Leonardo.ai
Runway
| Feature | Leonardo.ai | Runway |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $12/mo | Free / from $12/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.5 / 5 | 4.5 / 5 |
| Best For | game-developers, graphic-designers, content-creators, 3d-artists | filmmakers, content-creators, advertisers, video-editors |
| Founded | 2022 | 2018 |
| Text To Image | ✓ | ✗ |
| Image Editing | ✓ | ✗ |
| Real Time Canvas | ✓ | ✗ |
| Model Finetuning | ✓ | ✗ |
| Texture Generation | ✓ | ✗ |
| 3d Generation | ✓ | ✗ |
| Motion | ✓ | ✗ |
| Text To Video | ✗ | ✓ |
| Image To Video | ✗ | ✓ |
| Video Editing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Green Screen | ✗ | ✓ |
| Motion Brush | ✗ | ✓ |
| Inpainting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Upscaling | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Leonardo.ai Pros
- Generous free daily credits
- Multiple models and fine-tuning
- Excellent for game assets and textures
- Real-time canvas editing
✗ Leonardo.ai Cons
- Credit system can be confusing
- Quality varies between models
- UI can feel overwhelming for beginners
✓ Runway Pros
- Industry-leading video generation quality
- Comprehensive AI creative tools
- Text-to-video and image-to-video
- Professional-grade motion control
✗ Runway Cons
- Credits deplete quickly with video generation
- Expensive for heavy use
- Generated videos limited to a few seconds
The Verdict
Leonardo.ai is built for game developers and graphic designers, with a focus on text-to-image and image-editing. Runway targets filmmakers and content creators and leads with text-to-video and image-to-video.
Both tools come in at similar price points ($12/mo for Leonardo.ai, $12/mo for Runway), so pricing won't make the decision for you.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Both tools are a solid fit for content creators — in those cases, the decision often comes down to workflow style and how your team prefers to organize work.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.