How much does an AI micro-drama cost? AI video cost calculator

In short. A one-minute micro-drama episode costs from $16 on budget settings to $346 in Full HD. I paid Kling $337 across three payments and got two minutes of video out of it — how that happened and what to do instead.

The math

• Seedance 2.5
• 720p
• with sound
• ×2.5 generated per second kept

1. 24 × 60 sfinished video
2. ÷

   80%kept from each clip
3. ×

   ×2rerolls
4. =

   3,600 sgenerated240 clips × 15 s
5. ×

   $0.231per generated secondMaker's API
6. +

   $28.94besides videoCharacter sheets · Location sheets

=

$861for 24 micro-drama episodes$35.87 per 1 min episode

Open in calculator(opens in a new tab)

Price your own project in the AI video cost calculator: an episode, a season or a film — video, character and location reference sheets, storyboard and voice. Pick a ready-made project and change the settings; the total updates as you go. Share sends a link that opens exactly this estimate. Export saves a finished AI video budget as a PDF — for an ad client or your boss.

How the calculator works#

Video models charge for every second they generate. And at first you will generate anything but the perfect seconds of a perfect episode: every good scene takes 3–4 attempts. So a finished minute takes not one minute of generation but five, or even ten. That is why the micro-drama cost calculator starts from how much has to be generated, not from how long the finished video runs:

generated seconds=finished secondsshare of each clip that makes the edit×rerolls

generated seconds = finished seconds ÷ share of each clip that makes the edit × rerolls

The calculator rounds the result up to whole clips, because a model always generates the whole clip. An example: a 60-second episode. Of each 15-second clip, 80% survives the edit once failed frames and extra length are trimmed. And half the seconds have to be generated again — sometimes the whole clip, sometimes just the failed shot, because the prompt came out wrong the first time and the model gave you something completely different from what you had in your head:

The math

• Seedance 2.0
• 720p
• with sound
• ×2.5 generated per second kept

1. 60 sfinished video
2. ÷

   80%kept from each clip
3. ×

   ×2rerolls
4. =

   150 sgenerated10 clips × 15 s
5. ×

   $0.15per generated secondMaker's API

=

$22.50per episode$22.50 per minute on screen

Open in calculator(opens in a new tab)

What moves the price most: from $0.06 to $0.42 a second#

• Model and quality. The same second on Seedance 2.5 costs $0.23 at 720p and $0.57 at 1080p. A micro-drama on Seedance 2.5 already looks good at 480p, and on a phone screen it is practically indistinguishable from 720p on the same model. 1080p, 2K and 4K (Kling 3.0 only, $0.42 a second) make sense for a YouTube film, because it will be watched on the big screen of a computer or a TV.

• Where you buy it. The same model costs differently at its maker and at resellers. Seedance 2.5 at 720p: $0.23 a second on BytePlus, $0.32 on kie.ai, $0.47 on fal. Kling 3.0 at 720p without sound: $0.084 at Kling, $0.07 on kie.ai. The calculator lists only the providers where we found a price for that model.

From my experience. I looked at Higgsfield and the TopView drama studio. Once I converted their tokens into real seconds, a mid-tier package bought very little: Higgsfield Plus at $59 (1,200 credits) is 600 seconds of Kling 3.0 at 720p, two one-minute episodes on "Normal", and TopView Ultra at $150 (500 credits) is about 420 seconds of Seedance 2.5 at 720p, less than an episode and a half. The markup pays for the interface. Fine for a one-off bit of fun, expensive for 2–4 episodes a week. So I studied their features and generation process and moved them into my own work with Claude. I'll describe exactly how, with prompts, in a separate article.

• How much of each clip you keep. If 12 seconds of a 15-second clip survive, that is 80%. The less experience you have and the more of a perfectionist you are, the fewer generated scenes you will like. If half a clip or less makes the edit, and on top of that you reroll until it is perfect, the video comes out 3–5 times more expensive: instead of $100 you pay $300–500. Remember that when you think of perfectionism as a virtue: you pay for it in real money. So always reread the video prompt an AI wrote for you, and keep the shot prompts that worked in your own "library" or a Claude Skill. The savings in money, time and nerves are huge. Nerves especially: even Claude, after a run of good video prompts, likes to invent a new technical description of the shots for a similar script and drive you up the wall, because you asked it to repeat the shots that worked, not to invent something new and crooked. That is ×1.5–2 on the budget: $300 a month on AI video instead of $150. So think twice before asking Claude for video prompts from scratch every time.
• Rerolls. A shot where the AI actor's face suddenly changed (the character lost consistency), the movement came out unnatural or the action was wrong has to be generated again: as a whole clip, or just that shot — from 3 s on Kling and from 4 s on Seedance. ×1.5 means that on average you generate half the seconds again; ×3, every second three times, and the video costs three times as much. In the AI video cost calculator both settings are one choice, "How picky are you?": Quick drafts (80%, ×1.5), Normal (60%, ×3) or Perfectionist (50%, ×5). The exact values are under Advanced settings.
• Clip length. Seedance 2.5 and Wan 3.0 Prime generate clips of up to 30 seconds, Kling and MiniMax up to 15, Runway Gen-4.5 up to 10.

From my experience. I took my first subscription on the Kling platform, so I simply had no access to other models. Later, on another service, I only tried the top versions of Seedance. I heard about MiniMax H3 only three months in. Yet it is among the cheapest per second, and it voices the dialogue itself, in English and ten other official languages. It is a big mistake to think a less famous model is at the level of 2023's "Will Smith eating spaghetti". Before you pay, make the same test shot on 3–4 models.

The table above shows what a second costs on each model.

