Hedra vs Magic Hour (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Magic Hour grades higher than Hedra: 2.4 against 1.8 out of 4.0.
Checked Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 12, 2026 and Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA
Magic Hour grades higher on the free plan and features. They get the same grade on value for money, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Magic Hour
Browser studio of AI video, image and audio tools paid with credits
Which one is for you
Pick Hedra if
- Fits if you make short character or talking-head videos in a browser
- Works for developers who want hosted models over an API
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want a free plan, because there isn't one
- Pricey if you only need a few clips, as Basic is $20 a month with 2,000 credits and slower generations
- Watch out: monthly credits don't roll over, though credit-pack balances don't expire
- Watch out: the main site now talks about research and infrastructure, and Play sits on its own pricing page
Pick Magic Hour if
- Fits if you want face swap, lip sync and video tools in one place
- Works for developers who want an API on the same credits
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you need clean free exports, because free video and audio may be watermarked
- Tight if you need high resolution, as Creator caps at 1024px and 4K is Business only
- Watch out: annual plans charge the full year upfront
- Watch out: refunds apply only within 7 days and below 400 credits used, once per customer
- Watch out: Pro and Business were shown to us in ringgit, so check the dollar total at checkout
How we grade them
| 1.8GPAHedraWeak | 2.4GPAMagic HourFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CBasic is $20 a month billed monthly for 2,000 credits, in the dearer half of the category's $10 to $15 range. | CCreator is $12 a month billed yearly, in the category's middle-to-dearer band. |
| Free plan and trial | FNo free plan on the page. After cancelling you keep only limited, watermarked generations. | CSome tools work with no account, and a free account gets 400 credits plus up to 7 daily claims of 100. |
| Features | CPlay subscriptions with credits, plus model APIs and compute on the main site. The pricing page doesn't say which models or lengths each plan covers. | BText and image to video, face swap, talking photos, lip sync, image and audio tools, plus an API and SDKs. |
| Ease of use | CA web studio metered in credits, so you have to work out what each clip costs. | CMore than 100 tools means a lot to find your way around. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb studio, with model APIs for developers. No phone or desktop program. | BWeb with an API and SDKs that use the same credits. |
| Best for | talking-character video, on a monthly credit plan | a big bag of video and face-swap tools with free tries |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Hedra and Magic Hour. How we grade
Price against what you get
Hedra starts at $20 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. Magic Hour starts at $12 a month and scores 2.7.
Magic Hour scores higher and starts $8 a month lower. Of the other AI image and video generators on the chart, 30 score higher than Hedra for less, and 6 score higher than Magic Hour for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Magic Hour also covers image generation.
At a glance
| Hedra | Magic Hour | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Paid | Free plan |
| Starts at | $20 per month, billed monthly | $12 per month, billed annually (MYR 78 billed monthly) |
| Free plan | None | Selected tools work without an account within per-tool limits. A free account adds 400 sign-up credits and up to 7 daily claims of 100 credits. Free video may be watermarked. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Hedra | Magic Hour AI, Inc. |
| Price read from | hedra.com | magichour.ai |
| Checked | Nov 12, 2026 | Nov 13, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Hedra
- The main site has shifted to infrastructure and research; the Play studio sits on its own pricing page.
- Monthly credits do not roll over; credit-pack balances do not expire.
- After cancelling, only limited watermarked generations remain; a free plan was not listed.
Magic Hour
- Annual plans charge the full year upfront and add the whole year's credits at once; monthly billing adds 12,000, 25,000 or 70,000 credits a month.
- The pricing page showed Malaysian ringgit to us, so Pro and Business are given in MYR; Creator's $12 comes from the vendor's page description and help center.
- Export resolution depends on plan: 1024px on Creator, 1472px on Pro, and 4K only on Business.
- Refunds apply within 7 days and only if fewer than 400 credits were used, limited to one approved refund per customer.
Key features
Hedra
- Play subscriptions
- Plans sell monthly credits for the Play studio, with faster generation on higher tiers.
- Model APIs
- A separate prepaid USD wallet pays for REST API and CLI usage; it is separate from Play credits.
- GPU compute
- Compute is priced per GPU-second, for example $0.001736 per second on an NVIDIA B200.
- Model Factory
- Custom model research engagements with forward-deployed researchers, priced per engagement.
Magic Hour
- Text and image to video
- Describe a scene to generate a clip, animate a still photo, or restyle an existing video with video-to-video.
- Face swap and character replace
- Swap a face in a photo or video, or replace a whole character in a clip with another person or figure.
- Talking photos and lip sync
- Add audio to a portrait to make it speak, or match a video's mouth movements to new speech.
- Image generation and editing
- Generate images from prompts and edit them by description, plus headshots, background removal, upscaling and colorizing.
- Audio tools
- Voice generator, voice cloner, voice changer, music and sound effect generators, and audio translation.
- API and SDKs
- A developer API with SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go and Rust that draws on the same credits as the web plans.
Plans
Hedra
Basic$20
per month, billed monthly
2,000 credits a month, slower generations and commercial use.
Pro$50
per month, billed monthly
7,200 credits a month, faster generation and commercial use.
Teams$75
per month, billed monthly
14,400 credits a month, fastest generation and teams plan access.
Ultra$100
per month and up, billed monthly
18,000 credits a month; allowances up to 57,600 credits a month.
EnterpriseCustom
Dedicated support, private deployments and SSO; sold through sales.
Magic Hour
Basic$0
Free tools without sign-up, 400 credits on sign-up and up to 7 daily claims of 100 credits; many image tools export without a watermark.
Credit pack$10
one-time, for 4,000 credits
$1 buys 400 credits, in packs of $10, $30, $80, $160 and $640. Credits never expire and include watermark-free, commercial use.
Creator$12
per month, billed annually (MYR 78 billed monthly)
144,000 credits a year (about 1.7 hours of video or 28,800 images), 1024px exports, 3 generations at once and 2GB uploads.
ProMYR 103
per month, billed annually (MYR 161 billed monthly)
300,000 credits a year (about 3.5 hours of video), 1472px exports, 5 generations at once and 5GB uploads.
BusinessMYR 276
per month, billed annually (MYR 414 billed monthly)
840,000 credits a year (about 9.7 hours of video), 4K exports, unlimited generations at once and 10GB uploads.
Ways to pay less
Hedra
No public discounts listed.
Magic Hour
- Annual discount
Save 33% to 37% with annual billing
The pricing page offers 4 months free on yearly plans: 37% off Creator, 36% off Pro and 33% off Business compared with monthly billing.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Hedra or Magic Hour?
As of Nov 13, 2026, Magic Hour is cheaper to start with: $12 a month, against $20 a month for Hedra. Hedra starts at $20 per month, billed monthly, and Magic Hour starts at $12 per month, billed annually (MYR 78 billed monthly).
Which has a free plan, Hedra or Magic Hour?
As of Nov 13, 2026, only Magic Hour has a free plan. Hedra does not.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.