Lumen5
The long-standing blog and article-to-video maker for marketing teams
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Facts checked · Nov 2026 — the pricing, free-plan and watermark facts on this page were checked against Lumen5's official pages. See how we verify and the listing changelog.
Price alerts for Lumen5
AI video tools change prices and credit rules without warning — Kling has raised prices roughly 3× before. Get emailed when Lumen5's price, credits or free plan changes.
Our verdict
Best for content and marketing teams who already write articles and want a branded video version of each one — the original blog-to-video workflow, still simple, still metered.
Lumen5 at a glance
| Starting price | Paid plans from $19/month billed annually (Basic) |
| Pricing type | Freemium |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free export allowed | ✓ |
| No watermark on free export | ✕ |
| Category | Script-to-Video Tools |
What Lumen5 really costs
Our listing records Lumen5's pricing as Paid plans from $19/month billed annually (Basic) (freemium pricing).
What you actually pay depends on the plan you pick, how much you create, and — on tools that meter usage — how many attempts you discard along the way. A cheap entry plan that meters every generation can cost more in a heavy month than a flat subscription.
We do not publish a per-minute cost estimate for Lumen5: we only publish per-unit figures derived from official pricing pages, and Lumen5 is not one of the tools our calculator models numerically yet. Treat the entry price as a floor, not a monthly total.
See how the tools we do model numerically compare in the cost calculator.
What is Lumen5?
Lumen5 is one of the oldest tools in this catalogue's neighbourhood: a browser platform that converts text — a blog post URL, an article or a pasted script — into a short video. Its AI drafts a storyboard from your text, picks the sentences that matter, lays them over stock footage with your branding, and leaves you to approve, swap and trim scenes. The output is the classic marketing explainer format: stock visuals, bold on-screen text, music, and optionally an AI voiceover reading the script.
That formula is both its strength and its ceiling. Lumen5 will not generate original footage, animate a presenter or give you a timeline editor's control. What it gives a content team is throughput: every article the team publishes can become a LinkedIn, YouTube or social video the same day, in the same brand kit, made by someone whose job is writing rather than editing. The newer layers — AI voiceover minutes, AI animation minutes, voice cloning on higher tiers — are metered add-ons to that core, and the metering is where plans are really decided.
How Lumen5 works
- 1Start on the free Community plan — paste a blog URL or script and let Lumen5 draft a storyboard from the text.
- 2Review the auto-selected sentences: the storyboard is only as good as the lines it keeps, so cut and reorder before touching visuals.
- 3Swap stock clips where the automatic match misses the point of a line — this pass is most of the quality.
- 4Apply your colours and fonts (a full brand kit from the Starter plan) and choose a template format for the platform you are publishing to.
- 5Add AI voiceover if your plan's monthly voice minutes allow, or publish text-led with music — decide before generating, because regenerating audio spends minutes again.
- 6Export. Free videos are 720p, capped at 2 minutes, and end with a Lumen5 branded outro; paid plans remove the branding, and Starter and above export at 1080p.
Core features
Article and script-to-storyboard drafting
Paste a URL or text and Lumen5's AI summarises it into scenes with on-screen text matched to stock footage. This drafting step — not any single effect — is the product: it turns a published article into a reviewable video in minutes.
Stock media library
Videos are assembled from licensed stock photos and footage. The library grows by plan, up to Shutterstock editorial media on Pro, per the plan details published on Lumen5's pricing page.
AI voiceover and voice cloning
Paid plans include monthly AI voiceover minutes from a library of 1,000+ voices (20 minutes on Basic, 60 on Starter, 180 on Pro in the published plan data), with voice cloning arriving on Starter (one clone) and Pro (three clones). Voice minutes are the meter heavy narrated-video users will hit first.
Brand kits and custom watermarks
Custom colours and fonts start on Basic; a customisable brand kit arrives on Starter; Pro adds custom watermarks and multiple workspaces. For teams publishing under one brand, the kit is what keeps fifty videos looking like one channel.
AI animation minutes
Paid plans also meter a small monthly allowance of AI animation (1 minute on Basic, 2 on Starter, 5 on Pro in the published data) — enough for accents inside a stock-led video, not for animation-led production.
Templates and automated captions
Ready formats for social and marketing video with automated captions, so a text-led video is publishable without a separate captioning tool.
The free plan — the full truth
The free Community plan is permanent and recurring — 5 videos a month — which already separates it from one-time credit drops. Its limits are published and consistent: videos up to 2 minutes, 720p export, and every video ends with a Lumen5 branded outro. That last point is verified from Lumen5's own help centre, in an article titled 'Why is there a Lumen5 logo at the end of my video?': videos created on the Free Community plan have a Lumen5 logo at the very end, removable only by upgrading to a paid plan. It is an outro rather than a watermark stamped across the frame, but for a branded channel the effect is the same — the video announces the free tool that made it.
Commercial use of free output is the murkier question. Reviewers who have read Lumen5's terms closely report a contradiction between its Terms of Service wording (personal, internal use tied to paid fees) and a help article claiming commercial rights, so this review records free commercial use as unverified rather than repeating either side as settled. The practical advice is unchanged: if the video represents a business, the $19/month billed-annually Basic plan — which removes the branding and unlocks unlimited videos — is the tier the free plan is designed to lead you to. Note also that Lumen5 offers no free trials of paid plans; its help centre instead promises a 7-day money-back window on upgrades.
