A $25 video model bake-off: one 5-second prompt on six Sume tiers

A bake-off needs the same prompt on several models, enough repeats to see variance, and a budget cap. Take a $25 budget and a 5 second test clip. Sume's per-second rates are the fal list price times 1.25, so the cost of a run is the rate times 5. Each model's duration range includes 5 seconds, so one prompt fits every tier (Wan 3.0 allows 2 to 30 seconds, MiniMax 5 to 15, Omni Flash 3 to 10).

The vendor list prices come from each model's fal page, read 2026-10-05. fal currently shows a 40 percent promotion on MiniMax H3 Max (480p $0.03 per second) that ends October 15; the table uses the regular $0.05. Sume's catalog formula is list x 1.25 rounded up to the next cent (ceil usd cents), so a billed job can land a cent above these unrounded figures; read usage.cost for the real amount.

Runs per $25

A practical split

Do not spend equally. Run each tier once at the cheapest settings, look at the results, then spend the remainder on repeats of the two you would ship. One pass over all six tiers costs $2.875, leaving $22.125 of the $25.

Keep the same prompt, the same aspect ratio and the same duration across tiers, or the price comparison stops meaning anything. Log the returned usage.cost for each run; it shows the amount actually billed, which may differ from the estimate you reserved.

Sume reserves against a spendable USD balance, so a $25 top-up bounds the bake-off. Top-ups are $10 to $1,000 per checkout; see the billing and credits docs.

• Resolution matters: the table uses each model's cheapest listed tier.
• Budget 20 percent for reruns when a prompt needs adjustment.