Arcade vs Runway

Arcade is an interactive demo and product video platform from Arcade Software, founded in early 2021 by former Atlassian colleagues Caroline Clark and Rich Manalang. Its seed round was led by Upfront Ventures with Sequoia and Bond. The original job is simple: record clicks in your product with a browser extension and turn them into a clickable, embeddable walkthrough that prospects can try on a website, blog or social post before signing up.

Today Arcade sells two product lines. Interactive demos add branching, hotspots, AI voiceovers, AI translations, lead forms, CTAs, MP4 and GIF export and engagement insights. AI video builds editable launch videos, changelogs, tutorials and talking-head clips from your product and brand, and can be requested from Claude or ChatGPT through the Arcade MCP. Demo plans run Free, Growth (per seat) and Enterprise; AI video has a separate Free and credit-based Pro plan.

Arcade suits product marketers, sales engineers and growth teams at product-led SaaS companies who want demos live in hours. It is not an in-app onboarding tool like Userflow or Stonly, and async screen recording for internal updates is cheaper in Loom. Custom domains, SSO and the native Salesforce integration sit on Enterprise only.

Buying tip: demo subscriptions do not include AI video credits, and monthly credits do not roll over. Arcade says more than 37,000 teams use it, with logos such as Atlassian, Zapier, Retool and Carta, so check which product line you actually need before buying both.

Runway is an AI video company founded in New York in 2018 by Cristóbal Valenzuela, Anastasis Germanidis and Alejandro Matamala. It builds its own generative video models and a browser-based creative suite used by filmmakers, advertising agencies, designers and content creators, and it has partnerships with studios such as Lionsgate.

The Gen-4 family generates video from text and images with consistent characters, objects and locations across shots, while References and Act-One give control over style and performance, for example by mapping an actor's expressions onto a character. Aleph edits existing footage with prompts, such as changing angles, lighting or objects in a scene. The suite also includes classic AI tools such as green screen removal, inpainting, motion tracking, upscaling, image generation and audio features. Pricing is credit-based: a free plan with one-time credits and watermarks, and Standard, Pro and Max with growing monthly credits per user.

Runway suits creative professionals who need controllable, production-oriented AI video rather than one-off clips. Credits run out quickly at high quality, results still need iteration and editing, and the cost per finished minute can be significant. Google Veo and OpenAI Sora are strong general video models, Kling and Hailuo are popular for realistic motion at lower prices, Luma Dream Machine and Pika target quick creative clips, and traditional editors remain necessary for the final cut.