Editframe cloud render $0.02 a minute plus $99 vs Sume Timeline

Editframe is cheaper per rendered minute than Sume, and the catch is a $99 base fee. Its pricing page (read 2026-10-03) lists cloud render minutes at $0.02 up to 2 megapixels, $0.04 up to 4 and $0.07 up to 9, on a Cloud plan at $99 a month plus usage. Sume's Timeline render is $0.10 per output minute with no listed monthly fee, so a 3-minute Reel is $0.30 on Sume and $0.06 to $0.12 of render usage on Editframe's first two bands.

The detail worth checking is the pixel arithmetic. A vertical 1080 by 1920 Reel is 2,073,600 pixels, or 2.07 megapixels, exactly the pixel count of 1920 by 1080. The page labels its first band as "≤2 MP (1080p)", so 1080p is evidently meant to sit in the cheapest band despite being a hair over 2.0; confirm that rounding with Editframe before you budget. This post prices both the $0.02 and $0.04 bands.

What Editframe lists

The page shows four tiers. Free is $0 for up to 3 employees with the client-side SDK, browser rendering using WebCodecs and CLI rendering, and commercial use allowed. Team is $49 a month for 4 to 10 employees with the same features. Cloud is $99 a month plus usage for 11 to 20 employees or any size needing cloud, adding remote video storage, CDN streaming playback and parallel cloud rendering. Enterprise is custom for 21 and over. Usage is billed on Cloud only: render minutes by band, and delivery minutes at $0.0009 per minute. The page lists no included minutes.

How Sume's side adds up

Timeline 1.0 accepts an output width and height as even integers from 256 to 2160, so a 1080 by 1920 default and a 720 by 1280 draft are both valid. It bills per output minute, rounded up, and does not scale its rate with pixel count. That makes draft renders at lower sizes cost the same as finals on Sume, while on Editframe's bands the lower band is half the price.

The calculator below prints Editframe's band for both orientations and the Sume cost of a 180-second spine.

import math

# Editframe Cloud render bands (page, read 2026-10-03)
BANDS = ((2, 0.02), (4, 0.04), (9, 0.07))

def megapixels(width, height):
    return width * height / 1_000_000

def sume_cost(seconds):
    return 0.10 * math.ceil(seconds / 60)

for w, h in ((1920, 1080), (1080, 1920), (3840, 2160)):
    print(w, "x", h, round(megapixels(w, h), 2), "MP")
for limit, rate in BANDS:
    print(f"<= {limit} MP band: 3-minute Reel render ${rate * 3:.2f}")
print("3-minute Reel on Sume:", sume_cost(180))

Worked examples

A team of 15 people that renders 200 minutes of 4 MP-band video a month pays $99 plus 200 times $0.04, which is $107, on Editframe Cloud. The same 200 minutes on Sume is $20.00 with no base fee. The picture flips for volume: at 2,000 minutes Editframe is $99 plus $80 or $179, and Sume is $200. The crossover sits between about 1,240 minutes (if you pay the $0.02 band) and 1,650 minutes (the $0.04 band), which is more video than most social teams make.

A solo creator who renders 30 minutes a month fits Editframe's free tier by rendering in the browser or CLI on their own machine, and pays nothing. Sume would be $3.00. The difference is that Sume runs the render on its own worker, so you do not need a machine with ffmpeg, a headless browser or the time to babysit a long job.

This is why the Reels change matters here. A 3-minute Reel is three billable Sume minutes, and a 181-second Reel is four. Editframe's page does not state rounding, so check whether partial minutes are rounded before comparing.

What Sume does and does not do here

• Sume does not give you a browser SDK or a client-side renderer. The render is a job.
• Sume does charge the same rate at every size. If you render many low-resolution previews, Editframe's lower bands help.
• Sume jobs are polled with GET /v1/jobs/:id/status and read with GET /v1/jobs/:id/result; a render never blocks your process.
• Sume's output is a single MP4 you place into your own player. There is no hosted streaming player.

What to do

If you want an SDK and have one-off previews, start on Editframe Free. If you want a hosted render you can call from a cron job, price the Timeline plan call for one Reel, multiply by your month, and compare the total with $99 plus usage.