What a rejected take costs: 30-second Seedance 2.5 vs 8-second clip

A rejected 30-second Seedance 2.5 take at 720p costs $17.33; a rejected 8-second take costs $4.62. If a job fails, Sume refunds the reservation, but if it completes and you simply do not like the clip, the capture stands and a retake is a new job at full price.

Failed versus unwanted

Sume reserves the estimated amount when it accepts a job, captures it on success, and refunds the reservation if the job fails or is cancelled before capture (Usage, Generation admission). So the balance you need on hand at submit time is the price of everything in flight, not only the final total.

This difference matters for long clips: a failure costs you time only, a bad take costs you the whole clip.

Cost of takes by length

Sume bills the provider list rate multiplied by 1.25 on every video model (Video Router). The figures here come from the price estimators in Sume's repository, run on 2026-10-07, and are rounded to the cent. The live numbers for your workspace are in the catalog response and on the API pricing page.

Expected cost of one keeper

If one take in three is acceptable, a keeper costs three takes on average. At 30 seconds and 720p that is $52.00; at 8 seconds it is $13.87. Use the short clip to explore a prompt, and the long clip only when the prompt is proven.

Seedance models on Sume accept no seed, so you cannot repeat a good take at a higher resolution; a final render is a new draw (Video generation).

• Prove the prompt at 480p and 8 seconds ($2.15).
• Move to 720p and 30 seconds once the look holds.
• Cap the experiment with max_spend_usd from MCP.

Guard rails

Set a cap before you start: from MCP, a paid tool takes dry_run=true and max_spend_usd (MCP tools and gates). Send a distinct Idempotency-Key per job so a retry replays the original job instead of charging again.

Check the figures against your own account

Every number on this page comes from the model rates and the 1.25 multiplier above, so you can reproduce it with a calculator. The live record is your own ledger: after a first job, read the balance and the usage rows for that job and compare the captured amount with the table. If they differ, trust the ledger and the model list your account returns, because the rates in the API response are the ones that bill.

The balance call below needs only an API key from your workspace and prints the USD balance. It does not start a job and costs nothing.

curl https://api.sume.com/v1/balance \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY"

What these figures leave out

The prices here cover video generation only. Voice, captions, a Timeline join, storage and the plan fee are separate lines, and the API pricing page lists them. Taxes are not included. Provider list rates can change, and Sume applies the current published rate at submit, so a quote from last month is not a promise.

Retakes are the largest hidden cost in any batch. Add a reserve of 20 to 30 percent for clips you reject, and use cheaper settings for exploration before you spend at the final size. For this page's question, that rule turns the table into a floor rather than a forecast.