Veo 3.1 Fast 20 credits vs Quality 100 in Flow: a draft ladder

In Flow, a Veo 3.1 Quality generation costs 100 credits and a Fast one costs 20 (10 for Ultra subscribers), so five Fast drafts cost the same as one Quality clip. The free daily 50 credits cannot pay for a Quality clip at all.

The prices are from Google's Flow credits page, read 2026-10-02, and may change. The page lists Veo 3.1 Lite at 10 credits (5 for Ultra), Fast at 20 (10 for Ultra), and Quality at 100 for all users.

What does the ladder look like in credits?

Divide the Quality price by the draft price and you get the number of drafts you can afford for one final. The numbers below use the non-Ultra price and the Ultra price from the page.

Why can't the daily credits cover Quality?

The daily allowance is 50 credits and the page says unused daily credits do not roll over. Quality needs 100, so a free day cannot buy one. Monthly plan credits (200 for Plus, 1,000 for Pro, 10,000 or 25,000 for the two Ultra plans) do the job, and they also do not roll over.

So the practical plan on a free account is: draft on Lite or Fast today, and do not expect to pool two days' credits into a Quality clip.

What is the equivalent on Sume?

Sume's catalog is separate, so the credit ladder does not translate. The pattern does: render cheap and small, then re-render the approved prompt at full size. In the Video Router, Gemini Omni Flash 1.1 runs 3-10 seconds at 360p, 720p, 1080p or 4K, and the docs say billing is provider list times 1.25 per output second by resolution.

On Google's pricing page, Omni Flash video output is listed at about $0.10 per second at 720p. Applying the 1.25 factor, that is about $0.125 per second on Sume, or about $1.00 for 8 seconds; confirm the live row in GET /v1/videos/models before you budget.

# draft: 360p, 4 s
curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/videos -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Idempotency-Key: lamp-draft-1" \
  -d '{"model":"gemini-omni-flash-1.1","prompt":"A ceramic lamp, slow push-in","resolution":"360p","duration":4}'

# final: same prompt, 1080p, 8 s, new key
curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/videos -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Idempotency-Key: lamp-final-1" \
  -d '{"model":"gemini-omni-flash-1.1","prompt":"A ceramic lamp, slow push-in","resolution":"1080p","duration":8}'

What should I watch for?

Seeds are not guaranteed, so a final is a new roll of the dice, not the draft in higher resolution. Judge a draft on framing and motion only. And use a different Idempotency-Key for the final; reusing the draft key returns the draft job instead of a new one.