What 3D Software Actually Costs in 2026: Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Cinema 4D and Blender
Overview
Introduction
If you are budgeting for 3D work in 2026, the software licence is the first line on the sheet and the render is the second. This guide covers the first line. It lists what Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Cinema 4D (via Maxon One) and Blender cost, using figures read from each vendor's own public page on 6 October 2026.
The short version: Blender is free. Maya and 3ds Max both list at $2,010 for one year on Autodesk's buy pages. Houdini runs from a free non-commercial tier to $3,505 a year for FX on SideFX's buy page. Cinema 4D is part of Maxon One; this page lists only the Maxon One price, €1,425.57 (may include local VAT) per licence per year as read on 6 October 2026, and we did not read a Cinema 4D-only price.
Three of these packages already have their own detailed guides. This page is the overview: one short summary for each, a link to the full guide, and the part those guides leave to one side, which is how the cost of rendering behaves next to the cost of a seat.
The Prices at a Glance
All figures below were read with no sign-in and nothing purchased. Prices are the list prices shown on each vendor's page on 6 October 2026; local taxes may apply. Autodesk and SideFX prices are in US dollars. Maxon showed its price in euros, chosen by the page for the visitor's location; we did not convert it, and it may include local VAT.
| Software | Plan and term | List price (as of 6 October 2026) | Vendor page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blender | Any version | Free, released under the GPL | blender.org/about/license |
| Houdini Apprentice | Non-commercial use | Free | sidefx.com/products/houdini-apprentice |
| Houdini Indie | 1 year / 2 years | $299 / $449 | sidefx.com/products/houdini-indie |
| Houdini Core | 1-year rental, workstation | $1,475, includes 5 Karma licences | sidefx.com/buy |
| Houdini FX | 1-year rental | $3,505, includes 5 Karma licences | sidefx.com/buy |
| Maya | Annual | $2,010 per year ($168 per month, billed annually) | autodesk.com/products/maya/buy |
| Maya | Monthly | $255 per month | autodesk.com/products/maya/buy |
| Maya | 3-year term | $6,025 for one user | autodesk.com/products/maya/buy |
| Maya | Flex tokens | $99 for a minimum of 33 tokens; 6 tokens per day of use | autodesk.com/products/maya/buy |
| 3ds Max | Annual, monthly, three-year term and Flex, same prices as Maya | $2,010 / $255 / $6,025 / $99 for 33 tokens | autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/buy |
| Maxon One (includes Cinema 4D) | 1 year, per licence | €1,425.57 (may include local VAT) per year | maxon.net/en/maxon-one |
Two cautions before comparing rows. First, they are not like for like: Houdini Indie and the Apprentice tier carry usage limits, and Maxon One is a bundle rather than a single application. Second, prices differ by country and change over time, so treat the table as a dated snapshot and confirm on the vendor page before you buy.
Maya
Autodesk's buy page offers Maya as an annual subscription, a monthly subscription, a three-year term and Flex tokens that bill by the day you open the application. As of 6 October 2026 the annual plan is $2,010 a year, shown on the page as $168 a month billed annually. The monthly plan is $255 a month, and a three-year term is $6,025 for one user. Flex starts at $99 for 33 tokens, and Maya draws 6 tokens on each day it is used.
The three-year price is worth a second look. Divided by three it is about $2,008 a year, almost exactly the one-year rate, so the longer term earns no meaningful discount (our arithmetic from the figures above).
Our Maya cost guide goes further than this summary: it works out when pay-by-the-day Flex stops beating a year-long seat, explains who qualifies for Maya Indie, and adds the workstation cost that the licence price leaves out.
3ds Max
Autodesk's 3ds Max buy page showed exactly the same prices as the Maya page on 6 October 2026: $2,010 a year, $255 a month, $6,025 for three years, and Flex at $99 for 33 tokens with 6 tokens a day. If you are choosing between the two on licence cost alone, there is nothing to choose between.
The annual figure has one detail that applies to both products. Autodesk's buy page shows $168 per month billed annually next to $2,010 per year, and twelve times $168 is $2,016. The page states $2,010 as the annual total, so that is the figure we use.
Our 3ds Max licensing guide covers what this overview does not: whether a multi-year term is worth committing to, what a studio pays once it runs several seats, and the question of perpetual licences that older studios still ask about.
Houdini
Houdini is the one package here with a real ladder of tiers, and the gap between the bottom and the top is large. As of 6 October 2026, SideFX's pages show:
- Apprentice: free, for non-commercial projects. Renders are limited to 1920x1080, and the tier does not work with third-party renderers.
- Indie: $299 for one year or $449 for two years. SideFX's terms set a ceiling of $100K USD in annual gross revenue and a maximum of three Indie licences, among other conditions, including a funding limit and a no-shared-pipeline rule with commercial Houdini.
