010 |
| Top up pack | $50 | 5,000 | $0.010 |
| Top up pack | $100 | 11,500 | $0.0087 |
| Top up pack | $200 | 24,000 | $0.0083 |
| Top up pack | $300 | 37,500 | $0.008 |
| Starter plan | $49 / month | 1,500 | $0.033 |
| Creator plan | $98 / month | 5,000 | $0.020 |
| Max plan | $350 / month | 17,500 | $0.020 |
Every figure below is costed at the $0.010 pack rate, which is the standard top up. At the largest pack it falls to $0.008, so the real cost of a heavy month is lower than the numbers here rather than higher.
Two details worth knowing before you compare us to anything else. Credits never expire, and unused credits roll over to the next month rather than resetting. If you buy 5,000 credits and use 800, the other 4,200 are still there next month and the month after.
What changes the price of a clip
Every model is priced by what it costs us to run, so the cheaper ones are genuinely cheaper rather than deliberately limited. Four things move the number:
- Duration. Several models are billed per second of output, so a 10 second clip costs roughly two and a half times a 4 second one.
- Resolution. Moving from 480p to 720p roughly doubles the per second rate on the per second models.
- Reference video. A reference clip's seconds are billed alongside the output's, though at a lower per second rate than a render with no reference.
- AI sound. Adding generated audio to a model that does not carry native dialogue costs 25 credits per render.
Failed renders cost nothing. If a model errors, the credits are returned automatically. The live cost of whatever you have selected is shown on the button before you generate, so you never have to work it out from a table.
How many ads a plan actually produces
Working from the cheapest video model, a plan's monthly allowance converts to roughly this many clips:
- Starter, 1,500 credits: about 36 video clips a month
- Creator, 5,000 credits: about 121 video clips a month
- Max, 17,500 credits: about 426 video clips a month
Most teams do not spend the whole allowance on video. A finished ad usually mixes a few clips with images and a voiceover, which is costed below.
A full ad, costed line by line
Here is a realistic 24 second UGC ad built from three clips, one product image and a voiceover:
| Item | Credits | Cost at the pack rate |
|---|---|---|
| 3 video clips at 8s each | 123 | $1.23 |
| 1 product image at 1K | 10 | $0.10 |
| Voiceover, 40 word script | 5 | $0.05 |
| Burned in captions | 0 | $0.00 |
| Total | 138 | $1.38 |
That is $1.38 for a finished, captioned ad. On the largest credit pack the same ad is about $1.10. Captions, the ad recreation feature and the prompt writing tools do not consume credits at all.
Free renders on a paid plan
Every paid plan includes a set of models that render at no credit cost while the plan is active. Starter includes GPT Image 2. Creator and Max add Nano Banana Pro, Nano Banana 2 and Seedance 2.0 Fast for video. These free renders queue rather than running instantly, and they run one at a time, which is the trade for not charging for them. For a team testing hooks in volume, they are the cheapest way to iterate before committing credits to a final cut.
How this compares to Higgsfield
Higgsfield is a general purpose AI video platform rather than an ecommerce ad tool, so the feature comparison is not like for like. The credit maths is worth setting out plainly, because it is the question most people are actually asking.
Higgsfield publishes four paid tiers: Starter at $15 a month for 200 credits, Plus at $49 for 1,000, Business from $89 for 1,500, and Ultra from $129 for 3,000. Credit costs per video vary by model on both platforms, and published third party figures put a Veo class generation on Higgsfield in the region of 40 to 70 of its credits.
| Source of credits | Cost per credit | Cost of one Veo class clip |
|---|---|---|
| Higgsfield Plus plan | $0.049 | $1.96 to $3.43 |
| Higgsfield Ultra plan | $0.043 | $1.72 to $3.01 |
| Polaris top up pack | $0.010 | $0.41 |
Costed on top up credits, a Polaris clip lands at roughly a fifth to an eighth of the Higgsfield figure, or about six times cheaper at the midpoint of their published range. The gap holds if you compare packs to packs rather than packs to plans, since Higgsfield top ups are reported at around $0.05 a credit, which is above its own plan rate.
Two structural differences matter as much as the rate. Polaris credits roll over and never expire, so a slow month is not money lost, and reported Higgsfield top ups expire after 90 days. A failed generation is refunded here rather than charged. Both platforms change their pricing, so it is worth checking the current published rates on both sites rather than taking any headline multiple on trust.
Working out your own budget
The practical method is to start from output rather than from a plan. Decide how many finished ads a month you need, multiply by roughly 140 credits for a three clip ad with a voiceover, and add a margin for the variations you will discard. Twenty finished ads a month is about 2,800 credits, which the Creator plan covers with room left. Sixty is about 8,400, which is where the Max plan starts to make sense.