Q4 2026 AI video budget template: lean, standard, heavy by month

Q4 is when most seasonal video spend lands: Halloween, Singles Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holiday weeks. A budget template helps because the cost of each kind of output is fixed by the rate card, and only your volumes change. This post gives three scenarios, lean, standard and heavy, spread across October, November and December.

Unit prices come from Sume rates read on 2026-10-03: a screen is a 5-second Wan 3.0 clip at 480p ($0.3125), a hero is a 15-second Seedance 2.5 clip at 720p 9:16 ($8.667), a final is a 10-second Wan 3.0 clip at 1080p ($2.50) and a caption job is $0.20.

What does each scenario cost?

Volumes are planning assumptions, not measurements of how any team works; change them to match your own. October runs from October 3 and has 29 days, November 30 and December 31.

What volumes sit behind the totals?

Each cell lists screens, heroes, finals and captions. November carries the most because it holds Singles Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

How do you use the template?

Replace the volumes, keep the unit prices, and add a retake buffer on the video lines. A 20 percent buffer on the standard scenario adds about $35.71. Fund the wallet month by month, and set a generation cap on any automated run. A scheduled run caps at $1.00 by default.

Heroes are the line to watch. In the standard scenario they are only 10 of the 178 clips (screens, heroes and finals together) but the largest share of video cost. If the budget has to shrink, change heroes to Wan 3.0 finals first.