- Core: $1,475 for a one-year workstation rental, with five Karma licences included.
- FX: $3,505 for a one-year rental, also with five Karma licences included.
Two add-ons show up on the same buy page. An extra Karma licence is $195 for a one-year rental, and Houdini Engine, which brings Houdini assets into other applications such as Maya and 3ds Max, is $525 for a one-year rental. Houdini Engine for Unreal and Unity is listed as free (the buy button only becomes active once a commercial licence is purchased, per SideFX's page). SideFX also sells an Education licence to validated students; we did not read a price for it, so none is given here.
Our Houdini cost guide explains what the $2,030 step from Core to FX actually buys and who needs which tier.
Cinema 4D and Maxon One
Cinema 4D is the one application in this overview without its own cost guide, so it gets a fuller treatment here. Maxon One is a bundle that includes it, and we did not read a Cinema 4D-only price. Maxon's Maxon One page lists Cinema 4D together with ZBrush, Redshift, Red Giant, Universe and Autograph, plus the Maxon Capsules asset library, Cineversity training and five Team Render nodes.
On 6 October 2026 that page showed €1,425.57 (may include local VAT) per year for each licence. Two limits on that number are worth stating plainly. The page picked euros on its own, and we did not read a dollar price, so any conversion would be a guess. And we did not read a reliable monthly price, so we leave monthly pricing out rather than estimate it.
What the bundle changes is the shape of the comparison. Redshift, Maxon's renderer, is part of the Maxon One list, so a Maxon One seat comes with a production renderer in the same licence. Maxon also runs education licences for classrooms, students and teachers, and states that they may not be used for commercial, professional or other profit-making purposes.
For the rendering side of Cinema 4D, our Cinema 4D cloud render farm page describes how jobs run on our nodes.
Blender and the Free Tiers
Blender is released under the GPL, and its licence page describes it as free to use, change, share and sell your work with. For a budget, that makes the software line zero.
Free tiers elsewhere come with conditions. Houdini Apprentice is for non-commercial projects only and has the render limits listed above. Education licences are a separate case: SideFX sells one to validated students, and Maxon's are limited to non-commercial use; we did not read a price for either. If you earn money from the work, check which tier you actually qualify for, because the rule that matters is usage, not price.
A free application does not mean a free render. Blender scenes still take machine time, and that time is the next section.
The Cost That Sits Next to the Licence
A subscription licence (Flex aside) is priced per seat and per term. You pay the same amount whether you render one frame that year or one hundred thousand. The machine time to render works the other way round: it grows with three things you control, which are the number of frames, the time each frame takes, and the rate for the hardware, and on a render farm it is priced per job.
Here is the arithmetic as an illustration, not a benchmark. A 300-frame animation at 20 minutes a frame is 6,000 minutes, or 100 hours of rendering on one machine. A render farm splits those frames across many machines, so the elapsed time drops while the machine hours stay roughly the same. A longer or heavier project raises that total, and a lighter one lowers it, regardless of which application's licence you hold.
At Super Renders Farm, CPU jobs are billed per GHz-hour and GPU jobs per OctaneBench-hour. The CPU rate depends on the priority level you choose, so there is no single rate to quote, and the pricing page lists the current ones. Larger credit top-ups carry an automatic volume discount of up to 30%, and render credits do not expire. Render-engine licences for V-Ray, Corona, Redshift, Arnold and Octane are included in the per-unit rate.
GPU jobs run on nodes with NVIDIA RTX 5090 cards, 32 GB of VRAM each. CPU jobs run on a fleet of 20,000+ cores. To turn a test frame into an estimate for your own project, the cost calculator takes your inputs, and our cost-per-frame guide walks through the same maths by hand.
What a Small Team Pays: The Licence Line Times Five
Licence prices scale with the number of seats, so a team's licence line grows faster than a freelancer's. The table below is simple arithmetic on the list prices above, multiplied by five, as of 6 October 2026. It is not a quote: volume, reseller and team terms may differ, and we did not measure them. Maxon's pages place five or more licences on its Teams plan (its individual plans cover one to four licences), and we did not read a Teams price, so the five-seat Maxon One figure is plain arithmetic on the single-licence price, not a Maxon price.
| Package | List price per seat per year | Five seats, list price |
|---|---|---|
| Maya or 3ds Max, annual | $2,010 | $10,050 |
| Houdini Core | $1,475 | $7,375 |
| Houdini FX | $3,505 | $17,525 |
| Maxon One (includes Cinema 4D) | €1,425.57 (may include local VAT) | €7,127.85 (arithmetic only, may include local VAT) |
| Blender | Free | Free |
The table also shows why the licence is rarely the whole decision. A studio with a five-seat annual Maya subscription and a studio on Blender have very different licence lines, but both face the same render maths once the frames are queued.
