You want to generate images, write scripts, produce a music track and a voice-over. Taken one at a time, each tool costs about as much as a meal out. Stack them end to end and the bill starts to look like a premium 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 you have published a single thing.
Here we break down, line by line, what ChatGPT, Midjourney, Suno and their neighbours really cost, including the fees nobody puts on the pricing page: VAT, currency conversion charges, credits that expire, annual lock-in. Then, four concrete ways to bring the total down, from the single subscription that bundles the tools together 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, 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 the vendors advertise, before promotions and before tax for services billed in dollars. These price lists change often: always check the official page before you get your card out, for example the official ChatGPT pricing.
| Tool | What it is 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 5 times 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 h 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 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: around $126 plus €11.99, so close to €150 a month. Over twelve months: €1,800.
That figure is shocking, but it is completely ordinary. Most people never see it coming because each subscription was signed up for in a different month, on a different card, for a one-off need that quietly became 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 is around 25%, thanks to VAT, currency conversion and credits that do not roll over.
Here are the six items that dig the hole.
- 20% VAT. Dollar prices are listed before tax. A private individual in France pays 20% more. ChatGPT Plus at $20 shows up as $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 charge 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. One month on holiday is one month paid for nothing.
- Being pushed up a tier. 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.
- Annual commitment. The 15 to 20% discount means paying twelve months up front. On a tool you abandon after three months, that discount turns into a straight loss.
- Forgotten subscriptions. This is the single biggest source of waste. A tool you tried in January and never opened again keeps charging you every month. Try it: open the 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 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 the Skilzy AI Lab: you learn how to create, and you create directly inside the platform with the real tools, with the credits included in the subscription. No juggling 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, so €358.80 a year, against €1,020 for the light stack described above. The annual gap is more than €650. The full breakdown of what each plan includes is on the Skilzy pricing page.
There is 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 training funding, which changes the nature of the expense: it is no longer a hobby subscription, it is training you may be able to have 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, with no bank card. It is not much, and it is designed to let you check that the interface suits you, not to produce a campaign.
Let us 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 job. The single-subscription logic wins when you work across several formats at moderate volume, which is the case for the vast majority of creators. The same reasoning is laid out in our comparison, 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 stalls |
|---|---|---|
| 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, paid plan required |
| Suno | Yes, 50 credits a day | Around 10 tracks, no commercial rights |
| ElevenLabs | Yes, 10,000 characters a 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 genuinely blocks you, and pay only for the line 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 is money too. We measured it on a specific case in cut out, change the background, crop: five tools or just one. And on image editing in particular, the line between what free tools do very well and where they fall apart is covered 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, API access billed by consumption and monthly rotation of a single subscription will often land under €15 a month.
Method 3: the API and prepaid credits
Instead of paying a fixed monthly fee, 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 monthly plan. For images, reckon on somewhere between 3 and 8 cents per generation depending on the model and the size.
The 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 rather someone who already automates tasks, as in our guide on 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 it to 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 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 tries | Discovery demo with no bank 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 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 blocks | 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 are using three different paid tools, the single subscription becomes 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 saving is hiding, before you even change method. Then choose based on the number of formats you produce, not on whichever tool is being talked about the most. And test before you pay: seven days without a bank card is enough to know whether a tool fits the way you work.
