Prepaid or postpaid AI video API: how Sume bills, and invoices
Sume bills self-serve usage from a prepaid USD balance reserved at submit; Enterprise lists invoice and PO billing. A 30-second Wan 3.0 hold, worked.
Sume's self-serve billing is prepaid: you hold a USD balance, each paid job reserves its price from that balance at submit, and the job either captures the reserve or refunds it. If the balance cannot cover the reserve the API answers 402 insufficient_credits before any provider work starts. The pricing page lists "Invoice / PO billing" only under Enterprise, so a pay-after-the-month model is a contract conversation, not a switch in the dashboard.
What the docs say about money moving
Sume's generation admission page says a submit creates a durable job when the request is valid, Sume can reserve the balance, and the workspace has capacity. The usage page gives each ledger row one of three statuses, and the credits page says the balance is in USD and that top-ups are a dashboard operation backed by Stripe. All were read on 2026-10-07.
| Step | What happens | Where it is documented |
|---|---|---|
| Top-up | Dashboard starts a Stripe-backed manual top-up; the API has no endpoint to create one | Billing and credits |
| Submit | Sume reserves the estimated price from the USD balance | Generation admission |
| Short balance | 402 insufficient_credits, before provider execution | Errors and rate limits |
| Success | Row moves reserved to captured | Usage |
| Failure or cancel before capture | Row moves to refunded; the reserve is released | Usage |
| Read balance | GET /v1/balance, in USD | Billing and credits |
A worked reserve
Take a 30-second Wan 3.0 clip at 720p. The repo's list rate is $0.10 per second, so the provider list is 30 x $0.10 = $3.00. Sume bills list x 1.25, which is $3.75 for the clip. The repo's price book adds a 5.5% platform fee on that model amount ($0.20625), so the hold is $3.95625. If your balance is $3.90, the submit is refused with a 402 even though the sticker price is $3.75. Check the balance against the price plus the fee, not the price alone.
| Line | Arithmetic | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Provider list | 30 s x $0.10 | $3.00 |
| Sume model amount | $3.00 x 1.25 | $3.75 |
| Platform fee | 5.5% of $3.75 (floor to the micro-dollar) | $0.20625 |
| Hold at submit | $3.75 + fee | $3.95625 |
Where Enterprise differs
The pricing page lists Enterprise with custom plans, volume pricing, "Invoice / PO billing" and higher concurrency. Sume's authentication docs describe Enterprise as not self-serve, with contracted numbers instead of the self-serve rows. Nothing public describes a postpaid switch for Pro, Startup or Scale, so plan on prepaid unless you have talked to Sume.
What to do with this
- Keep the balance above the largest single job you plan to queue plus 5.5%, since each queued job reserves on submit.
- Read
GET /v1/balancebefore a bulk run, then submit; a 402 costs nothing but a retry after a top-up. - If finance needs invoices or purchase orders, ask about Enterprise before the first large run, not after.
Sources
Related posts
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- A 15-second AI video clip: the price on every Sume model
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- A 5-second AI video clip: the price on every Sume model
One 5-second clip costs $0.0625 on Grok, $0.3125 on Wan 480p, $1.34 on Seedance 2.5 480p. Every Sume SKU priced from the catalog on 2026-10-07.
- Price per second of 720p AI video on Sume: Wan, Omni, Seedance ranked
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Written by Sume