Seedance 2.5 vs MiniMax H3 for a 9-second clip: $0.68 to $12.79

For a 9-second clip on Sume, minimax-h3 costs $0.5625 at 480p and $0.675 at 768p, minimax-h3-max costs $0.90 at 768p and $1.80 at 1080p, and seedance-2.5 costs $2.418093 at 480p, $5.2002 at 720p and $12.79395 at 1080p. Nine seconds is inside both ranges: minimax-h3 accepts 5 to 15 seconds and seedance-2.5 accepts 4 to 30.

The resolution grid

MiniMax H3 is native 480p or 768p, and H3 Max adds 1080p as a latent refinement from native 768p. Seedance 2.5 has 480p, 720p and 1080p tiers. The closest pairings are 480p to 480p, H3 768p to Seedance 720p, and H3 Max 1080p to Seedance 1080p.

Reading the grid

The 768p and 720p pairing is not exact, since 768p has more pixels than 720p in a 16:9 frame. That makes the Seedance premium in that row a slight overstatement of a per-pixel price. At 480p, where both are native, the multiple is 4.30.

• Cheapest 9-second clip on the grid: H3 at 480p, $0.5625.
• Most expensive: Seedance 2.5 at 1080p, $12.79395, which is 22.7 times the cheapest.
• H3 Max's 1080p is $1.80 against $12.79395 for Seedance 2.5, a $10.99 difference per clip.

Choosing by length

Past 15 seconds the MiniMax rows end. A 20-second clip is only possible on Seedance 2.5 (4 to 30 seconds) or Wan 3.0 (2 to 30 seconds) among these. Under 5 seconds H3 is out too, since it starts at 5. In the 5 to 15 second window, all four rows are valid, and the choice is price against what you see in your own test.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-router/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: h3-9s-768p" \
  -d '{
    "model": "minimax-h3",
    "prompt": "A vertical product clip on a desk, natural light",
    "resolution": "768p",
    "duration": 9,
    "aspect_ratio": "9:16",
    "mode": "async"
  }'

Test budget

Ten test clips of 9 seconds each: $5.625 on H3 at 480p, $6.75 on H3 at 768p, and $52.002 on Seedance 2.5 at 720p. If the cheap tier passes your review, the Seedance run is only needed where the cheap one fails.

What these numbers leave out

The grid prices only the output seconds at default options. It does not price extra options, retries or a second take. If you plan three takes per shot, multiply every cell by three: H3 at 480p is $1.6875 for three 9-second takes, and Seedance 2.5 at 720p is $15.6006. Sume reserves the estimate at submit and refunds a job that fails before generation, so failed submissions do not add to the total.