Credits vs Tokens vs Per-Second: How AI Video Pricing Actually Converts to Money

There is one common denominator: dollars per finished second. The same 10-second 1080p 9:16 clip is $2.00 on Alibaba's per-second Wan 3.0 API, about 486,000 tokens or ¥22 (≈$3.1) on token-billed Seedance 2.0, and 120 Runway credits worth $1.20–2.88 depending on plan. One credit is worth anywhere from $0.006 to $0.024, and the same clip costs 80–460 credits across platforms, so credit counts are not comparable.

Three billing models and who uses which

Per second. The price is printed as dollars per second of output. MiniMax H3 bills $0.08/s at 768p and $0.13/s at 2K (MiniMax, checked 2026-09-02); Alibaba's Wan 3.0 bills $0.10/s at 720p and $0.20/s at 1080p on the international Model Studio (Alibaba Cloud). Transparent, except that Wan bills input-video seconds too.

Per token. ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 on Volcengine converts video into tokens and bills per million: ¥28 with video input, ¥46 without (Sina Finance, 2026-03-04). Token count depends on resolution, duration and frame rate, so the per-second price is something you compute.

Credits. Runway, Kling, ByteDance's consumer app Jimeng and end-to-end drama platforms all use them. The platform sells credits (a monthly grant or a pack), then prices each model, tier and duration in credits — two stacked conversions, each with its own discounts, which is how one platform can show a 3× per-second spread for the same model.

Token math for Seedance

The formula documented by a third-party API reseller (APIYI, second-hand, self-reported accuracy within 0.1%): tokens ≈ (input-video seconds + output seconds) × width × height × 24 ÷ 1024, with input seconds = 0 for text- or image-to-video. Volcengine's own article gives no formula. At ¥46 per million tokens, converted at 7.1 CNY/USD for illustration:

Cross-checks: the reseller's own example (15 s at 720p ≈ 308,880 tokens) matches the table, and the press figure of about ¥1 per second is the 720p row. Actual dimensions come from the API; a 1088×1920 output changes tokens by 0.7%.

The counter-intuitive part: the cheaper ¥28 "with video input" rate is not always cheaper. Feed a 10-second reference video and request 10 seconds at 1080p, and tokens are counted over 20 seconds: 486,000 × 2 × ¥28 = ¥27.2, more than the ¥22.4 without video input. Seedance 2.5 is priced 50% above 2.0 on the same basis (¥42 per million with video input).

The same 10-second 1080p 9:16 clip under each model

Fixed conditions: 10 seconds, 1080p, 9:16, text- or image-to-video, no reference video, one successful attempt. Subscription credits are valued at monthly fee ÷ monthly credits, valid only at full utilisation.

From $0.48 to $5.00: a 10× spread for one clip. The cheapest is a Jimeng subscription credit on the same Seedance family that costs $3.15 by API — the member price undercuts the list price through prepaid fees and queueing, and flips above it once you use half the allowance. The most expensive is an end-to-end platform whose per-second rate carries reference-image injection, storyboarding and compositing; comparing it with a bare generator says nothing. Kling's official credit table sits behind a login, so only second-hand figures are available; a February 2026 Chinese review (Tencent News) giving about ¥4 per 5-second 720p clip is consistent with them.

What one credit is worth

Two conclusions. First, a credit is worth $0.006 to $0.024 — a 4× spread. Second, the same clip costs 80 to 455 credits — nearly 6×. Only the product of the two, dollars per finished second, crosses platform boundaries. "Our credits are cheaper" and "only X credits for 10 s" say nothing alone. Granularity matters too: a failed 5-second Runway clip burns 60 credits, a failed 15-second Jimeng clip 120 — coarse steps lose more per failure.

