Crun
Crun is a unified AI API platform that routes a single key to more than 100 video, image, audio and language models, billed as prepaid credits with no monthly subscription and OpenAI-compatible endpoints.
What is Crun?
Crun is an API aggregation platform: one account, one key and one balance open a catalogue the homepage advertises as more than 100 models, spread across four families - video, image, audio and large language models. The catalogue draws on ByteDance, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Alibaba, Kling, Suno, Vidu, Black Forest Labs, Runway, Hailuo, Zhipu and PrunaAI, so a team can call Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1, Sora 2 Pro, Nano Banana Pro, Flux 2, Qwen3 TTS or GPT 5.6 without opening an account with each vendor. The commercial argument is price: the homepage claims savings of up to 70% against the official APIs, while the documentation gives a narrower 30-50%, reaching 80% on a few models.
Technically the service is an HTTP API. Requests carry an X-API-KEY header and go to a single task endpoint that returns a task_id; results arrive through a callback URL or by polling, since every generation job is asynchronous. Default limits are 20 new generation requests per ten seconds and more than a hundred concurrent tasks per account, with hourly, daily and total caps per key plus an IP whitelist. Crun also advertises drop-in OpenAI compatibility and publishes OpenAI Responses, OpenAI Chat Completions and Anthropic Messages endpoints, so an existing integration can be repointed with limited rework.
Around the API sit three lighter entry points. Every model page carries a playground for testing before writing code. An AI Studio section offers ten browser tools - avatar, motion control, lip sync, upscaler, video enhancer, watermark remover, background removal and replacement, character generation and a prompt generator - that need no development at all. Finally Crun Skill registers the catalogue as tool declarations inside an AI agent, installed with a single npx command and compatible with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenClaw, Antigravity, LobeHub and WorkBuddy.
Billing is prepaid credits rather than a subscription, from 5 USD, with volume discounts up to 12%. The vendor describes itself as a small startup team and states plainly that its stability may run slightly below the official providers, a trade-off it presents as deliberate.
What it does
- Generate video from text, images or reference material through Seedance, Veo, Sora, Kling, Wan, Vidu, Hailuo and Runway models
- Generate and edit images with Nano Banana, Seedream, GPT Image, Flux, Imagen, Qwen Image and Z-Image
- Call large language models including GPT, Gemini, Claude, GLM and Doubao Seed through one endpoint
- Produce speech and music with Qwen3 TTS and the Suno API
- Upscale, restore, cut out, recolour backgrounds, remove watermarks and enhance video in the browser
- Add avatars, motion control and lip sync to existing footage
- Give an AI agent direct access to the whole catalogue through Crun Skill
When to use Crun / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Crun is the right fit.
When to use Crun
- Developers who need video, image, audio and text generation in one product without opening an account with every model vendor
- Startups and small product teams watching unit costs, since the documentation claims 30-50% below the official APIs
- Teams already built on OpenAI libraries, who can repoint an existing integration at the OpenAI Responses, Chat Completions or Anthropic Messages endpoints
- Creative studios and freelancers needing video, image, voice and music models behind a single prepaid balance
- AI agent users, who can install Crun Skill with one npx command and call the whole catalogue from Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or OpenClaw
When not to use Crun
- Buyers with a procurement checklist: no DPA, no subprocessor list and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification is published
- Mission-critical workloads, since the vendor itself states that its stability may run slightly below the official providers
- Organisations requiring EU data residency, as the application is maintained in the United States with no regional option
- Teams needing long-term storage of outputs, because generated media is deleted after 14 days and logs after two months
- Anyone under 18, and anyone needing a verifiable corporate counterpart, since no postal address or legal notice is published
How to use Crun
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account and generate an API key on the API key page; keys take the form ak_ followed by 32 characters
- Top up the balance from the billing page, choosing one of the four credit tiers from 5 USD upwards
- Browse the models page and open the model you need, then test it in its playground before writing any code
- Read the getting-started guide in the documentation for the request flow, authentication and limits
- Send a POST request to the task creation endpoint with the X-API-KEY header and a JSON payload carrying the model and its input fields
- Collect the returned task_id, then either register a callback URL or poll the task status endpoint, since every job is asynchronous
- Check the logs page for creation time, model, parameters, status, credit consumption and final results
- Set per-key rate caps and an IP whitelist to guard against overuse and unauthorised requests
- For agent workflows, install Crun Skill with npx skills add CrunTeam/crun-agent-skills --all, then store the key through the CLI or the CRUN_API_KEY variable
- For occasional needs without code, use the AI Studio browser tools and AI Effects templates directly
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A single account, key and invoice replace a dozen vendor relationships across four model families
- Prices announced 30 to 70% below the official APIs, with per-model promotions displayed openly
- No subscription: prepaid credits start at 5 USD and volume tiers add up to 12% more credits per dollar
- Claimed 100% OpenAI compatibility, with migration presented as a one-line change
- A playground on every model page removes the guesswork before integration
- Three ways in - REST API, no-code browser tools and an agent skill - suit very different skill levels
- Unusual candour from the vendor about its own stability and the size of its team
Cons
- The vendor states that its overall stability may be slightly lower than the official providers
- Company transparency is thin: no postal address, no legal notice, no named founder and no company LinkedIn page
- Legal documents conflict, with a privacy policy written under Hong Kong law and terms governed by United States law
- Three different retention periods appear across the terms, the privacy policy and the documentation
- No DPA, no subprocessor list and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification is published
- Credits are non-refundable, and prices may move with the upstream providers' own pricing
- Email support is described by the vendor as neither the preferred nor the fastest channel, with restricted hours
Pricing & Plans
Crun does not sell subscriptions. Access is paid through prepaid credits, and the lowest entry point is a credit purchase of 5.00 USD, which yields 200 credits per dollar. No permanent free plan is documented: the homepage refers to free tier credits and the frequently asked questions mention a free trial, but neither an amount nor a duration is stated, and the AI Prompt Generator is the only tool advertised with a standing free allowance of 200 uses per day. Consumption is then charged per request against the credit balance, and purchases are non-refundable under the terms of service.
