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 $3.74 on token-billed Seedance 2.0 (BytePlus), and 120 Runway credits worth $1.20–2.88 depending on plan. One credit is worth anywhere from about $0.003 to $0.024, and the same clip costs 90–100 credits on platforms that publish a count, 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 BytePlus ModelArk converts video into tokens and bills per million: $7.0 without video input and $4.3 with it at 480p/720p, $7.7 and $4.7 at 1080p (BytePlus pricing, checked 2026-09-12). 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 Dreamina 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

BytePlus publishes the formula on its pricing page (BytePlus, checked 2026-09-12): tokens ≈ (input-video seconds + output seconds) × width × height × frame rate ÷ 1024, with input seconds = 0 for text- or image-to-video; its worked examples use 24 fps. At $7.0 per million tokens (480p/720p) and $7.7 (1080p), without video input:

Cross-check: BytePlus's own 5-second examples are $0.76 at 720p and $1.87 at 1080p, which the table reproduces. Actual dimensions come from the API; a 1088×1920 output changes tokens by 0.7%.

The counter-intuitive part: the cheaper "with video input" rate ($4.7 per million at 1080p) 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 × $4.7 per million = $4.57, more than the $3.74 without video input. Seedance 2.5 lists about 50% above 2.0 on the same basis ($10.70 vs $7.0 per million at 480p/720p without 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 $0.46 to $3.74: roughly a 8× spread for one clip. The low end is Dreamina's own promotional per-second figure (Dreamina pricing page, vendor claim) for the same Seedance 2.0 model that costs $3.74 by API — a subscription undercuts the list price through prepaid fees and promotions, and only when the whole allowance is used. The end-to-end platform lands at $1.08–1.08 from its lowest to its default tier, and that 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.

What one credit is worth

Two conclusions. First, a credit is worth about $0.003 to $0.024 — roughly an 8× spread, and the low end is a promotional first charge. Second, the same clip costs 90 (Kling, at 720p) to 100 credits where a count is published — about 1×. 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: credits are charged in steps (Runway Gen-4.5: 60 per 5 s), so a discarded 10-second take costs 120 credits whether you keep a second of it or none.

Tier multipliers: up to 3× inside one platform

• 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).
• BytePlus / Alibaba: Seedance 2.5 lists at about 1.5× Seedance 2.0 per million tokens on BytePlus ($10.70 vs $7.0 at 480p/720p); Wan 3.0 "prime" lists at about 1.4× the standard tier on Alibaba Cloud's international price list ($0.14 vs $0.10 per second at 720p).

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). Dreamina plans grant credits monthly. Compute monthly usage before buying annual.
2. Failure refunds. Alibaba's Wan 3.0 pricing states failed requests are not billed and do not consume the free quota, and BytePlus states that Seedance is charged only for successfully generated videos, with no fee when generation fails for reasons such as content moderation. Runway's and Kling's pricing pages do not say. 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. Credit platforms price duration in steps (Runway: 60 credits per 5 s); Wan bills input plus output seconds; token billing does not round but scales with pixels, and BytePlus's per-token rate is higher at 1080p, so a 1080p second of Seedance costs about 2.5× a 720p second, 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.
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 $3.74 for 10 seconds at 1080p by API and about $0.46 for 10 seconds at Dreamina's own promotional rate. 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://docs.byteplus.com/en/docs/ModelArk/1099320
• https://dreamina.capcut.com/seedance/seedance-2-0-pricing
• 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

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