How to Read Your Own Budget
Four questions move the total more than the headline prices do:
- Is the work commercial? Houdini Apprentice is limited to non-commercial projects, and education licences exist as a separate route; check the terms of each before using either on paid work.
- Where do you sit against the Indie limits? Houdini Indie sets a $100K USD revenue ceiling and a cap of three licences, among other conditions, including a funding limit of $1,000,000 USD over the last 24 months and no use in the same pipeline as commercial Houdini. The licence is only an option while you are inside them.
- How many seats, and for how long? Per-seat list prices multiply, and the term you pick (monthly, annual, three-year) changes what you commit to.
- What will rendering cost? Time one representative frame, multiply by your frame count, and price that separately from the licence.
For the first three, the detailed guides linked above carry the vendor-specific rules. For the fourth, the pricing page and the cost calculator are the places to start.
Summary
| Question | Short answer (as of 6 October 2026) |
|---|---|
| What is the free option? | Blender, under the GPL, and Houdini Apprentice for non-commercial work. Education licences are a separate case: SideFX sells an Education licence to validated students, and for Maxon's education licences we read no price, so we make no claim either way. |
| What do Maya and 3ds Max cost? | The same: $2,010 a year, $255 a month, $6,025 for three years |
| What does Houdini cost? | $299 Indie, $1,475 Core, $3,505 FX for one year; Apprentice is free |
| What does Cinema 4D cost? | As part of Maxon One, €1,425.57 (may include local VAT) per licence per year; a Cinema 4D-only price was not read |
| Is rendering included? | A licence can bundle a render engine (for example Houdini Core and FX include Karma licences, and Maxon One lists Redshift), but the machine time to render is a separate cost that depends on frames, time per frame and rate |
FAQ
Q: How much does 3D software cost in 2026? A: It ranges from free to a few thousand dollars per seat per year. As of 6 October 2026, Blender is free, Houdini Indie is $299 a year, Houdini Core is $1,475, Houdini FX is $3,505, Maya and 3ds Max are each $2,010 a year on Autodesk's annual plan, and Maxon One, which includes Cinema 4D, is €1,425.57 (may include local VAT) per licence per year (a Cinema 4D-only price was not read).
Q: Which 3D software is free? A: Blender is free and released under the GPL, including for commercial work. Houdini Apprentice is also free but only for non-commercial projects, with renders limited to 1920x1080 and no support for third-party renderers. Education licences are a separate case: SideFX sells an Education licence to validated students, and for Maxon's education licences we read no price, so we make no claim either way.
Q: Is Maya more expensive than 3ds Max? A: Not on list price. As of 6 October 2026, Autodesk's buy pages show the same figures for both: $2,010 a year, $255 a month, $6,025 for a three-year term, and Flex tokens at $99 for a minimum of 33 with 6 tokens drawn per day of use.
Q: How much do Houdini Indie, Core and FX cost? A: As of 6 October 2026, Indie is $299 for one year or $449 for two years, Core is $1,475 for a one-year workstation rental, and FX is $3,505 for a one-year rental. Core and FX each include five Karma licences. Indie requires annual gross revenue to not exceed $100K USD and allows a maximum of three licences. Indie also requires funding under $1,000,000 USD in the last 24 months and cannot be used in the same pipeline as commercial Houdini.
Q: How much does Cinema 4D cost? A: Cinema 4D is included in the Maxon One bundle. On 6 October 2026, Maxon's page listed €1,425.57 (may include local VAT) per licence per year for a bundle that also includes Redshift, ZBrush and Red Giant. Maxon's page chose euros for the location it was read from, and we did not read a dollar price, so we do not give one. We did not read a Cinema 4D-only price, so the euro figure above is the Maxon One bundle.
Q: Do render costs come on top of the software licence? A: Machine time to render is a separate cost, even though some licences bundle a render engine (for example Houdini Core and FX include Karma licences; Maxon One lists Redshift). It grows with the number of frames, the time each frame takes and the hardware rate, and on a render farm it is priced per job. At Super Renders Farm, render-engine licences for V-Ray, Corona, Redshift, Arnold and Octane are included in the per-unit rate. The pricing page and the cost calculator show how a job is priced.
Q: Are these prices the same in every country? A: No. The figures here are the list prices shown on each vendor's page on 6 October 2026: Autodesk and SideFX in US dollars, and Maxon in euros, chosen by the page for the visitor's location, which may include local VAT. Taxes, local stores and currency choices vary by country, and vendors change prices, so confirm the current figure on the vendor's own page before you buy.
About Thierry Marc
3D Rendering Expert with over 10 years of experience in the industry. Specialized in Maya, Arnold, and high-end technical workflows for film and advertising.
