Shorts series season of 30-second AI episodes: cost per season

A 10-episode season of 30-second episodes costs $37.50 on Wan 3.0 at 720p and $80.60 on Seedance 2.5 at 480p, because each episode is one 30-second job. Six episodes cost $22.50 and $48.36 on the same two settings.

YouTube's help page on Shorts series says episodes must be portrait or square and can run up to 180 seconds, and that you set a season number when you add videos to a show (YouTube Help, read 2026-10-07). A 30-second episode sits well inside that.

Season cost by episode count

Sume bills the provider list rate multiplied by 1.25 on every video model (Video Router). The figures here come from the price estimators in Sume's repository, run on 2026-10-07, and are rounded to the cent. The live numbers for your workspace are in the catalog response and on the API pricing page.

Wan 3.0 and Seedance 2.5 both accept 30 seconds in one request (Video generation), so an episode is one job and the season is the episode count times one price. Use 9:16 for the Shorts feed; it prices the same as 16:9 on both models.

Pick by what the season needs

Wan 3.0 is the budget choice: $3.75 an episode at 720p. Seedance 2.5 costs more, $8.06 an episode at 480p and $17.33 at 720p, and is the one to pick when you want its look or its reference handling. Neither price includes retakes, so add a margin: if one episode in four needs a second take, multiply by 1.25.

A season is also a consistency problem. The same prompt template and the same reference images keep the look steady across episodes; budget one pilot episode at the final resolution before you commit the rest.

• Cap the season in advance: send max_spend_usd from MCP or set a run cap for agent-driven batches.
• Submit episodes with their own Idempotency-Key so a retry never double-bills.
• Keep the aspect ratio fixed for the whole season.

Balance and waves

Sume reserves the estimated amount when it accepts a job, captures it on success, and refunds the reservation if the job fails or is cancelled before capture (Usage, Generation admission). So the balance you need on hand at submit time is the price of everything in flight, not only the final total.

A Pro workspace runs 4 jobs at once, Startup 8 and Scale 20 (the plans page lists the ladder), so a big batch drains in waves rather than all at once.

Ten 720p Wan episodes in flight on Pro means four reservations of $3.75 at a time, or $15.00 held at peak, even though the season total is $37.50.