Avatar creation is $0.95 once: what reusing one handle saves

An Avatar 1.0 avatar costs a flat $0.95 to create, and you pay it once per avatar, not once per video. If you reuse one handle for 20 videos of 15 seconds on the default plus tier, you spend $74.45 in total. Creating a fresh avatar for every video would cost $92.50, so reuse saves $18.05.

The arithmetic

A 15-second plus video without a product image is 15 x $0.245 = $3.675. The table compares one avatar per video against one reusable handle. Avatar rates are Sume's charged per-second tier rates from the repo rate card (standard $0.184, plus $0.245, max $0.55 without a product image); confirm them in GET /v1/catalog.

How to reuse the handle

Create the avatar once, poll the job until it completes, then send the same avatar_handle on every talking video. Use an Idempotency-Key per video so a retry does not bill twice.

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: weekly-update-2026-w41" \
  -d '{
    "avatar_handle": "product_host",
    "script": "This week we shipped three updates. Here is the short version.",
    "quality": "plus",
    "aspect_ratio": "9:16"
  }'

Limits and gotchas

• Each talking video is 4 to 60 seconds by Sume's estimate of the script.
• One final video uses one resolved avatar. A second presenter needs a second video.
• If the avatar is not ready when you submit, the video request is refused until the avatar job completes, so wait on the create job first.
• A new look (different photo or prompt) is a new avatar and a new $0.95.