AI Video Cost per Minute: Pricing by Model Compared

An AI video model quotes its price in cents per second, but your project is measured in minutes. Between those two units sits a gap that can swing a bill from under two dollars to more than forty for the same sixty seconds of footage. This article does the multiplication model by model, then adds the costs that rate cards leave out: native audio, higher resolutions, and the clips you throw away before one is good enough to keep.

The numbers come from API rate listings last updated in early September 2026, plus reseller listings from earlier in the year for models that have no first-party price. Hosts price the same model differently, so treat every figure as a planning number and confirm it on the provider's page before you commit a budget. Where a model is available on Picasso IA, its name links to its page so you can test it yourself.

Turning Seconds Into Minutes

Every provider sells video by the second of output. The conversion to a minute is simple arithmetic, yet the habits around it are where budgets break.

The Simple Formula

Cost per minute = price per second × 60. A model at $0.05 per second costs $3.00 per minute of generated footage. A model at $0.40 per second costs $24.00. Nothing is hidden in that step, but it is the number you never see on a pricing page, because pages quote a single clip and not a finished video.

Keep this conversion chart next to your own estimates:

Why Clips Multiply the Bill

Most video models generate 5 to 10 seconds per request. Seedance 2.5 is listed with outputs up to 30 seconds, but that is the exception. A finished minute therefore usually means six to twelve separate paid generations, and every one of them is a chance to pay for footage you will never use.

Billing units add another wrinkle. Some providers charge per second of output, some meter tokens that depend on resolution and input length, and others sell credits that convert to dollars at a fixed rate. Per-second pricing is the easiest to forecast. Token pricing can swing wildly between a short low resolution draft and a long 1080p render, so the only safe way to budget is to run a small test and read the actual charge. Credits sit in between: simple to read, but the conversion rate hides what each second really costs until you do the division yourself.

💡 Budget rule: price the footage you keep, not the footage you generate. The gap between the two is often the biggest line on the bill.

Price Per Minute by Model

Below, published per-second rates are multiplied by 60. Every row assumes the standard queue with text or image input, and "with audio" means native synchronized sound.

OpenAI's deprecation schedule set the Sora 2 API removal for September 24, 2026, so read those two rows as a historic benchmark and not as a live API price. The Kling rows come from the Kling 3.0 rate card.

Reading the table takes one caution. First-party rates come straight from the model's maker, while reseller rates are what a hosting platform charges for the same model, and they can sit above or below the original. When two sources disagree, assume the higher number for planning and treat the lower one as a pleasant surprise.

Budget Tier Under $5 per Minute

This is where the cheapest published rates live, and it is crowded.

• Veo 3.1 Lite: $1.80 per minute at 720p without sound, $3.00 with sound, and $4.80 at 1080p with sound. It is the lowest first-party rate in this comparison.
• LTX 2.3 Fast: the LTX 2.3 family is listed around $0.04 per second in price comparisons, roughly $2.40 per minute. Confirm the exact Fast rate before you budget.
• Gen4 Turbo: $3.00 per minute at 5 credits per second.
• Wan 2.6 T2V: around $0.07 per second on reseller listings, so $4.20 per minute at 1080p with audio.

Mid Tier From $5 to $10

Most working creators land here, because the quality jump from the budget tier is real.

• Kling v3 Video: $5.04 per minute at 720p without audio, $7.56 with audio, and $10.08 at 1080p with audio.
• Seedance 2.0 Fast: between $4.56 and $5.40 per minute on reseller listings, sitting right on the line between tiers.
• Hailuo 2.3 and Wan 2.7 T2V: each about $0.10 per second on reseller listings, which is $6.00 per minute.
• Gen 4.5: $7.20 per minute.
• Veo 3.1 Fast with sound: $6.00 per minute at 720p and $7.20 at 1080p.

Premium Tier Above $10

Pay these rates for hero shots, not for every scene.

• Veo 3.1: $12.00 per minute without audio and $24.00 with audio at 720p or 1080p. At 4K it climbs to $24.00 and $36.00.
• Sora 2 Pro: $18.00 per minute at 720p, up to $42.00 at 1080p.
• Seedance 2.0: token-metered, so a single clip can cost anywhere from $0.19 to $9.33 depending on resolution, input length and model variant.

💡 Tip: the spread between the cheapest and the dearest published rate is more than 20 times for the same footage length. Match the tier to the shot, not to the whole project.

Audio and Resolution Change the Math

Two settings quietly decide whether a rate card tells the truth about your bill.

What Native Audio Adds

Sound is not free. On the Google models the same clip costs noticeably more when it ships with dialogue, ambience and effects:

The extra charge is flat on the Lite and Fast tiers, but it doubles the price on the full Veo 3.1 model. Whether audio earns its surcharge depends on the shot. Dialogue, footsteps, rain and crowd noise are tedious to fake afterward, so native sound pays for itself in scenes where the sound is part of the story. For a silent product turntable or a montage that will sit under a music track, you are paying for sound you will mute.

If your video needs a custom voice or a music bed anyway, generating silent footage and adding sound separately can be cheaper. The text to speech and AI music generation categories in the Picasso IA model library are built for exactly that.

