Luma Ray 3.2 edit at 360p costs 9x a 360p generation: $0.54 vs $0.06

A Ray 3.2 video edit at 360p costs $0.54 for 5 seconds on Luma's pay-as-you-go rate card, nine times the $0.06 that a 360p text-to-video generation costs for the same 5 seconds. The multiple falls as resolution rises: 4.8x at 540p, 3.6x at 720p, and 1.8x at 1080p. So the cheap draft trick that works for generation works much less well for edits.

Why the edit tier is flat-ish

Luma prices video edits on their own rate table, not as a surcharge on generation. The table above shows that the edit price moves from $0.54 to $2.16 across resolutions (a 4x spread), while generation moves from $0.06 to $1.20 (a 20x spread). The edit tier therefore has a high floor. The same page lists the 10-second edit totals as $1.08, $1.44, $2.16 and $4.32, which is exactly double each 5-second figure.

Luma also notes that video rates are subject to change ahead of general availability and tells buyers to confirm with sales before committing to high-volume work, so treat these as the numbers on the page on 2026-10-09.

A test loop priced both ways

Say you want to try three edit prompts and then render one final. Doing the three tests at 360p and the final at 1080p costs 3 x $0.54 + $2.16 = $3.78. Doing everything at 1080p costs 4 x $2.16 = $8.64. The draft loop saves $4.86, about 56 percent. For generation the same shape saves much more: 3 x $0.06 + $1.20 = $1.38 against 4 x $1.20 = $4.80.

• Edit loop, 360p tests plus 1080p final: $3.78 per 5-second clip.
• Edit loop, all 1080p: $8.64.
• Generation loop, 360p drafts plus 1080p final: $1.38; all 1080p: $4.80.

What Sume lists

Sume does not list Luma Ray 3.2 in its public catalog, so there is no Ray edit price on Sume. Sume's video-edit path is Gemini Omni Flash 1.1 (gemini-omni-flash-1.1), which the video docs say takes a video_url edit input and accepts 3 to 10 seconds in 16:9 or 9:16 with native audio. Sume's catalog rates for that model are $0.0375 per second at 360p and $0.9375 per 5 seconds at 1080p ($0.1875 per second).

Using the same loop on Sume rates: three 5-second tests at 360p cost 3 x (5 x $0.0375) = $0.5625, and one 5-second 1080p final costs 5 x $0.1875 = $0.9375, for $1.50 in total. That is arithmetic on Sume's per-second rows, not a Luma comparison of quality. Check the model's reported limits with GET /v1/videos/models before you rely on an edit input length, and note that Sume reserves the estimated price at submit and releases it if the job fails.

Edit or regenerate?

Because edits have a high floor, regenerating can be cheaper than editing when the change is large. A fresh 5-second 720p generation costs $0.30 on Luma's page, while a 720p edit costs $1.08, so regenerating is 3.6 times cheaper. At 1080p the numbers are $1.20 against $2.16. The trade-off is that a regeneration does not keep the original shot, so an edit remains the right tool when you must preserve motion or framing.

A practical rule is to edit only when the source clip is approved and the change is local, and to regenerate from a revised prompt or start frame when you are still exploring. Keep the 360p tier for generation drafts, where the draw is a 20x gap to the final price.