How to Use Veo 3 for Free, and What It Costs in 2026

The free way to use Veo is Google Flow. Everyone gets 50 Flow credits a day, and a Veo 3.1 Fast clip costs 20 of them. That's two Fast clips a day, or five Lite clips, without paying anything.

One note on the name. Google shut down Veo 3 itself in the Gemini API on June 30, 2026. Veo 3.1 replaced it, so "Veo 3" today means Veo 3.1.

What the 50 free credits buy

Flow charges credits per clip, not per second. These are Google's rates for anyone not on Ultra:

Model in Flow	Credits per clip	Free clips a day
Veo 3.1 Lite	10	5
Veo 3.1 Fast	20	2
Veo 3.1 Quality (8 seconds)	100	0

The takeaway: the free allowance is for Fast and Lite. A single Quality clip costs 100 credits, twice the daily free amount.

There's one more catch. Google's help page says videos may be unavailable to people without a plan for a few hours a day, roughly 2 to 5 PM UTC. Plan your free tests around that.

The Gemini app

The Gemini app is the other place to try Veo. Google AI Pro includes a limited trial of Veo 3.1 Lite, and Ultra includes Veo 3.1. It's fine for a quick test, but Flow gives you more control for a series.

Paid plans

Here are Google's US prices:

Plan	Price	Flow credits added
Free	$0	50 a day
Google AI Pro	$19.99 a month	1,000 a month
Google AI Ultra	from $99.99 a month	10,000 a month

The takeaway: Pro's 1,000 credits are about 50 Fast clips or 10 Quality clips a month. On Ultra a Fast clip costs 10 credits instead of 20.

You aren't charged for blocked or failed generations. You are charged for rerolls, so set outputs per prompt to one.

Pay per second with the API

There's no free tier for Veo on the Gemini API. You pay per second of video:

Gemini API, audio on	720p	1080p
Veo 3.1	$0.40 a second	$0.40 a second
Veo 3.1 Fast	$0.10 a second	$0.12 a second
Veo 3.1 Lite	$0.05 a second	$0.08 a second

The takeaway: an 8-second Fast clip at 720p costs $0.80. The same clip on full Veo 3.1 is $3.20.

fal.ai and Replicate charge the same $0.40 a second for full Veo 3.1, and $0.15 for Fast. Use them if you want one account for several video models.

Make the free clips count

Plan the shot first. Our Veo 3 prompt generator writes timed cuts and dialogue in the format Google's guide uses.
Use Lite for drafts. It's half the credits of Fast, so you get five tries a day instead of two.
Keep one speaker per clip. Veo can swap lines when two people talk, and a swapped line wastes a clip.
Start from a prompt that works. Our Veo prompts are free to copy.

Want a different model for free? Kling has a free plan with a watermark, see is Kling AI free. For the full picture on Veo, read our Veo guide.