40-second AI presenter video: $7.36, $9.80 or $22.00 on Sume

A 40-second AI presenter video made with Sume Avatar 1.0 costs $7.36 at Standard, $9.80 at Plus and $22.00 at Max when you send no product image. The price is the tier rate multiplied by the clip length in seconds, so 40 seconds is a single job with no splitting needed.

The arithmetic

Rates: Standard $0.184, Plus $0.245, Max $0.55 per second without a product image; $0.194, $0.258, $0.58 with one (Sume pricing page, as of 2026-10-08). Forty seconds sits well inside the 4 to 60 second window, so one request covers it.

What changes the number

Three inputs move the bill. The first is the tier: plus is the default when you omit quality, standard is the fastest Sume path, and max is the highest quality with slower turnaround. The second is a product image, which swaps the rate to the product column. The third is the script itself: Sume plans duration from the text, so a longer script at the same tier costs proportionally more.

With a product image the same 40 seconds costs $7.76, $10.32 and $23.20. The gap over the no-product price is $0.40, $0.52 and $1.20.

• Tier is chosen per request with quality.
• Aspect ratio defaults to 9:16; 1:1, 3:4, 4:3 and 16:9 are also accepted.
• Resolution is 720p at this time.

Submit it

The request below creates the job. Poll /v1/jobs/{id}/status, then fetch /result. The Idempotency-Key header makes a retry return the same job instead of a second charge.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/avatar-1.0/talking-video \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: presenter-40-001" \
  -d '{"avatar_handle":"product_host","quality":"plus","aspect_ratio":"9:16","script":"Your script here."}'

Budget check

Because the tier rate dominates, run a cheaper tier first if pacing is the only open question. The cost of a Standard pass on 40 seconds is $7.36, which is $2.44 less than Plus and $14.64 less than Max. Whether that is worth it depends on whether the faster path shows you what you need to see.

Practical notes

Reading results. A completed result can include public media.sume.com video artifacts, and for avatar videos also public-safe preview fields such as preview_image_url and scene_previews. You can list or read finished videos with GET /v1/avatar-videos and GET /v1/avatar-videos/{id}. Store the job id and the video id together so a billing line can be traced back to a creative.

Reusable avatars. An avatar is created once, for a flat $0.95, and then referenced by its avatar_handle on every later request. Sume normalizes a leading @ away and stores the handle without it. Treat the handle as a stable identifier in your own system, and keep one record per handle noting who the avatar represents and what it may be used for.

Idempotency. The docs examples send an Idempotency-Key header on every create call. Use one key per intended job and reuse it only when you retry the same request. A network timeout followed by a fresh submit with a new key is the one path that can create, and bill, a second job. Keep keys human-readable, such as the campaign and scene, so a support lookup is easy.