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 dinner out. 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'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 advertises: 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 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, 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 vendors, excluding promotions and excluding tax for services billed in dollars. These price grids change often: always check the official page before you reach for your card, for example on 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, higher 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 | 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 French VAT and currency conversion 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 don't 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 Roughly 25%
Between the price shown on the vendor's site and the amount actually charged to your account, the gap runs around 25%, thanks to VAT, currency conversion and non-rollover credits.
Here are the six line items behind the difference.
- VAT at 20%. Dollar prices are listed excluding tax. A private individual in France pays 20% more. ChatGPT Plus's $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 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.
- Being pushed to the higher 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 pure 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. Run the test: pull up your last six months of statements and count.
Method 1: A Single Subscription That Includes the Tools and the Credits
Bundling text, image, video and music into one subscription drops the bill to €29.90 a month, roughly a third of the cost of a stack of separate tools.
That's the idea 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, 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's a gap of more than €650 a year. The breakdown of what's included in each plan is on the Skilzy pricing page.
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 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's not much, and that's the point: it's there to confirm 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 catalog, a dedicated Midjourney subscription will still be the better fit for that specific use. The single-subscription logic wins when you touch several formats at moderate volume, which describes the vast majority of creators. The reasoning is the same one laid out in our comparison, an alternative to ChatGPT Plus with one subscription for every model.
Method 2: Squeeze Everything You Can Out of the Free Tiers
Free tiers 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 where the main ones actually stand.
| 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 back in 2023 | No free trial at all, 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.
One classic trap to watch out for, 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 cut out, change the background, crop: five tools or just one. And on image editing specifically, the line between what free tools do beautifully and what they fumble is spelled out in cutting out an image: 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, metered API access and rotating one subscription month by month often land under €15 a month.
Method 3: APIs and Prepaid Credits
Instead of paying a fixed plan, you top up an account and get charged with each use. For text, moderate use comes to a few euros a month, well under the $20 of a subscription. 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 mainly suits text and image, and mostly 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, switched each month based on what you're producing. Month 1: Midjourney to build up a visual library. Month 2: cancel it and pick up 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, put a cancellation reminder in your calendar two days ahead, 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 exploring, you want a look | A few tries | 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 and you're 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 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 settle it: as soon as you're using three different paid tools, the single subscription comes out cheaper. Below three, a dedicated plan or the API usually still wins.
What to Remember
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 pay for without ever opening: that's usually where the first savings are hiding, before you even change methods. Then choose based on the number of formats you produce, not the tool everyone is talking about. And test before you pay: seven days with no credit card is enough to know whether a tool fits the way you work.