Subscription or pay as you go: a plan from $9 a month or a top-up from $5#

In "Subscription" mode you pick a platform: a studio with many models (Higgsfield, TopView, Artlist) or a maker's own app, which covers only its own model (Kling, BytePlus for Seedance 2.5, Hailuo for MiniMax, Runway for Gen-4.5).

You pay for the whole plan, and unused credits expire; a BytePlus pack lasts 3 months.

So pay as you go is often cheaper for a small project: one episode on Seedance 2.0 at 720p (native audio, 4 characters) costs about $93.20 through the API and about $119 on Higgsfield Ultra:

The math

• Seedance 2.0
• 720p
• with sound
• ×10 generated per second kept

1. 60 sfinished video
2. ÷

   50%kept from each clip
3. ×

   ×5rerolls
4. =

   600 sgenerated40 clips × 15 s
5. ×

   $0.194per generated secondSubscription · Higgsfield
6. +

   $3.22besides videoCharacter sheets

=

$119per episode$119 per minute on screen

Open in calculator(opens in a new tab)

A season turns it around: 24 episodes on Kling 3.0 cost about $910 through the API and about $623 in Kling Ultra+ credits. But only if you spend every credit.

How a subscription eats a beginner's money — the four traps I fell into, with my invoices — is in AI micro-drama from scratch: the mistakes that cost me $337.

Characters, storyboard and voice: an AI actor from $1, a storyboard from $2, voice for free#

• Character references. Characters × generations each. It usually takes 6–10 generations before you are happy with your AI actor's face, figure and clothes: $0.80–1.34 per AI actor on Nano Banana Pro. Eight characters at 15 generations is 120 images, about $16. 1K and 2K cost the same on Nano Banana Pro, $0.134 an image; only 4K costs more.
• Location references. The same: 24 locations at 4 generations is 96 images, about $13.
• Storyboard keyframes. Only for the image-first workflow: a keyframe for each shot, then image-to-video. A micro-drama cuts every 0.7–1.5 s, a film every 2–3 s. A minute of micro-drama is 40–60 frames, from $2 on Nano Banana 2. With multishot generation you need no keyframes, and this line of the budget disappears.
• Voice. Dialogue the video model generates itself (Seedance from lines in a multishot prompt, MiniMax, Kling with sound) is already in the video price, so it is free. A separate voice on ElevenLabs is billed by characters: about 15 characters per second of speech, plus retakes. A minute of micro-drama is 90–95% dialogue, about 1,250 characters, or 13 cents. A minute of film is about 75% dialogue, 10 cents.

Why a beginner does not need a storyboard, and how much time it eats compared with multishot, is in AI micro-drama from scratch.

Example budgets: from $1.60 for a teaser to $4,450 for a film#

Prices are before VAT or sales tax. The "Subscription" column is the cheapest platform for each project, if you spend every credit.

FAQ#

Why do I pay for seconds I will not use?#

Because the model spends its resources the moment it generates, and it will not refund you just because you are a perfectionist and are approving for the edit a clip you have rerolled for the 20th time. An automatic refund happens only when the API fails, when a server error meant the generation never actually started.

Which model is cheapest?#

Per second, Wan 3.0 Prime at 480p ($0.061 on kie.ai), MiniMax H3 at 768p ($0.06 on fal) and Kling 3.0 at 720p without sound ($0.07 on kie.ai). The list "The same project on other models" prices your whole project on each model, with your settings.

Which subscription should a beginner buy?#

None, until you have made 3–5 episodes: pay through an API you top up. After that, the smallest plan that fits your real monthly pace. The calculator shows how many episodes a month each plan makes ("Monthly budget" → "My plan"). Why — in AI micro-drama from scratch: the mistakes that cost me $337.

Does the calculator send my data anywhere?#

Only when you download a PDF or ask the AI. Everything is calculated in your browser and the settings live only in the page address; the CSV is written in your browser too. The PDF is drawn on our server from the same settings and the title you typed. A question in the "Ask AI" box goes to Claude (Anthropic) only to answer it: the numbers still come from this calculator, and we keep the question and the reply for 30 days to improve the answers, with nothing that says who asked; email addresses and phone numbers are masked. We count visits and which settings are used, without cookies and never with anything you typed.

Can I hand the budget to a client?#

Yes. Export in the total bar downloads a PDF: a summary page with the total and the key facts, then every line item with its arithmetic, other models, ways to save, the assumptions and the price sources, with a QR code that opens this exact estimate. Add a project title and who it is for before you download. CSV gives the same figures as a spreadsheet, and Copy as text a short summary for a chat or an email.

Can ChatGPT or Claude work out a budget with this calculator?#

Yes. The calculator also works as a URL: /api/budget with parameters such as preset, episodes or videoModelId returns the result and a link that opens the same estimate here. The description for assistants is in llms.txt.

Price sources#

As of October 16, 2026. Where a vendor does not publish a per-second price, we use trackers that convert its price list. Kling's plans were checked on Kling's page on October 20, 2026; my payments are from my Kling payment history.

• Seedance 2.5: ArgoLink, kie.ai, CellCog, packs: BytePlus
• Seedance 2.0: framesurfer, anikuku, fal
• Kling 3.0: chinamodelapi, vidirect, RenderCents, plans: Kling
• MiniMax H3: ArgoLink, plans: aimiracle
• Wan 3.0 Prime: Alibaba Cloud, kie.ai, fal
• Runway Gen-4.5: Treza Labs, Camclo3D
• Platforms: Higgsfield, TopView, Artlist
• kie.ai top-ups and terms: Terms of Use, Refund Policy
• Images: ecorpit, OpenRouter, aifreeapi, CometAPI
• Voice: Vapi, techjacksolutions, plans: smallest.ai