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 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 you have published anything at all.
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, 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 output 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 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 | 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, 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 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, 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 about 25%
Between the price listed on the vendor's site and the amount actually charged, the gap runs around 25%, thanks to VAT, currency conversion and non-rollover credits.
Here are the six items that create the difference.
- VAT at 20%. Dollar prices are listed excluding tax. An individual in France pays 20% more. ChatGPT Plus at $20 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 the renewal date. A month on vacation is a month paid for nothing.
- Forced upgrades to a 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.
- Annual commitments. 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 number one source of waste. A tool tested in January and never opened since keeps charging you every month. Try it: 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 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 Skilzy's AI Lab: you learn to create, and you create directly inside the platform with the real tools, with the credits included in the subscription. No juggling multiple 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, against €1,020 for the light stack described above. That is a gap of more than €650 a year. The 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 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 you pay, the discovery demo gives you 7 days with 1 image, 1 video, 1 track and 10 messages, with no credit card. It is not much, and it is designed to 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 catalog, a dedicated Midjourney subscription will still be a 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 is the same reasoning laid out in our comparison of an alternative to ChatGPT Plus with one subscription for every model.
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 are useful, and any article that hid them from you would cost you money. Here is 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, 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 reserved for Pro |
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 a 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 editing in particular, the line between what free tools do very well and what they miss is spelled out in background removal: when free tools are enough, and when they give up.
Methods 3 and 4: pay per use, or rotate a single subscription
If you create 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: the API 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 to a few euros a month, well below the $20 of a subscription. For images, expect roughly 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 mostly sold by subscription, with no metered equivalent. So this method mainly suits text and image, and 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 are producing. Month 1: Midjourney to build 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 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 | Subscription dedicated 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 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.
What to remember
The real cost is not the listed price: add 25% for VAT, currency conversion and lost credits. Before deciding anything, 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 the number of formats you produce, not the 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.
