You want to generate images, write scripts, produce music and a voiceover. Taken one at a time, each tool costs about as much as a restaurant meal. Stacked end to end, the bill looks more like a high-end gym membership: somewhere between €85 and €150 a month for anyone covering text, images, video, music, and voice. That's €1,000 to €1,800 a year, before you've published a single thing.
Here we break down, line by line, what ChatGPT, Midjourney, Suno, and their neighbors really cost, including the fees nobody puts on the pricing page: VAT, foreign exchange charges, credits that expire, annual commitments. Then, four concrete ways to bring the total down, from a single subscription that bundles the tools to pay-as-you-go usage. At the end, a table tells you which option matches your actual production volume, and how much you save.
What a Full AI Toolkit Really Costs in 2026
A creator covering text, images, video, music, and voice pays between €85 and €150 a month including tax, or €1,000 to €1,800 over a year.
Here are the most common entry-level plans. The amounts are the ones publishers display, excluding promotions and excluding tax for services billed in dollars. These price lists change often: always check the official page before you pull out your card, for example the official ChatGPT pricing.
| Tool | What it's for | Plan | Listed price | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus | Text, ideas, scripts | Plus | $20/month | Advanced models, expanded usage limits |
| Claude Pro | Long-form text, analysis, code | Pro | $20/month | Roughly 5x the free tier's limits |
| Midjourney | Images, light use | Basic | $10/month | Around 200 fast images per month |
| Midjourney | Images, regular use | Standard | $30/month | 15 hours of fast generation, then relaxed mode |
| Suno | Music | Pro | $10/month | 2,500 credits, around 500 tracks, commercial rights |
| ElevenLabs | Voiceover | Creator | $22/month | Around 100,000 characters per month |
| Runway | Generative video | Standard | $15/month | 625 credits per month |
| HeyGen | Talking avatars | Creator | $29/month | Around 30 minutes of video per month |
| Canva | Editing, formats, retouching | Pro | €11.99/month | Templates, resizing, backgrounds |
Two scenarios to make this concrete.
The light stack. ChatGPT Plus, Midjourney Basic, Suno Pro, ElevenLabs Creator, and Runway Standard: $77 a month. Once French VAT and foreign exchange fees are applied, your bank statement shows around €85. Over twelve months: €1,020.
The full stack. Same thing, but Midjourney on Standard (because 200 images no longer cut it), plus HeyGen for avatars and Canva for editing: roughly $126 and €11.99, or close to €150 a month. Over twelve months: €1,800.
That number is shocking, but it's completely ordinary. Most people never see it coming because each subscription is signed up for in a different month, on a different card, for a one-off need that quietly becomes permanent.
The Hidden Fees That Inflate the Bill by About 25%
Between the price on the publisher's site and the amount actually charged, the gap runs around 25%, thanks to VAT, currency conversion, and credits that don't roll over.
Here are the six line items that create the difference.
- 20% VAT. Dollar prices are listed excluding tax. An individual in France pays 20% more. ChatGPT Plus at $20 becomes $24 on the statement.
- Foreign exchange fees. Most bank cards charge 1 to 3% on a payment in a foreign currency, sometimes with a flat fee per transaction. Across five monthly subscriptions, it adds up.
- Credits that don't roll over. With Suno, Runway, or ElevenLabs, unused credits vanish on your renewal date. A month on vacation is a month paid for nothing.
- The forced upgrade. On Midjourney, keeping your images private (stealth mode) is only included starting with the Pro plan at $60 a month, double the Standard. On Suno, commercial rights to your tracks require a paid plan.
- Annual commitments. The 15 to 20% discount means paying twelve months upfront. On a tool you abandon after three months, that discount turns into a pure loss.
- Forgotten subscriptions. This is the number one source of waste. A tool you tried in January and never reopened keeps charging you every month. Try it: pull up your last six months of statements and count.
Method 1: One Subscription That Includes the Tools and the Credits
Bundling text, images, video, and music into a single subscription brings the bill down to €29.90 a month, roughly a third of the cost of a stack of separate tools.
That's the principle behind Skilzy's AI Lab: you learn to create, and you create directly inside the platform with the real tools, with credits included in the subscription. No juggling multiple bank cards, passwords, and billing dates. More than 15 programs cover image generation, video (UGC, ads, faceless channels, avatars, voiceover), music, prompt writing, automation with n8n, and AI-assisted coding.
The math is simple: €29.90 a month with no commitment, or €358.80 a year, versus €1,020 for the light stack described above. That's a gap of more than €650 a year. The full breakdown of what's included in each plan is on the Skilzy pricing page.
