How to make your first AI video
for free

What is the easiest free way to make an AI video?

Google Flow. Without a subscription, Google gives you “50 Google Flow credits per day”, and the same page lists what each clip costs. You need a Google account, and Google says “Product feature availability may differ by country/region of use.”

How many free clips does Flow give you?

It depends on the model. Flow charges per generation, and its credit table prices Gemini Omni Flash for all users at 6 credits for an 8-second clip at 360p, or 12 at 720p, and Flow’s models page says “All users can access Gemini Omni models”. At 360p, 50 credits covers eight clips a day. Veo prices are listed for subscribers (Veo 3.1 Lite is 10 credits for non-Ultra subscribers); the table gives no Veo price for accounts without a plan.

Flow can make two videos from one request, and each counts. Set the number of outputs to one while you learn.

How do you make your first clip in Google Flow?

These steps follow Google’s help page.

1. Open Google Flow and start a new project.
2. In the prompt box, describe the scene. Google’s advice: “Be specific about the subject, action, environment, lighting, and style.”
3. Click the model name. Flow starts on an image model (Nano Banana 2 Lite for accounts without a plan, says Google’s models page), so click Video.
4. Choose the aspect ratio, the number of outputs, the model and the length.
5. Click Generate.
6. To keep going, open the clip and use Extend (8-second Veo clips only), or hover over it and choose Add to Scene to start a sequence you can trim and download (Google).

Have a photo you want to bring to life? Choose Video, then Frames, drop your image on ”+ Add start frame” and describe what happens next.

What should your first prompt say?

Google’s Veo 3.1 guide gives a five-part formula: camera work, subject, action, context, then style and mood. Its own example is a good first test:

Medium shot, a tired corporate worker, rubbing his temples in exhaustion, in front of a bulky 1980s computer in a cluttered office late at night. The scene is lit by the harsh fluorescent overhead lights and the green glow of the monochrome monitor. Retro aesthetic, shot as if on 1980s color film, slightly grainy.

Run it once, then change one thing at a time: the shot size, the light, the action. You will learn more from five small changes than from five new ideas. For speech, put the exact words in quotation marks, as the same guide advises.

What will trip you up?

• Peak hours. Flow says that without a subscription you may not be able to generate videos during peak hours, roughly 2 to 5 PM UTC. Try outside that window.
• Credits that vanish. Daily credits do not roll over, so use them or lose them.
• Free tiers change. One creator who relied on Vidu wrote that “they just cancelled the daily free token program”. Another in the same thread says of Flow: “Google flow has caps but you can do a few a day.”
• Retries. A usable clip often takes several attempts. Our tool prices page works out what that costs.
• Commercial use. Some free plans forbid client work: Kling says content from its free Basic plan “is not for commercial use”.

When the free credits run out, Google’s paid plans start at $4.99 a month in the US for 200 extra Flow credits (Google).