Pencil alternatives for Meta ads: 7 tools compared

• Deepsolv is the best pencil alternative for Meta advertisers. It ranks weekly creative tests with reasons, writes execution-ready creative briefs (the instructions a designer or creator follows to make an ad) and keeps the history of why tests won or lost.
• A 15-second Pencil video costs $1.65 to $13.20 on the Growth plan at two named model rates. Reading one concept's result can cost $2,000 in media in our model, so the test slot is the scarce item.
• Score each concept on five questions before you test it. Fund only as many concepts as your weekly budget covers.
• Deepsolv keeps the reasons past tests won or lost, so weekly plans do not repeat failed angles.

Making an ad costs dollars. Testing it costs thousands. Pencil's pricing page lists Core at $14 a month for 50 generations and Growth at $55 for 250, as of November 2026. That works out to $0.28 and $0.22 per generation.

Pencil's credit help page prices video per second by model, for example 0.5 credits per second on Runway Gen-4 Turbo and 4.0 on Google Veo 3.1. A 15-second clip is therefore 7.5 to 60 credits. At the monthly rates that is $2.10 to $16.80 on Core and $1.65 to $13.20 on Growth. This is our arithmetic. The 60-credit clip also exceeds Core's 50 monthly generations. Our Pencil pricing comparison covers the full credit table.

Now price the test. Our model assumes you need 50 purchases per concept to read a result and pay a $40 cost per acquisition (CPA, the spend per purchase). That is $2,000 per concept, or $8,000 for four. Four 15-second videos at the 4.0-credit Veo rate cost $52.80 on Growth. Media spend is roughly 150 times production cost. Swap in your own purchase count and CPA, because the right count depends on your account.

In our view, a generator's output is a variant, not a reason to test it. A long-running competitor ad is a hypothesis, not proof of profit. Our generation versus testing comparison explains why generation follows the decision.

Score each concept from 0 to 2 on five questions, then test only the concepts you can fund. This is our recommendation, and the cut-offs are our judgment, not an industry standard.

A total of 8 to 10 means test now. A total of 5 to 7 means rewrite or wait. A total of 0 to 4 means drop it. Write each concept as a testable statement first; our A/B test hypothesis template gives the format.

To size the cycle, use concepts = weekly test budget ÷ (purchases needed × CPA), rounded down. With $5,000 a week, 50 purchases and a $40 CPA, you fund two concepts (2.5 rounded down).

We run this ranking weekly for our customers, using their ad results, competitor ads and customer signals.

Pencil is the tool being replaced, so it sits in the last row. Prices are US dollars as of November 2026.

Across these seven priced pages, the three generators (Creatify, AdCreative.ai and Pencil) start at $10 to $39 a month. The research, brief and analytics tools (Foreplay, Atria and Motion) start at $59 to $999. Bases differ: Creatify's $10 is billed annually. Many entry plans are also volume-capped.