720p, 1080p and 4K Surcharges

Resolution is the second multiplier. Here is Veo 3.1 Fast without audio:

The step from 720p to 1080p adds 25 percent. The step to 4K more than doubles the price again. Kling v3 Video shows the same pattern at smaller scale, rising from $0.084 to $0.112 per second between 720p and 1080p without audio.

💡 Tip: draft every scene at 720p and regenerate only the winners at 1080p or 4K. Most viewers watch on a phone, where the difference is small.

The Real Cost of a Finished Minute

Per-second rates assume every clip is a keeper. Nobody works that way.

Retakes Eat the Budget

Suppose a finished minute needs twelve usable 5 second clips, and you keep one generation out of every three. That is 36 generations, or 180 seconds of paid output, for 60 seconds of video. The ratio is a planning assumption, not a measured figure, and yours will move with prompt quality and the model you pick.

A cheap model does not always win. At one keeper in three, Veo 3.1 Lite costs $5.40 per minute against $12.00 for a perfect one pass run on Veo 3.1. But if the cheaper model needs eight tries per keeper, its bill climbs to $14.40 and the premium model is the better deal. The break-even point sits near 6.7 generations per keeper.

Sample Budgets for Three Creators

Here is how the math plays out with the same 1 in 3 assumption:

1. Social creator, 5 finished minutes a month. Veo 3.1 Fast at 720p with audio costs $6.00 per minute, so 5 minutes with retakes comes to about $90 a month.
2. Small agency, 6 finished minutes a month. Kling v3 Video at 1080p with audio costs $10.08 per minute, so six minutes with retakes lands near $181 a month.
3. Studio polishing one hero ad. One minute on Veo 3.1 at 4K with audio costs $36.00, and a tougher 1 in 4 keeper ratio pushes the total to $144 for a single minute.

These totals shrink when drafting moves to a free model. If free drafts replace two of every three paid attempts, the social creator's bill falls from about $90 to roughly $30 a month, because only the approved shot is rendered on the paid model. The exact saving depends on how well a free draft predicts the paid result, but the direction holds.

Free and Unlimited Options on Picasso IA

Two of the models in the Picasso IA catalog are listed as free and unlimited: PicassoIA Video, which generates video from text or an image, and Seedance 2.5 Lite, which produces clips up to 10 seconds. With no per-second meter running, the retake multiplier stops mattering for the drafting stage. Check the current plan terms on the site before you build a budget around that.

The catalog also carries the paid names from this article, including Veo 3.1 Lite, Kling v3 Video, Seedance 2.0, Wan 2.7 T2V and LTX 2.3 Fast. You can run the same prompt through several of them and compare results before deciding where real money is worth spending.

Where Free Models Make Sense

• Storyboards and animatics: lock the shot list before any paid render.
• Prompt testing: try ten phrasings of a scene without a bill.
• Social clips: short vertical loops rarely need 4K.
• Client previews: show motion and mood, then upgrade the approved shots.

How to Use Seedance 2.5 Lite

Because Seedance 2.5 Lite is the cheapest way to draft, it is a good place to practice the workflow that keeps paid models affordable.

1. Open the Seedance 2.5 Lite page on Picasso IA.
2. Write your prompt in the text field. Attach a reference still if the page offers an image input.
3. Choose the shortest duration for your first test.
4. Submit the job and wait for the preview.
5. Review the clip, adjust one detail in the prompt, and run it again.
6. Download the winner, then extend only the shots you plan to use.

Write Prompts That Avoid Retakes

Vague prompts are the biggest cause of discarded clips. Use this order: subject and action, camera movement, lighting, sound cues. One main action per clip keeps motion clean.

A fisherman pulls a rope hand over hand on a wooden dock at dawn, slow dolly-in from the side, soft golden light with light mist, gentle water lapping and gulls in the distance.

The usual reasons a clip gets thrown away are easy to avoid once you know them:

• Two actions fighting in one clip, such as a walk, a turn and a wave.
• Camera instructions that contradict each other, like a static shot with a fast orbit.
• Lighting left unspecified, so the model changes it halfway through.
• Crowded scenes with many faces or hands, where small errors multiply.

Test Short, Then Go Long

Draft at the lowest duration and resolution, confirm that framing and motion are right, then rerun the approved prompt at full length. A bad idea costs seconds, not minutes.

Picking a Model by Budget

Quick Picks by Use Case

Rules That Keep Costs Down

• Draft at 720p and upgrade only the approved shots.
• Add audio only when the model's sound is good enough to ship.
• Track your keeper ratio for a week. It is the most useful number in your budget.
• Compare two models on the same prompt before you commit a long project to one.
• Keep a log of prompt, model, setting and charge for every paid render.
• Re-check rate cards each quarter, because providers revise them often.

Try It on Picasso IA

Rate cards only tell you so much. The fastest way to find your own cost per minute is to generate something. Open Picasso IA, create a few photorealistic stills for your next project, then animate the best one with a free model and see how many tries it takes. Swap in a paid model only where the free draft proves the idea.

Pick a scene, write one clear prompt, and run it today. Your first test costs nothing, and it shows you exactly where your own budget will land.