What $7.77 buys in AI avatar video on Sume: 42 seconds, or 14 at max

A $7.77 balance buys 42 seconds of standard-tier avatar video on Sume, 31 seconds at plus, or 14 seconds at max, with no product image. With a product image the counts are 40, 30 and 13 seconds. Divide the balance by the per-second rate and round down to whole seconds.

That is the useful way to plan a small test: not "how much is a minute" but "how many seconds do I get before the balance stops me".

The division

Rates are from the Sume catalog, read 2026-10-09: standard $0.184 per second without a product image and $0.194 with one, plus $0.245 and $0.258, max $0.55 and $0.58. The table divides $7.77 by each and keeps the whole seconds.

Why whole seconds

Sume accepts scripts whose estimated length is 4 to 60 seconds, and the catalog prices by planned billable seconds. I have treated each second as a unit and rounded the quotient down, so the cost shown never exceeds the balance. The catalog also says the reservation at submit is rounded up to cents, which only matters at the margin: a figure like $7.595 is already inside the balance.

• Minimum job: 4 seconds, so the smallest standard job is $0.736 and the smallest max job is $2.20.
• Maximum job: 60 seconds, which standard prices at $11.04, more than this balance.
• If the reservation is more than the balance, the call is refused with 402 insufficient_credits and nothing is generated.

Spending the 42 seconds well

Forty-two standard seconds is enough for one 30-second ad plus a 12-second variant, or three 14-second hooks. If you want to compare tiers on the same script, put a short test through a preview: preview stills are tier-independent, and generate-video takes an optional quality that only changes the final render. That lets you approve a composition once and then decide which tier to buy.

The product image adds a small premium per second, not a step change: at standard it is $0.01 per second, so 40 seconds with a product image cost $7.76 against $7.728 for 42 seconds without one. Decide whether the image is worth two seconds of runtime.

Creating the avatar itself is a separate one-time charge of $0.95 and is not counted above. If you do not already have a ready avatar handle, subtract it first: $7.77 minus $0.95 leaves $6.82, which is 37 standard seconds.