You want to generate images, write scripts, produce a soundtrack and a voice-over. 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: between €85 and €150 a month for someone covering text, image, video, music and voice. That is €1,000 to €1,800 a year, before publishing a single thing.
Here we break down, line by line, what ChatGPT, Midjourney, Suno and their neighbours really cost, including the fees nobody displays: VAT, currency conversion charges, credits that expire, annual commitments. Then, four concrete methods to bring the total down, from the single subscription that bundles the tools to pay-as-you-go. 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, image, video, music and voice pays between €85 and €150 a month including tax, which works out to €1,000 to €1,800 over a year.
Here are the most common entry-level plans. The amounts shown are the ones published by the vendors, excluding promotions and excluding tax for services billed in dollars. These price lists change often: always check the official page before pulling 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 | 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 | Voice-over | 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, touch-ups | 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 VAT and currency conversion fees are applied, your bank statement shows around €85. Over twelve months: €1,020.
The full stack. The same thing, but Midjourney on Standard (because 200 images no longer cut it), plus HeyGen for avatars and Canva for editing: around $126 and €11.99, or close to €150 a month. Over twelve months: €1,800.
That number is shocking, but it is 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 shown on the vendor's website and the amount actually charged, 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.
- VAT at 20%. Dollar prices are listed excluding tax. A private individual in France pays 20% more. ChatGPT Plus at $20 becomes $24 on the statement.
- Currency conversion fees. Most bank cards apply 1 to 3% on a payment in a foreign currency, sometimes with a fixed 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 holiday is a month paid for nothing.
- Being forced up to the higher plan. On Midjourney, keeping your images private (stealth mode) is only included from the Pro plan at $60 a month, double the Standard. On Suno, commercial rights to your tracks require a paid plan.
- The annual commitment. The 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 tried in January, never reopened since, keeps charging every month. Try it: open your statements for the last six months and count.
Method 1: a single subscription that includes the tools and the credits
Bundling text, image, video and music into one 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 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 programmes cover image generation, video (UGC, ads, faceless channels, avatars, voice-over), music, prompt writing, automation with n8n and AI-assisted coding.
The maths is simple: €29.90 a month with no commitment, or €358.80 a year, versus €1,020 for the light stack described above. The annual gap is more than €650. The details of what is included in each plan are on the Skilzy pricing page.
A second lever on cost: two state-recognised 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 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 try 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 is not much, and it is designed to let you check that the interface suits you, not to produce a campaign.
Let's be honest about the limits: if you generate 2,000 images a month for a product catalogue, 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 same reasoning is laid out in our comparison of an alternative to ChatGPT Plus with one subscription for every model.
Method 2: squeeze the most out of the free tiers
Free plans are enough for learning 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 cost you money. Here is where the main ones actually stand.
| Tool | Free tier | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|
| 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 mandatory |
| 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 reserved for Pro |
The strategy that works: start entirely on free tiers for two to three weeks, note what actually blocks you, and pay only for the thing that blocks you. Nine times out of ten, it is not the one you expected.
Watch out for one classic trap, 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 cutting out, changing the background, cropping: five tools or one. And on image retouching in particular, the line between what free tools do very well and what they fail at is detailed in cutting out an image: when free tools are enough, and when they give up.
Methods 3 and 4: pay per use, or run one subscription at a time
If you produce in bursts rather than every day, API access billed by consumption and rotating a single subscription month by month often come in under €15 a month.
Method 3: the API and prepaid credits
Instead of paying a fixed plan, you top up an account and get charged each time you use it. For text, moderate use comes to a few euros a month, well below the $20 of a subscription. For images, budget roughly 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 suits text and image above all, and rather someone who is already automating tasks, as in our guide to automating social media publishing.
Method 4: monthly rotation
One active subscription at a time, no commitment, switched each month depending on what you are 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 the voice-overs.
Average cost: €10 to €30 a month instead of €85. The conditions for making it 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 a single variable: the number of 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 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, you are 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 |
One simple rule to decide: as soon as you are using three different paid tools, the single subscription becomes cheaper. Below three, the dedicated plan or the API often still wins.
Key takeaways
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 usually where the first saving is, before you even change method. Then choose based on the number of formats you produce, not on the tool everyone is talking about. And test before you pay: seven days without a card is enough to know whether a tool fits the way you work.
