H3 Max draft ladder: 15 shots, 5 reruns, 2 finals for $14.70 on Sume

Fifteen eight-second MiniMax H3 Max shots, five re-rendered at 768p and two finished at 1080p, cost $14.70 on Sume ($15.51 with the 5.5% platform fee), against $24.00 if all fifteen were rendered at 1080p. The ladder works because H3 Max's per-second rate doubles every step: $0.0625, $0.10 and $0.20 per second on Sume.

Timing matters this week. fal's H3 Max page, read today, shows a 40% promotional discount (480p at $0.03, 768p at $0.048, 1080p at $0.096 per second) that ends October 15, after which the regular $0.05, $0.08 and $0.16 apply. Sume's catalog constants carry the regular fal list, so the Sume figures here do not include the promo and are the same before and after October 15.

The ladder, priced

Against fal, before and after the promo

The same 22 renders priced at fal's promo rates come to $7.06, and at fal's regular rates $11.76. Sume's $14.70 is the regular figure times 1.25: $11.76 x 1.25 = $14.70. So buying through Sume costs $7.64 more than fal's promo price this week, and the gap closes to the 25% margin after October 15.

Skipping the ladder is the expensive choice: 15 x 8 s x $0.20 = $24.00. The ladder saves $9.30 here, about 39%. Note that 1080p on H3 Max is a latent refinement from 768p, not a separate native render, so a good 768p draft predicts the 1080p result well.

Steps

• Render every concept at 480p with model: "minimax-h3-max", duration: 8.
• Pick the keepers and rerun them at 768p, the native top resolution.
• Send only approved shots to 1080p.
• Keep durations between 5 and 15 seconds; H3 Max rejects anything outside that range.

Why 480p drafts are a fair test

MiniMax H3 Max renders natively at 480p and 768p, so a 480p draft is a real render and not an upscale. What it tells you is composition, motion and whether the prompt landed. What it cannot tell you is fine texture, so keep the 768p stage for the shots that pass.

A practical rule is to decide the keep rate before you start. With a 33% keep rate (5 of 15) the ladder above holds. If you keep half, move seven shots to 768p and the total rises to 7.5 + 5.6 + 3.2 = $16.30, still under the $24.00 all-1080p bill. If you keep every shot at 768p, you skip 480p entirely and each 8-second shot is $0.80.

These are per-shot numbers. If you queue many in parallel, plan limits (concurrency) decide how long the ladder takes, not what it costs.

What Sume does not do

Sume does not pass the fal promo through, does not offer 2K or 4K on H3 Max (that is the plain minimax-h3 row, which upscales from 768p), and does not guarantee that a 480p draft matches the 768p render frame for frame. Figures are exact micros from the repo's estimator, read 2026-10-08.