- • 5 videos per month on the free Community plan
- • Maximum 2 minutes per free video, exported at 720p
- • Every free video ends with a Lumen5 branded outro (official help centre)
- • Free commercial-use terms are contradicted between Lumen5's own documents — treated here as unverified
- • No free trial of paid plans; a 7-day money-back policy applies instead (help centre)
Lumen5 pricing
Pricing checked Nov 2026 — with a transparency caveat: Lumen5's own pricing page would not render in our reader this session (it loads as a script-driven page), so the plan table below is reported in the review text from multiple independent, dated readings of lumen5.com/pricing (September–October 2026), which agree with each other and with Lumen5's help centre on the free plan. The figures those readings agree on: Free Community $0 (5 videos/month, 2-minute cap, 720p, branded outro); Basic $19/month billed annually or $29 monthly (unlimited videos, no branding, 720p, 20 AI voice minutes/month); Starter $59/month billed annually or $79 monthly (1080p, 60 voice minutes, brand kit, one voice clone); Pro $149/month billed annually or $199 monthly (180 voice minutes, three voice clones, Shutterstock editorial media, multiple workspaces); plus an annual-only Team plan. Verify the number you are quoted on lumen5.com/pricing before paying, and treat our plans array as null until we can read the page directly.
Pros
- + The article-to-video drafting workflow is still the fastest route from a blog post to a reviewable video
- + Permanent free plan with a monthly allowance — rare honesty in this category
- + Brand kits keep a whole team's output visually consistent
- + Simple pricing ladder where the deciding meters (voice and animation minutes) are published
- + 7-day money-back policy on upgrades compensates for the absence of paid trials
Cons
- − Free output is capped at 2 minutes and 720p and ends with a branded outro
- − Basic is still 720p — 1080p waits until Starter at three times the price
- − Voice and animation minutes are small on lower tiers; narrated-video producers will outgrow Basic quickly
- − Stock-and-text output has a recognisable sameness — it will not pass for original footage
- − Free-plan commercial terms are unclear in Lumen5's own documents
Best for
- ✓ Content marketing teams republishing articles as social and LinkedIn video
- ✓ Small businesses that need steady, on-brand short videos without editing skills
- ✓ Agencies producing templated video versions of client content
Not ideal for
- ✕ Creators who need generated footage, avatars or cinematic output
- ✕ Faceless channels that need long narrated videos — voice minutes and the 2-minute free cap work against you
- ✕ Anyone who needs 1080p on a tight budget
Lumen5 alternatives
See all alternatives →Pictory is the closest alternative in our catalogue: it also turns scripts and blog posts into narrated stock-led videos, and adds long-video summarising. InVideo AI goes further toward generation — a full faceless video from one prompt, with script, voice and visuals drafted together. Fliki is worth a look if the voice is the point: its library and language range are its strength. And if your articles need a human face, Synthesia puts an AI presenter on the text instead of stock footage. Each has its own page with the free-plan facts we could verify for it.
Synthesia
Synthesia is an enterprise-focused avatar video platform used heavily for training and internal communication. It offers a large stock avatar library, personal avatars, multi-language narration and compliance and admin features that larger organisations require.
Colossyan creates presenter-led videos aimed at workplace learning, with scenario-style content, many languages and features for localising training across regions. It competes most directly with Synthesia in the corporate training niche.
InVideo AI
InVideo AI generates a full video from a single prompt — writing the script, adding voiceover, stock or generated visuals, captions and music. It is one of the most used tools for faceless YouTube channels because the first draft arrives almost complete and can then be edited with simple text commands.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Lumen5 free?
Yes — the Community plan is free forever with 5 videos a month, each up to 2 minutes at 720p. Every free video ends with a Lumen5 branded outro, confirmed in Lumen5's own help centre, and paid plans remove it.
How much does Lumen5 cost?
Basic is $19/month billed annually ($29 monthly) with unlimited videos and no branding; Starter is $59/month billed annually ($79 monthly) and adds 1080p and a brand kit; Pro is $149/month billed annually ($199 monthly). These figures are from dated readings of Lumen5's pricing page in autumn 2026 — see our plans note for why we report rather than table them.
Does Lumen5 watermark free videos?
Not across the frame — instead, free Community videos end with a Lumen5 logo outro. Lumen5's help centre states this directly and says upgrading to any paid plan removes it.
Can I use Lumen5 free videos commercially?
Unclear from Lumen5's own documents: its terms wording and a help article point in different directions, as reviewers who read both have noted. For business publishing, the safe route is a paid plan and the branding removal that comes with it.
Lumen5 or Pictory?
Both repurpose writing into stock-led video. Lumen5 is the marketing-team veteran with brand kits and a permanent free plan; Pictory adds blog-to-video plus long-video summarising and highlight features. If your source is mainly articles for social, Lumen5's drafting is hard to beat; if you also repurpose long videos, Pictory covers more ground.
Does Lumen5 have a free trial?
Not for paid plans — Lumen5's help centre says there are no free trials, but upgrades carry a 7-day money-back policy. The free Community plan is the intended way to evaluate the workflow.