# Pika API vs Runway API

> Runway API has a score of 61.1 (C) against Pika API's 47.8 (D). Both do video generate. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 42 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pika-vs-runway
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pika-vs-runway.md (~1,450 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pika-vs-runway.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pika-vs-runway.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

Runway API has a score of 61.1 (C) against Pika API's 47.8 (D). Both do video generate. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 42 points.

- Pika API: grade D, 47.8/100, rank #382 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pika.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pika.json
- Runway API: grade C, 61.1/100, rank #232 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/runway.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/runway.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Pika API for agent ergonomics (+5).

Pick Runway API for reliability (+40), schema & documentation (+10), security & auth (+18), maintenance & community (+42), transparency & trust (+8).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Pika API | Runway API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 75 | Runway API +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 93 | Runway API +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 75 | Pika API +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 33 | 51 | Runway API +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 20 | 62 | Runway API +42 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 49 | 57 | Runway API +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **47.8 · D** | **61.1 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Pika API | Runway API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Pika (Mellis, Inc.) | Runway |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.dev.pika.art` | `https://api.dev.runwayml.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Apache-2.0 (SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | none | 20 stars, 56k npm/wk, 67k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 4/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Pika API.** Keyless catalogue with live prices and JSON input schemas for 162 operations. $10 a month membership before any usage, and no free generation.

**Runway API.** OpenAPI 3.1, llms.txt and Markdown copies of every docs page. Gen-3 Alpha Turbo and Gen-4 Aleph were removed on 2026-07-30 with no prior notice in the changelog.

## Before you call either

### Pika API

1. Call `GET /catalog/apis/{api_id}?expand=inputs` first. It's free and returns the path, schema and price
2. Check GET /billing/balance before a submit. A 403 can mean an inactive key or an empty balance
3. Send an Idempotency-Key on every submit, and a fresh one only when you change the body
4. Record cost from `billing.charge_micro_usd` only once `billing.state` is settled

### Runway API

1. Send `X-Runway-Version: 2024-11-06` on every request or it fails
2. Use the SDK's wait-for-output helper or poll GET /v1/tasks/{id} until SUCCEEDED or FAILED
3. Don't retry a SAFETY.* failure unchanged. It's moderation, not an outage
4. Take model IDs from the models page, not memory. Two were removed without notice on 2026-07-30
5. Copy outputs to your own storage. URLs expire within 24 to 48 hours

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