BrandVideoAI

What each vendor's terms say about commercial use

Runway's free column, read against the paid columns beside it

Runway's free plan does not carry a commercial-use line; the paid plans do. Because the plans are presented as aligned columns, the gap sits on one visual row, which is the strongest form an omission can take short of being written out. As of 2026-09-12.

Why an aligned comparison makes a gap legibleIn a comparison grid each feature becomes one horizontal line and a reader follows it across the columns. A line that stops before the free column stops inside the same design that put the feature on the page.Aligned columnsSeparate blocks of proseHow a feature appearsOne line across every planRepeated per plan, in different wordsWhat an absence showsThe line stops at a columnA block simply does not mention itWho wrote itOne table, one decisionPossibly different hands, different datesWeight of the readingStrong, short of being written outWeak, and worth re-readingTwo layouts, two levels of confidence
Fig. 1 Layout is evidence. Aligned columns are the strongest form an absence can take.
One cell of the register: Runway on Free tier, read from its pricing page on 2026-09-12.
What the record holdsAs published
The published wordingNo commercial-use line on the free plan, while the paid columns carry one
Where it appearsThe plan comparison, with the free and paid columns aligned
How the reading was establishedAbsent from a column that carries it alongside
What the cell leaves openWhat the free plan does permit, which the comparison does not spell out

Inclusion rule. One vendor, one column. A cell earns a page when the vendor publishes something specific there, or when its silence is unusual beside the vendors read with it. Order. Fixed order: the wording, then its address, then the method, then the gap.

1An aligned comparison is the clearest kind of gap

In a comparison grid every feature becomes a horizontal line, and a reader follows that line across the columns without deciding to. When the line stops before the free column, the stop is part of the same design that put the feature there in the first place.

Compare that with a page where each plan gets its own block of prose: the same absence means much less, because the blocks were probably written at different times and by different hands. Layout is evidence, and this layout is the good kind.

2The paid side names a category, not a card

What the columns grant is stated of the paid plans as a group. No plan name and no price marks the crossing point, so the boundary is drawn around a category whose membership the reader has to work out from the same page.

For most readers that is enough, because any purchase clears it. It stops being enough when a plan is renamed, split or given a cheaper variant, at which point the category has moved and the sentence granting commercial use has not.

3Silence about what the free plan is for

The page does not describe a permitted use for free output the way a personal use licence would. Evaluation, learning and posting for yourself are the uses people assume, and none of them is written down.

The cell therefore records an absence and stops. Filling it with the obvious assumption would be the register doing the vendor's drafting, which is the failure mode this column was built to avoid.

  • Free tier
    The free plan does not carry a commercial use lineby omissionRunway, pricing / recorded 2026-09-12
  • Entry point
    Commercial use is listed on the paid planspaid plansRunway, pricing / recorded 2026-09-12

4What the output is for

Alongside the terms behind “Runway, free tier”, SceneMixer's guides describe the work itself this way:

On a segment’s storyboard card, next to Edit, press AI edit.

SceneMixer, AI Edit: Rewrite a Storyboard Segment by Saying What to Change (read 2026-10-13)

Every character, scene and prop card can carry a short list of the other names your script uses for the same thing.

SceneMixer, Also Called: Nicknames, Old Names, and How the Storyboard Knows Who Is Who (read 2026-10-13)

5Where this reading came from

The cell above was taken from the pricing page published at runway.com, as that page stood on 2026-09-12. The remaining three cells of the same vendor row sit on Runway; the column itself is described on free tier. This is a filing decision and not legal advice. Cells nearby: invideo AI, free tier, Synthesia, free tier.