Tier multipliers: a 3–5× spread inside one platform

• Jimeng: the same 15-second Seedance 2.0 clip went from 45 credits (early-user discount) to 120 on March 26 and 210 on the VIP fast lane — 4.7× in two months; one creator's two-minute video rose from ¥5.2 to ¥40.2 (21st Century Business Herald, 2026-04-20).
• Kling: 2.5 Turbo is 15 credits per 5 s at 720p, 3.0 is 45 — 3× (Atlas Cloud, second-hand).
• Runway: Gen-4.5 is 60 credits per 5 s, Aleph 2.0 is 140 — 2.3× (official).
• Volcengine / Alibaba: Seedance 2.5 is 1.5× Seedance 2.0; Wan 3.0 "prime" is 1.5× the standard tier on the China list (¥0.9 and ¥1.8 per second).

The pattern: tier multiplier ≈ upstream price ratio × platform margin, so multipliers inside one platform are more trustworthy than gaps between platforms. Check whether a tier table follows upstream ratios — Seedance 2.5 should sit near 1.5× Seedance 2.0; a tier far from that is marketing, not cost.

Six gotchas: expiry, refunds, minimums, rounding, surcharges, channels

1. Expiry. Runway's Standard and Pro credits reset every billing cycle; only Max rolls over one month; the free plan's 125 credits never expire (official). Kling subscription credits expire at the end of each cycle (second-hand). Jimeng grants credits monthly. Compute monthly usage before buying annual.
2. Failure refunds. Alibaba's Wan 3.0 page states failed calls are not billed and do not consume the free allowance — one of the few vendors to print it. Runway's and Kling's pricing pages do not say, and content-moderation rejections often do not count as failures. Read the help center, then test with a prompt that will be rejected.
3. Minimum packs. Runway top-ups start at 1,000 credits; no subscription sells 10 seconds. Occasional users routinely pay twice the headline rate.
4. Rounding. Jimeng rounds duration up to the next step (21st Century Business Herald); Wan bills input plus output seconds; token billing does not round but scales with pixels, so 1080p is 2.4× 720p, not 2×.
5. Surcharges. MiniMax H3 includes 5 reference images per call and bills $0.04 for each beyond that (official); Kling's native audio adds roughly 50% more credits per second in aggregator tables; Jimeng's VIP lane is 75% above the normal tier.
6. Channel spread. The same Kling 3.0 is $0.084–0.126/s at one reseller (Atlas Cloud) and $0.153/s at another (BuildMVPFast, 2026-07); the same Seedance 2.0 is ¥22 by API and ¥3–5 through a Jimeng membership. A quote without a channel name is not a quote.

Three steps to turn any quote into dollars per finished second

1. Price the credit. Pack price ÷ credits; for subscriptions, monthly fee ÷ monthly credits, valid only at full utilisation — use half and the unit price doubles.
2. Read the tier table. Model × resolution × duration × audio/reference-image options → credits; multiply by the credit price; divide by seconds. For token-billed models use the formula above; for per-second models check whether input seconds count.
3. Multiply by your average attempts — 2.5 if you have no data yet — then add reference-image, fast-lane and storage extras.

Then run the same three-episode script on each candidate and divide total spend by finished seconds — that number includes regeneration rate, rounding, surcharges and your own storyboarding habits, which no pricing page does.

Key figures and sources

Sources

• https://platform.minimax.io/docs/guides/pricing-paygo
• https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/model-pricing
• https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/roll/2026-03-04/doc-inhpvpqk3838479.shtml
• https://docs.apiyi.com/api-capabilities/seedance2/overview
• https://www.buildmvpfast.com/api-costs/ai-video
• https://www.atlascloud.ai/blog/case-studies/seedance-2.0-pricing-full-cost-breakdown-2026
• https://www.atlascloud.ai/blog/tips/kling-ai-pricing
• https://runway.com/pricing
• https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260211A02P8H00
• https://www.21jingji.com/article/20260420/herald/33ccb7a55ac6327b11d2a776271563d9.html
• https://www.sohu.com/a/1010914272_115565

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