- 200 credits per dollar
- no discount
- 206 credits per dollar
- advertised as Save 3%
- 212 credits per dollar
- advertised as Save 6%
- 224 credits per dollar
- advertised as Save 12%
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Crun handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy, updated on 10 January 2026, devotes a European Privacy Rights section to the GDPR. It recognises the rights of access, portability and rectification, allows consent to be withdrawn at any time by writing to support@crun.ai, and points EU residents to their national supervisory authority for complaints. Transfers outside the EU are said to be covered by the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, described as compliant with EU data protection law, and EU residents must be at least 18. Two caveats matter. The policy's general compliance statement is written under Hong Kong's Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance rather than the GDPR, and no Article 27 representative and no data protection officer is named anywhere on the site.
Who owns the data?
The terms are explicit that the customer keeps ownership: clause 4.1 states that you retain all rights to any content you upload, generate or create. Crun keeps only the intellectual property of its own platform, technology and software, as the privacy policy restates. The content policy adds the counterpart, namely that uploading or sharing content grants Crun permission to use, reproduce and display it in accordance with the terms, and that Crun may remove or modify anything it considers a policy breach. Beyond that licence, the terms commit to deleting uploaded images and files permanently within three days, adding that no one can access them and that they will not be used for anything.
Reuse rights
Users may reuse what they generate without asking permission: they retain all rights to uploaded, generated and created content, and the platform sets no editorial approval step before publication or commercial use. The limits are behavioural rather than proprietary. The content policy bans pornographic, hateful, illegal, deceptive and privacy-infringing material and requires that anything uploaded be original or properly licensed, with the responsibility for compliance resting on the creator. Crun states that it does not endorse or guarantee the legality of user content. On its own side, Crun uses account and device data to run the service, bill it, send notifications and measure audience, naming Google Analytics as a third party, while the terms state that uploaded files are not used for anything.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The privacy policy states plainly that the application is maintained in the United States, and that material uploaded for processing is stored on a remote server there for the duration of use. It warns that data held in the United States may be subject to lawful requests from local courts and law enforcement, and asks users to consent explicitly to storage, processing and transfer outside their country of residence. For users in the European Union, transfers are said to be secured by the standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission. No European hosting region and no data residency option is offered. At the network level the site resolves to a Cloudflare address announced from San Francisco, which identifies the content delivery front end rather than the place where generation actually runs; the upstream model providers behind the catalogue are not located or named in hosting terms anywhere on the site.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Crun.
- Credits are bought upfront and are non-refundable, so a large top-up on a platform this young ties up money you cannot recover
- Generated media disappears after 14 days and logs after two months: anything not downloaded in time is simply gone
- The vendor's own documentation warns that stability may run below the official providers, which matters if your product cannot degrade quietly
- Prices track the upstream providers and may be revised, so a margin built on today's rates is not guaranteed tomorrow
- With no published address, DPA, subprocessor list or certification, there is little to fall back on if a dispute or an audit arises
- Uploading images of real people carries consent and likeness risks that the content policy places squarely on the creator, not on Crun
- Cheap, abundant generation invites volume over judgement: it is easy to publish machine-made assets faster than anyone can review them
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low to moderate, depending on the route. Through the browser tools nothing is required beyond an account and credits. Through the API you need a key and the ability to make HTTP calls; the documentation promises a start in under five minutes with Python, JavaScript and cURL samples, and an existing OpenAI integration can be repointed in one line. The real work is the asynchronous model, which obliges you to handle a callback or a polling loop, plus rate caps and 429 handling. For agent users, one npx command and a stored key are enough, with no local GPU dependency.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Crun
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What is Crun?
How much does it cost to start?
Is there a free plan or a free trial?
Which models can I call?
How do I integrate the API?
Is it compatible with my existing OpenAI code?
What are the rate limits?
How long are my files kept?
Where is my data hosted?
Is there an affiliate programme?
Should you pick Crun?
Crun does one thing and does it clearly: it puts a single key and a single balance in front of a catalogue of generative models that would otherwise mean a dozen vendor accounts. For a developer who needs video, image, audio and text generation inside the same product, that consolidation saves real money and real time, and the OpenAI-compatible endpoints keep migration cost close to zero. Prepaid credits from 5 USD, a playground on every model page and ten no-code browser tools make the platform cheap to evaluate before committing.
The reservations concern the company rather than the technology. Crun.ai Inc. publishes no postal address, no legal notice, no named founder and no company page; the domain was registered in January 2026 and the first web archive capture dates from July 2026. The legal documents contradict one another, with a privacy policy framed under Hong Kong's Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance while the terms are governed by United States law, and three different retention periods spread across the terms, the privacy policy and the documentation. Nothing resembling a DPA, a subprocessor list or a security certification is published, and credits are non-refundable.
To its credit the vendor is unusually candid, writing that it is a small startup team and that its stability may run slightly below the official providers. Read together, these signals point to a sensible use: prototyping, side projects and production workloads that tolerate occasional variance, with outputs downloaded promptly and a modest balance rather than a large prepayment. Teams facing procurement, security or GDPR review will find too little published to clear their checks, and should treat Crun as a cost-optimisation layer worth testing rather than a vendor to standardise on.
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