You want to generate images, write scripts, produce a track and a voice-over. Taken one at a time, each tool costs about as much as dinner out. Stacked together, the bill looks more like a premium gym membership: between €85 and €150 a month for someone covering text, images, video, music and voice. That is €1,000 to €1,800 a year, before you have published a single thing.
Here we break down, line by line, what ChatGPT, Midjourney, Suno and their neighbors actually cost, including the fees nobody puts on the pricing page: VAT, currency conversion 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. At the end, a table tells you which option matches your real 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 listed by the companies themselves, 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 does | Plan | Listed price | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus | Text, ideas, scripts | Plus | $20/month | Advanced models, higher usage limits |
| Claude Pro | Long-form text, analysis, code | Pro | $20/month | Roughly 5x the free tier limits |
| Midjourney | Images, light use | Basic | $10/month | About 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, about 500 tracks, commercial rights |
| ElevenLabs | Voice-over | Creator | $22/month | About 100,000 characters per month |
| Runway | Generative video | Standard | $15/month | 625 credits per month |
| HeyGen | Talking avatars | Creator | $29/month | About 30 minutes of video per month |
| Canva | Editing, formats, retouching | Pro | €11.99/month | Templates, resizing, background removal |
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 currency conversion fees are applied, your bank statement shows about €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, which lands close to €150 a month. Over twelve months: €1,800.
The number is shocking, but it is completely ordinary. Most people never see it coming because each subscription gets 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 listed on the vendor's site and the amount actually charged to your account, the gap runs around 25%, thanks to VAT, currency conversion and credits that do not roll over.
Here are the six items that create the difference.
- 20% VAT. Dollar prices are listed excluding tax. An individual in France pays 20% more. The $20 for ChatGPT Plus becomes $24 on the statement.
- Currency conversion 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 do not roll over. With Suno, Runway or ElevenLabs, unused credits vanish on your renewal date. A month on vacation is a month paid for nothing.
- Being pushed up a tier. 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.
- The annual commitment. That 15 to 20% discount means paying twelve months up front. On a tool you abandon after three months, the discount turns into a straight loss.
- Forgotten subscriptions. This is the number one source of waste. A tool you tried in January and never opened again keeps charging you every month. Try it: pull up the last six months of your statement 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 is the idea behind the Skilzy 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, voice-over), 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 is a gap of more than €650 a year. The full breakdown of what each plan includes 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 are eligible for funding, which changes the nature of the expense: it is no longer a hobby subscription, it is training that part of which you may be able to get covered depending on your situation. You can verify the official registration on the France Compétences RS7439 record.
To try before you pay, the discovery demo gives you 7 days with 1 image, 1 video, 1 track and 10 messages, no credit card required. It is not much, and that is the point: it lets you check that the interface works for you, not produce a campaign.
Let's be honest about the limits: if you generate 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. The reasoning is the same one laid out in our comparison of an alternative to ChatGPT Plus with one subscription for every model.
Method 2: squeeze everything you can out of the free tiers
Free plans are enough to learn and for occasional use, but they almost always hit a wall on three things: volume, resolution and commercial rights.
They exist, they are useful, and an article that hid them from you would be costing you money. Here is where the main ones actually stand.
| Tool | Free tier | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Yes, lighter model | Low message limits, advanced features restricted |
| Claude | Yes | Daily quota runs out fast on long text |
| Midjourney | No, removed back in 2023 | No free trial at all, paid plan required |
| Suno | Yes, 50 credits per day | About 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 plans 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 is not the one you expected.
One classic trap to watch out for, though: chaining five free tools together for a single task costs time, and time has a price too. We measured it on a specific case in cut out, change the background, crop: five tools or one. And on image retouching specifically, the line between what free tools do very well and where they fall apart is spelled out in cutting out an image: when free tools are enough, and when they give up.
Methods 3 and 4: pay as you go, or run one subscription at a time
If you produce in bursts rather than every day, metered API access and rotating a single subscription month to month 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 per use. For text, moderate use comes to a few euros a month, well under the $20 of a flat plan. For images, budget somewhere around 3 to 8 cents per generation depending on the model and the size.
Two caveats: you need to be comfortable with an API key and a technical interface, and not every tool offers it. Music and generative video are still sold mostly by subscription, with no metered equivalent. So this method suits text and images above all, and works best for someone who already automates tasks, as in our guide to automating social media publishing.
Method 4: monthly rotation
One active subscription at a time, no commitment, swapped each month based on what you are producing. Month 1: Midjourney to build up a library of visuals. Month 2: you cancel and take Suno for your music. Month 3: ElevenLabs for the voice-overs.
Average cost: €10 to €30 a month instead of €85. The conditions for it to work: never take an annual plan, set a cancellation reminder two days ahead in your calendar, and accept working in blocks rather than continuously. It is the cheapest method, and the one that demands the most discipline.
Which method for which profile
The right choice comes down to one variable: how many different formats you produce each month, not your technical level.
| Your profile | Monthly volume | Method | Realistic budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| You are just exploring, you 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 tracks | Method 1, single subscription | €29.90 |
| You automate text and you are technically comfortable | Irregular | Method 3, metered 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 a project in blocks | Occasional and intense | Method 4, monthly rotation | €10 to €30 |
| You want a certification eligible for funding | Regular | Method 1 with a certification track | €29.90, funding possible |
One simple rule to settle it: as soon as you are using three different paid tools, the single subscription is cheaper. Below three, a dedicated plan or the API usually still wins.
The takeaway
The real cost is not 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 pay for without ever opening them, that is often where the first savings are, before you even change methods. Then choose based on how many 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.
