Runway Seedance 2.0 4K at 150 credits a second: cost

On Runway's API, Seedance 2.0 at 4K costs 150 credits per second, which is $1.50 a second at Runway's listed $0.01 per credit, so a 10-second 4K clip is 1,500 credits, $15.00. Sume's seedance-2 lists 480p, 720p, and 1080p, and its docs do not list a 4K tier for it, so on Sume you generate at 1080p and upscale separately if you need more pixels.

Runway's numbers are from its API pricing page and the API changelog (June 24, 2026 entry), read on 2026-10-03. Sume's are from video generation and the Video Router page.

What does Runway charge per resolution?

The pricing page lists Seedance 2 at 36 credits per second for 480p and 720p, 40 for 1080p, and 150 for 4K. The June 24 changelog entry says six new 4K ratio values were added across generation endpoints and that 4K generations are billed at 150 credits per second.

Is 4K worth 3.75 times the 1080p price?

The jump from 1080p to 4K is 150 divided by 40, or 3.75 times, for four times the pixels of 1080p. Seedance 2 clips run 4 to 15 seconds on Runway's changelog entry for the launch, so the whole range lands between $6.00 and $22.50 at 4K and between $1.60 and $6.00 at 1080p.

That is a fair price if the output goes to a big screen or you will crop heavily. It is a poor price for a clip that ends up in a vertical feed, where the platform recompresses to 1080p or lower anyway.

What does Sume offer instead?

Sume's docs describe seedance-2 as supporting 480p, 720p, and 1080p, 4 to 15 seconds, with first and last frames and image, video, and audio references. Billing is the provider list price times 1.25, reserved on submit; read pricing_skus from GET /v1/videos/models for the live rate rather than copying a number from a blog.

The same docs say seedance-2.5 accepts 4 to 30 seconds at 480p, 720p, and 1080p. Sume does not list a 4K Seedance. If you must have native 4K from Seedance, that is a Runway-side capability today; Sume's 4K row is Gemini Omni Flash 1.1, at 3 to 10 seconds.

How do you decide?

Ask what the file is for. Native 4K for a delivery master points to Runway at 150 credits. Social, paid ads, and web video point to 1080p, where the cost per second is far below the 4K rate. Run one clip each way and compare on the actual screen before you commit a month of volume.

If you stay on Sume, submit with an Idempotency-Key and check admission first: a valid job can be accepted as queued when your plan's concurrency is full, and a full queue returns 429 queue_full per the generation admission page.

What if you need more pixels than 1080p on Sume?

Sume's documented route is to generate at the model's top tier and upscale afterward. The video docs mention that 2K and 4K upscales are priced when requested on minimax-h3, and Sume lists a separate video upscale tool; check the catalog entry for the model you pick before you plan around it, because upscales are not offered on every model.

An upscale is not the same as native 4K. A model that renders at 4K can add detail that an upscaler has to invent. For a delivery master, test both on a clip with fine texture, such as fabric or text, and compare at 100 percent zoom.

What is a sensible test before you commit?

Run the same 5-second prompt three ways: native 4K on Runway ($7.50 at 150 credits a second), 1080p on Runway ($2.00 at 40), and 1080p on Sume. Put the three on the screen you will actually deliver to and ask someone who has not seen the prompt to pick. If nobody can tell 4K from 1080p at that size, the 3.75 times price is not buying you anything.

Keep the date next to the numbers. Runway's pricing page is a live document, and the 150-credit figure is from the page and changelog as read on 2026-10-03.