Fliki API needs Premium; Sume lists API rate limits on Free too

Fliki's pricing page says only Premium and Enterprise include API access, so a Standard subscriber cannot call it from code. Sume's authentication docs give a request budget per API key for Free, Pro, Startup and Scale workspaces, so a key is not limited to a top tier. Generation still needs a funded USD balance, and 402 insufficient_credits comes back when the balance is below the reserve.

What Fliki lists

Fliki's page lists Free with 3 credits per month and a 5-minute export cap, Standard with 180 credits and 15-minute exports, Premium with 600 credits and 40-minute exports, and Enterprise with custom credits. Prices for Standard and Premium were not in the text I fetched. It says Premium offers API access and Enterprise provides API access plus advanced AI models.

What the Sume plan does gate

According to the authentication docs, the plan of the workspace that owns the key sets the request budget, and reads and writes have separate budgets. Generation concurrency is plan-based too, with extra jobs queued, and the error codes include 429 queue_full and rate_limited. The plan decides speed and limits, and the balance decides whether a job is accepted.

Steps: test the API path before paying

• Create a workspace API key in the dashboard.
• Send one cheap request, such as a video trim at $0.02, with an Idempotency-Key.
• Read the response headers and error codes for rate and balance behavior.
• Only then decide whether you need a higher plan for throughput.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: first-call-001" \
  -d '{"video_url":"https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/talk.mp4","start":0,"duration":5}'

What Sume does not do

Sume is not a one-screen text-to-video app. It has no voice-and-slide editor like Fliki's. A free plan key gives rate budget, not free generation: jobs bill from the balance.

What credits mean in each model

Fliki meters in credits tied to the plan: 3, 180 or 600 a month, with export caps of 5, 15 and 40 minutes. Sume meters in dollars, reserved at provider list times 1.25 for each job. The first approach hides price per output behind a credit and the second shows the dollar figure on the job. If you need to forecast a month, the dollar model is easier to total, but only after you have run enough jobs to know the average.

Export caps compared

Fliki limits exports to 5, 15 and 40 minutes on Free, Standard and Premium. The Sume docs I read describe per-model clip lengths instead, with the caption job priced for clips up to 60 seconds and Timeline for output minutes at $0.10. Long programs on Sume are built by assembling clips, not by one long export, so plan your structure around segments.

Verdict

If you want an API and the vendor gates it behind a high tier, check the key and budget model first. For Fliki that means Premium. For Sume it means a key and a funded balance, with the plan setting speed.