$25 avatar budget: 9 standard, 6 plus or 3 max 15-second clips on Sume

With $25 you can render 9 avatar videos of 15 seconds at standard, 6 at plus, or 3 at max on Sume, using the per-second prices in the catalog as of 2026-10-09. The per-clip costs are $2.76, $3.675 and $8.25. A 15-second clip is a handy unit: it is a standard social cut, and it is also the length at which the numbers divide cleanly.

The division

Divide the budget by the per-clip price and round down. The remainder is what is left for a retry or one more short clip.

Mixed tiers do better than a single tier

You do not have to pick one tier. If you need one hero clip at max and the rest as standard, the hero costs $8.25 and leaves $16.75, which buys 6 standard clips ($16.56) with $0.19 to spare. That is 7 clips in total, against 6 at plus. Use quality per request to do this.

A preview can protect the budget. The preview route renders first-frame stills before the full video, and when you approve one you can choose a different final tier at generate-video. Preview stills are tier-independent, so approving at one tier and rendering at a cheaper one needs no new preview.

Things that are not in the table

Creating the avatar is a separate charge of $0.95. If you start from zero, take that from the $25 first: the standard count stays at 9 ($24.84 + $0.95 = $25.79 exceeds $25, so it falls to 8 clips, $22.08 + $0.95 = $23.03). Omitting quality gives you plus, not standard, so the same $25 buys 6 clips and not 9.

A failed job refunds its reservation before capture, per the catalog's reservation policy, so a failure does not eat the budget, but you should still plan a remainder for retries. Keep the remainder above the price of your cheapest clip.

• Set quality explicitly.
• Budget the $0.95 avatar creation once per avatar.
• Keep one clip's price in reserve for a retry.

Using the remainder

The leftovers are not wasted. At standard, $0.16 remains, which buys nothing, but at plus the $2.95 left covers a 4-second clip at the minimum length: 4 x 0.245 = $0.98, or a 12-second standard clip at 12 x 0.184 = $2.208. At max, $0.25 is below the price of a minimum clip. Plan the last job to use up the remainder, within the 4-60 second window.

A final point on retries. If a job fails before capture, the reservation is refunded, so you do not lose the budget on a failure, but a clip you dislike still costs its full price. That is where the preview earns its keep.