AI video cost FAQ

For one attempt with no retries, verified examples: Veo 3.1 Lite 720p API $3.00/min ($0.05/sec), Veo Fast $6.00/min, Veo Standard $24.00/min, Seedance 2.0 720p API about $9.12/min ($0.76/5s), MiniMax H3 768P $4.80/min, Runway Gen-4.5 about $13.82/min on Standard annual credits, Pika Wan 3.0 720p about $3.52/min on Starter annual credits (no commercial licence on that tier). With 2 retries, roughly triple those numbers. Your usable-clip cost = rate × length × (1 + retries).

By verified per-second sticker: Veo 3.1 Lite ($0.05/sec), Seedance 2.0 480p ($0.07/sec) and MiniMax H3 ($0.08/sec) APIs, and Hedra Character-3 for talking avatars (from $0.025/sec at 540p). By subscription credits, Pika Wan and Luma buckets can be cheap — but check commercial rights, watermark and credit expiry first; the cheapest tier is often not licensed for commercial use.

Kling membership plans listed 660 (Standard), 3,000 (Pro), 8,000 (Premier) and 26,000 (Ultra) credits/month on the official membership page. Official point policy: membership credits expire 1 month after distribution; purchased credits last 2 years; standard purchase pricing listed as $1 = 66 credits. Per-generation credit cost was not verifiable on official public pages on Oct 16, 2026, so ClipCost marks Kling “check official pricing” instead of inventing a per-clip dollar cost — Kling shows the cost in-product before you generate.

Runway is calculable today: Gen-4.5 is 12 credits/sec, so one 30s try is $6.91 in Standard-annual credits (360 credits) and the effective cost with 2 retries is $20.74 at that credit rate (1,080 credits). Caveat: Standard only includes 625 credits/mo — about one 30s try, not the full 1,080 — so you would need a top-up (min. 1,000 credits for $10 at $0.01/credit, never expire) or a bigger plan; on monthly billing ($15/625 credits) the same maths is $8.64 single-try / $25.92 with 2 retries. Gen-4.5 also only generates 2–10s at a time, so a 30s finished video is stitched from multiple generations. Kling cannot be honestly dollar-compared until its per-generation credit cost is confirmed in your account — anyone publishing an exact Kling per-video price without that caveat is using an estimate or third-party data. See the comparison page.

Hands, text, faces, motion and prompt adherence fail often. Planning for 1–3 retries per usable clip is normal for client work; hobby clips may need fewer. That is why ClipCost prices the usable finished video, not the first generation.

Often, yes: Runway Standard/Pro monthly credits reset, Kling membership credits expire after 1 month, Pika plan credits refresh monthly, Luma monthly credits do not roll over. Purchased/top-up credits often last longer (Runway purchased credits never expire; Kling purchased credits 2 years; Luma top-ups 12 months). Each tool page lists the verified trap for that tool.