Arcads screenshots
What is Arcads?
Arcads is a hosted tool for making video ads without cameras or creators. You give it a product link or a script, pick an AI actor, and it returns a short talking-to-camera clip in the UGC style that dominates TikTok, Reels and Meta feeds.
The pitch is variation. A paid-social team wants ten hooks against three audiences by Friday, and booking creators for that is slow and expensive. Arcads turns each hook into a fresh clip in minutes, so the testing loop speeds up.
It sits between an editor and a creator marketplace. There's an editor for captions, B-roll and music, a library of 1,000+ actors, and a set of AI video and image models (Sora 2 Pro, Seedance, Kling and others) behind it. A newer agent, Mark, reads your product page and drafts the first ads.
It replaces part of the creator and editor budget, not all of it. Real customers on camera still convert better in many categories, so most teams use Arcads for volume and keep a few human creators for the winners.
The product moves quickly. New models and features appear every few weeks, and pricing isn't public, so treat the feature list below as a snapshot of what Arcads shows today.
How Arcads works
You start from a product link, an idea or a script. The agent reads the page, proposes hooks and scripts, and generates a first set of ads. You can also skip the agent and use Studio, which is the manual editor.
Pick an actor, or build a custom avatar. Arcads lets you set the emotion of the performance, so the same line can read as excited, skeptical or deadpan, and you can swap the actor afterwards without starting over.
The clip renders with a video model you choose. The editor then handles captions, B-roll, transitions, music, background removal and camera angle. Tools such as translate video, change voices, extend video and transcribe cover the clean-up.
Dubbing produces the same ad in other languages, in the 30+ Arcads supports. Presets built for performance marketing, such as unboxing and product showcase, give you a starting structure.
For teams, the workflow canvas lays hooks, actors and offers side by side so you can test variants against each other and scale the winners together.
Arcads pricing
Arcads has no free plan, so budget for it from the start. Here's how the pricing works.
Arcads doesn't publish plan prices on its public pages. You create an account, and the plans appear inside the app. That means this page can't quote a verified figure, and you should read the real number before you decide.
Third-party roundups list an entry plan near $110 a month and a second tier near $220, with a custom high-volume plan and occasional promotions. Those numbers come from blogs, not from Arcads, and they've differed between sources, so treat them as a rough guide only.
Everything is metered in credits. One finished video with one actor costs about the same on any plan, so there's no built-in volume discount until you negotiate a custom plan. Budget by videos per month, then add room for retakes and hook variants, which is where most credits go.
Arcads has run a limited-time 7-day offer with unlimited generations on one video model. If it's live when you sign up, use it on your own product and write down the end date.
Compare cost per finished ad with what you pay a UGC creator, typically $100 to $300 per video plus revisions. If you test fewer than ten ads a month, creators can still be cheaper. If you test fifty, the maths flips.
Prices change often. Check the current plans on the official site before you pay.
See Arcads pricingArcads features
- Library of 1,000+ AI actors with emotion control
- Custom AI avatars that hold a product or wear branded clothing
- Video models to pick from, including Sora 2 Pro, Seedance and Kling
- Editing tools: captions, B-roll, transitions, music, background remover and camera angle
- Voice changes, dubbing and video translation in 30+ languages
- Ready-made ad presets such as unboxing and product showcase
- Workflow canvas for teams to create, test and scale ads together
- An AI ad agent (Mark) that reads a product page and drafts the first ads
The depth is in the ad workflow rather than the video model. Actors, emotion control, custom avatars, captions and dubbing live in one editor, and the workflow canvas lets a team lay out and compare variants instead of exporting files between tools. The trade-off is the credit meter: every render, retake and translation spends it.
How to set up Arcads
- 1
Create an account and start the trial
Sign up at arcads.ai. If a trial is running, start it and write down the end date; plans and prices appear inside the app.
- 2
Check what a finished ad costs
Before you generate anything, open the plans and work out credits per video. That single number sets your testing budget.
- 3
Paste a product link
Give the agent a product page. It drafts hooks and scripts, which is faster than starting from a blank script.
- 4
Pick an actor and set the emotion
Choose someone who looks like your buyer, and try two or three on the same script. Set the emotion line by line.
- 5
Edit, caption and add B-roll
Add captions, B-roll and music in the editor. Keep the first three seconds tight, since paid-social viewers decide there.
- 6
Export variants and test
Upload several hooks as separate ads and let the ad platform find winners. Scale the winner, or remake it with a real creator.
- 7
Check the ad network's AI rules
Read the current policy on AI-generated people for each network you'll run on, and add any required label before you spend.
What people use Arcads for
Hook testing on paid social
Render the same offer with ten opening lines and let the ad platform find the one that stops the scroll. The catch: credits run down fastest here.
Localized ads for new markets
Dub a winning English ad into Spanish, German or Portuguese instead of reshooting it. Have a native speaker check the translated script.
App install ads
Mobile app studios pair an AI actor's reaction with screen recordings, a format that suits app-store funnels.
Agency concept pitches
Show a client three concept ads in an afternoon before anyone commits budget to a real shoot.
Affiliate and lead-gen creative
Performance marketers in affiliate, insurance and real estate niches need constant fresh creative, which is where credit-based generation pays off.
Product showcase and unboxing clips
Use the built-in presets to get a starting structure for e-commerce products, then swap the actor and captions per variant.
Refreshing tired creative
Swap the actor or change the voice on an ad that's fatiguing, and relaunch it without a new script.
Arcads vs Creatify
If you're weighing Arcads against Creatify, both live in someone else's cloud, so it comes down to price, fit and how much you'd have to move.
| Aspect | Arcads | Creatify |
|---|---|---|
| Price to start | No public price · free trial | From $39/month |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Self-hosting | No | No |
| Your data | In their cloud, exportable | In the vendor's cloud |
Creatify figures are from its pricing page, checked 2026-09-30.
All Creatify alternativesArcads next to similar tools
- Arcads vs HeyGen
- HeyGen covers presentations, training and translation as well as ads, and has a free plan. Arcads is narrower and organized around ad hooks, actors and testing, so it fits a paid-social team better.
- Arcads vs hiring UGC creators
- Creators look real and their reviews carry trust, but each video takes days and costs more, and revisions add up. Arcads wins on speed and variation; creators win on credibility for expensive products.
- Arcads vs Creatify
- Creatify is a similar product-link-to-ad generator with its own actors and pricing. Run the same product through both trials and compare the output and the credit cost per finished ad.
- Arcads vs Synthesia
- Synthesia targets corporate training and explainer video. It isn't built for UGC-style ad creative, so it's the wrong tool for hook testing.
- Arcads vs shooting UGC yourself
- A phone, a script and a friend cost nothing and look authentic. It doesn't scale to fifty variants a week, and that's the gap Arcads sells into.
Bottom line
Our take on Arcads
If you spend real money on paid social and need more creative than you can brief, try Arcads during its trial and count the cost per finished ad against your creator rate. Keep a few human creators for your best performers, and read each ad network's AI-content rules before you scale. If you test only a handful of ads a month, hiring creators is still the simpler route.
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