Trend.io alternative: Trend.io pricing, cost per video, and Trend.io alternatives compared

No. Trend.io has been acquired by soona, the US studio and creative platform. soona states on its own site that its UGC product was built from what it learned acquiring Trend.io and is powered by Trend, and the support address published on Trend.io's pricing page is now [email protected].

What has not changed is the product you actually buy. Re-verified on 5 September 2026, Trend.io is still live, still selling the same four credit packages at the same prices, still taking its own checkout, and the 12-month credit expiry survived the deal. The soona banner announcing the two joining forces is still running at the top of Trend's own pricing page more than three years after the deal was announced in June 2023. So if you already use Trend, nothing about your existing content license or your unspent balance changed on the day the deal closed.

The strange part is the pricing. The same company now sells creator video at two different rates through two different sites: roughly $69 to $92 per video through Trend credit packs, and $89 to $259 per video buying direct from soona. Which one you pay depends on which website you happened to find. Our soona alternative page compares both routes, and what the acquisition changes for your UGC budget covers what to do if you are holding credits.

Only above the entry tier, and the entry tier is the surprise. Trend publishes a price for individual Creator Credits alongside its packages, $9.16 each as read on 5 September 2026, and that single number is what makes the packages comparable. Divide each pack by its credits and the Starter package comes out at $9.17 a credit. It buys no discount whatsoever over paying one credit at a time.

That is unusual and it is worth knowing before you commit $550 you then have twelve months to spend.

The practical reading: if you are testing Trend, buy individual credits rather than the Starter pack. You pay the same rate, you are not holding a balance against a twelve-month clock, and you can stop after two videos instead of six. The packages only start earning their commitment at Essential, and the curve flattens hard after that. Going from Essential to Scale nearly quadruples your outlay to move the unit rate 7 percent.

Underneath the credits the arithmetic is simple. A video costs 10 credits and a photo costs 4, which is how 60 credits becomes either 6 videos or 15 photos. So a video is $69 to $92 depending on the pack, and a photo $28 to $37.

What neither number covers is whether the video that comes back is usable. A 10-credit video shot from a vague brief costs exactly the same as one shot from a specific brief, and the clock on the remaining credits keeps running either way.

Trend.io publishes its pricing as credit packages, which is clearer than most of the category once you translate it into content. Starter is $550 for 60 credits, covering up to 6 videos or 15 photos. Essential is $1,045 for 140 credits, up to 14 videos or 35 photos. Growth is $1,980 for 280 credits, up to 28 videos or 70 photos. Scale is $3,872 for 560 credits, up to 56 videos or 140 photos.

Individual credits run about $9.16 each, and each creator you hire produces either 5 photos or 2 videos. The effective per-video cost falls as the package grows: roughly $92 on Starter down to about $69 on Scale.

Two details worth knowing before you buy. Credits expire 12 months after purchase, so a large package you cannot spend is money lost. And the entry point is $550, not a per-video purchase. Verified against trend.io in July 2026. That expiry clock is exactly why the brief for each order matters: a video shot from a thin brief that needs a reshoot burns credits twice.

Trend.io is a curated marketplace producing brand-owned UGC from real creators, paid for in prepaid credit packages that expire after 12 months. UGCMarketplace does not sell video, credits, or creators at all.

Trend.io sells credits in packages, cheapest per video when you buy the most, with a 12-month expiry. That model rewards brands who can forecast a year of content demand and punishes brands who cannot. UGCMarketplace sells the brief you write before spending those credits: the objective, audience, hook, timed scenes, technical spec, and creator profile, free for the first product and $29 a month for unlimited after that.

On per-video economics at high volume, Trend.io's Scale package is genuinely competitive at around $69 per video. If you will actually use 56 videos inside a year, that is a strong number and we will say so. Whether you spend it well is a brief problem, not a Trend.io problem, and that is the piece we help with.

Yes. Trend.io states that credits expire 12 months after purchase. This is the single most important thing to understand about the package pricing, because the per-video discount only exists if you spend the whole balance in time.

Run the math honestly before you size up. A $3,872 Scale package is about $69 per video if you use all 56, but if you only get through 20 of them before the year is out, you actually paid about $194 per video, which is worse than the Starter package you skipped.

Buy the package that matches the content you will realistically brief, not the one with the best headline rate. And write a real brief for every video you do commission. A vague ask that comes back unusable and needs a reshoot is the fastest way to burn a package before the clock runs out.

Buy Trend.io credits if you have a predictable, high volume of content and want the lowest per-video cost you can lock in. At 28 to 56 videos a year, the Growth and Scale packages price well, and the credit system lets you flex between video and photo as campaigns change.

It also suits brands that like the curated browse-and-pick experience and want a known credit balance to draw down against, rather than deciding what to spend each time.

Use UGCMarketplace alongside it, not instead of it: before you spend a Trend.io credit on any creator, generate the brief and script for that specific video first. First brief is free, and $29 a month covers unlimited briefs if you are commissioning several videos a month.