Pika Labs Review: Pika 2.5 Video, Credits, Prices and the Bad Reviews

Pika, also known as Pika Labs, is an AI video generator at pika.art. It started in 2023 as a Discord bot. Since then it has grown into a web app, a mobile app, an API club and an agent. Its pitch is playful. Squish a skyscraper, put your cat in the Grand Canyon, or star in a viral trend from one selfie. The model behind it is Pika 2.5.

What does Pika do?

The core is text-to-video and image-to-video. You type a prompt or upload a still. Pika 2.5 returns a five or ten second clip at 480p, 720p or 1080p. Pikaframes stretches that to 25 seconds by animating between keyframes you set.

Most of the product is a set of named tricks on top of that model. Pikascenes builds a scene from several reference images. Pikadditions drops a person or object into an existing video. Pikaswaps replaces an element in a video with something from a photo or prompt. Pikatwists rewrites what happens in a clip. Pikaffects are one-tap effects that melt, squish, inflate or "cake-ify" whatever is in a photo. Pikaformance drives a face with an audio track. AI Trendmaker puts your selfie into a trending video with a sound.

In 2026 the company widened out. Pika Agent is a chat partner that can call every model Pika has. Pika MCP lets other agents, such as Claude or ChatGPT, use Pika's tools. The Pika API Club is a $10 a month membership. It sells access to more than 100 third-party media models. Pika says its prices are up to 88 percent below other aggregators. In August 2026 it shipped its own audio models: Soundtrack, Music, SFX and Speech.

There is an iOS app called Pika - AI Video, and the web app runs in any browser. Sign in works with Google, Facebook, Discord or email.

Which features stand out?

• Pikaffects — one-tap physics effects that made Pika famous on TikTok and still have no equal for speed.
• Pikaswaps and Pikadditions — swap or insert real objects into footage from a photo, which is closer to VFX than to generation.
• Pikaframes — keyframe control up to 25 seconds, longer than most rivals' single generations.
• Pika Agent and MCP — a conversational front end and a connector so other agents can generate with Pika.
• API Club — one API and one membership for Seedance, MiniMax, Nano Banana, ElevenLabs and Pika's own models.
• Weekly billing — the pricing page offers weekly, monthly and yearly terms, which is rare and handy for one project.

How much does Pika cost?

Four plans, all priced per month and billed yearly. The page's toggle says monthly billing costs 20 percent more, and there is a weekly option too.