A 6-minute story: Shorts series or one TikTok? Both bill 60 cents

A 6-minute story costs the same $0.60 to render as one 360-second TikTok or as two 180-second YouTube Shorts episodes, because Sume bills Timeline at $0.10 per started output minute. Split into 90-second episodes instead and it rises to $0.80, because each 90-second file rounds up to 2 minutes.

The platform limits: YouTube's Shorts series takes episodes of at most 180 seconds (YouTube Help), and TikTok says you can record up to 10 minutes in the app (TikTok Support), both read 2026-10-06.

What does each split cost?

The rate is $0.10 per ceil output minute, per the Timeline 1.0 docs, confirmed in GET /v1/catalog. Each episode is its own render, so each rounds up on its own.

Which split should I choose?

Pick the split that matches the story, then nudge each episode to land just under a whole minute. A 61-second episode bills two minutes, so trimming it to 60 seconds halves its cost. POST /v1/timeline-1.0/plan returns billable_minutes for a body without creating a job, so you can test a cut length for free.

For the series route, the playlist has to contain only Shorts that are portrait or square, and each episode has its own render. Render the episodes with the same output size so the feed looks consistent.

Can I do both from one timeline?

Yes. Build the full 360-second body once, then build episode bodies by changing audio.parts[] or audio.source_in and the video[] start times. Each is a separate render with its own Idempotency-Key. The TikTok master and the episodes then cost $0.60 each way, $1.20 together.