Ten 5-second avatar hook variants: $9.20 Standard, $12.25 Plus

Ten different 5-second hooks on one reused Sume avatar are 50 seconds of avatar video: $9.20 at Standard, $12.25 at Plus and $27.50 at Max. If the avatar does not exist yet, add the one-time $0.95 creation fee.

The arithmetic

Rates: Standard $0.184, Plus $0.245, Max $0.55 per second without a product image; $0.194, $0.258, $0.58 with one (Sume pricing page, as of 2026-10-08).

Why one avatar

Hook testing compares openings, so the face and voice should not change. Create the avatar once and send its avatar_handle on each job. Each hook is its own job with its own Idempotency-Key, which lets you retry one without touching the others.

Each job is 5 seconds, above the 4-second minimum. A hook of 3 seconds would be rejected on its own; pad it with a silence beat in a multi-scene plan or lengthen the line.

• Start with Standard for the tournament; the docs call it the fastest path.
• Re-render the winner at Max: 5 x $0.55 = $2.75.
• Total for ten Standard hooks plus a Max re-render of the winner: $9.20 + $2.75 = $11.95.

Tracking the cost

Since the unit is seconds, the budget is simply the sum of planned hook lengths. A script that Sume estimates at 6 seconds costs 20 percent more than one it estimates at 5, so keep hooks at similar length if you want comparable cost per test.

Practical notes

Reading results. A completed result can include public media.sume.com video artifacts, and for avatar videos also public-safe preview fields such as preview_image_url and scene_previews. You can list or read finished videos with GET /v1/avatar-videos and GET /v1/avatar-videos/{id}. Store the job id and the video id together so a billing line can be traced back to a creative.

Reusable avatars. An avatar is created once, for a flat $0.95, and then referenced by its avatar_handle on every later request. Sume normalizes a leading @ away and stores the handle without it. Treat the handle as a stable identifier in your own system, and keep one record per handle noting who the avatar represents and what it may be used for.

Idempotency. The docs examples send an Idempotency-Key header on every create call. Use one key per intended job and reuse it only when you retry the same request. A network timeout followed by a fresh submit with a new key is the one path that can create, and bill, a second job. Keep keys human-readable, such as the campaign and scene, so a support lookup is easy.

Job lifecycle. Every Sume avatar request is job-backed. You submit, store the job id, and poll GET /v1/jobs/{id}/status until it completes, then read GET /v1/jobs/{id}/result. The shared lifecycle also lets you wait with sync or subscribe mode for a limited time instead of polling, and the result carries Sume-hosted artifacts rather than provider URLs, so you never handle a provider queue id. Plan your client around the job, not around a single blocking response.