A second lever on cost: two state-recognized certifications are available through the platform, RS7439 (content marketing with AI) and RS6792 (AI and sales). They're eligible for funding, which changes the nature of the expense: it's no longer a hobby subscription, it's training you may be able to get partly covered depending on your situation. You can check the official registration on the RS7439 record at France Compétences.
To test before paying, the discovery demo gives you 7 days with 1 image, 1 video, 1 music track, and 10 messages, no credit card required. It's not much, and it's designed to let you check whether the interface suits you, not to produce a campaign.
Let's be honest about the limits: if you're generating 2,000 images a month for a product catalog, a dedicated Midjourney subscription will still be the better fit for that specific use. The single-subscription logic wins when you work across several formats at moderate volume, which describes the vast majority of creators. It's the same reasoning we lay out in our comparison of the ChatGPT Plus alternative with one subscription for all models.
Method 2: Squeeze Everything Out of the Free Tiers
Free plans are enough for learning and occasional use, but they almost always hit a wall on three things: volume, resolution, and commercial rights.
They exist, they're useful, and an article that hid them from you would cost you money. Here's the real state of the main ones.
| Tool | Free tier | Where it breaks down |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Yes, lighter model | Low message limits, advanced features restricted |
| Claude | Yes | Daily quota hit fast on long texts |
| Midjourney | No, removed in 2023 | No free trial, paid plan required |
| Suno | Yes, 50 credits per day | Around 10 tracks, no commercial rights |
| ElevenLabs | Yes, 10,000 characters per month | Attribution required, commercial use restricted |
| Canva | Yes | Many templates and elements are Pro-only |
The strategy that works: start entirely on free tiers for two to three weeks, note what actually blocks you, and pay only for the line that blocks you. Nine times out of ten, it isn't the one you expected.
Watch out for one classic trap, though: chaining five free tools together for a single task costs time, and time gets paid for too. We measured it on a specific case in background removal, background swap, cropping: five tools or just one. And on image retouching specifically, the line between what free tools do very well and what they miss is detailed in removing an image background: when free tools are enough, and when they give up.
Methods 3 and 4: Pay Per Use, or Rotate a Single Subscription
If you produce in bursts rather than every day, API access billed by consumption and monthly rotation of a single subscription often come in under €15 a month.
Method 3: APIs and Prepaid Credits
Instead of paying a fixed plan, you top up an account and get charged for each use. For text, moderate usage comes out to a few euros a month, well below the $20 of a subscription. For images, expect somewhere around 3 to 8 cents per generation depending on the model and size.
Two caveats: you need to be comfortable with an API key and a technical interface, and not every tool offers this. Music and generative video are still mostly sold by subscription, with no metered equivalent. So this method mainly suits text and images, and it fits someone who already automates tasks, like in our guide to automating social media publishing.
Method 4: Monthly Rotation
One active subscription at a time, no commitment, switched each month based on what you're producing. Month 1: Midjourney to build up a bank of visuals. Month 2: you cancel and take Suno for your music. Month 3: ElevenLabs for voiceovers.
Average cost: €10 to €30 a month instead of €85. The conditions for making it work: never take an annual plan, put a cancellation reminder in your calendar two days before renewal, and accept working in blocks rather than continuously. It's the cheapest method, and the one that demands the most discipline.
Which Method for Which Profile
The right choice comes down to a single variable: the number of different formats you produce each month, not your technical level.
| Your profile | Monthly volume | Method | Realistic budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| You're just curious and want a look | A few experiments | Discovery demo with no credit card, then free tiers | €0 |
| You publish 1 to 2 pieces a week, across several formats | 20 visuals, 4 videos, 2 music tracks | Method 1, single subscription | €29.90 |
| You automate text and you're technically comfortable | Irregular | Method 3, pay-as-you-go API | €5 to €20 |
| You produce high volume in a single format | 500 images or more | Dedicated subscription to that tool | €30 to €60 |
| You tackle projects in bursts | Occasional and intense | Method 4, monthly rotation | €10 to €30 |
| You want a fundable certification | Regular | Method 1 with a certification track | €29.90, funding possible |
A simple rule to settle it: as soon as you're using three different paid tools, the single subscription becomes cheaper. Below three, a dedicated plan or an API usually still wins.
Key Takeaways
The real cost isn't the listed price: add 25% for VAT, currency conversion, and lost credits. Before making any decision, open your bank statement and list the AI subscriptions you're paying for without ever opening them: that's often where the first savings are, before you even change methods. Then choose based on the number of formats you produce, not on whichever tool everyone is talking about. And test before you pay: seven days without a credit card is enough to know whether a tool fits the way you work.
