Ten Seedance 2.5 shots at once: the balance to hold before submit

Ten 6 second Seedance 2.5 shots at 720p reserve about $34.67 from your Sume balance at submit, because each job holds provider list x 1.25 until it finishes. At 480p the ten shots hold $16.12 and at 1080p $85.29. If the balance cannot cover a job's reserve, that submit fails with 402 insufficient_credits before any provider work starts.

This is the practical side of a Kling 4.0 style ten-shot plan. The fal explainer (read 2026-10-05) lists up to 10 keyframe images for the full model. On Sume today you would run ten separate shots, so the cash you need up front is the sum of ten reserves.

What gets reserved

The video docs state that Sume reserves provider list x 1.25 at submit and that usage.cost is the amount billed. The generation admission docs add that a submit succeeds only if the request is valid, the balance can be reserved, and the workspace has capacity.

So there are three separate ways a tenth job can fail. The balance can run out (402 insufficient_credits). The queue can be full (429 queue_full). Or the submit rate can be too high (429 rate_limited). Only the first is about money, and you can compute it before you send anything. The balance check is per submit: the reserve is taken when each job is accepted, so the tenth job is the one most likely to fail if you started with only enough for nine. Top up before you start a batch, not between shots, so a half-finished storyboard does not stall with some shots rendered and others missing.

Reserve for ten 6 second shots

Capacity is a separate limit

Capacity is the second limit. The admission docs list accepted job capacity by plan: Free 6, Pro 24, Startup 48, Scale 120 and Enterprise 120, counting both processing and queued jobs. Ten shots do not fit on a Free workspace in one wave: the first six are accepted, and the rest fail with 429 queue_full until some finish. The docs say to prefer the live generation_limits field over the static table.

The wave size matters too. The docs define wave_size_hint as a submission hint only, not a concurrency limit, so use it to pace submits and not to decide how many shots you can afford. A queued job is not a failure. Store the job id, poll with backoff, and fetch the result when the job is completed. Retry a queue_full or rate_limited submit with the same Idempotency-Key, so the replay returns the original job instead of reserving twice.

Check the balance first

This adds up the reserve for a list of shots and compares it with a balance you provide, so you can stop before the first submit. The prices come from the Seedance 2.5 token formula described in the pricing post.

def reserve(width, height, seconds, rate):
    tokens = width * height * seconds * 24 / 1024
    return tokens / 1000 * rate * 1.25

shots = [6] * 10
balance = 30.00
need = sum(reserve(1280, 720, s, 0.0214) for s in shots)
print(f"need ${need:.2f}, balance ${balance:.2f}")
if need > balance:
    gap = need - balance
    print(f"top up ${gap:.2f} or lower resolution before submitting")
    cheap = sum(reserve(864, 496, s, 0.0214) for s in shots)
    print(f"480p drafts would hold ${cheap:.2f}")

Cheaper ways to run ten

The lower-cost way to run ten shots is a draft ladder. Run the ten at 480p for $16.12, keep the three or four that work, and rerun only those at 720p. That is cheaper than a full 720p pass of $34.67 even if you keep half. The reference video post shows when a video reference raises the reserve.

Work out the ladder before you start. Ten drafts at 480p are $16.12. If four shots pass, rerunning them at 720p adds about $13.87, so the whole project is about $30 against $34.67 for ten straight 720p renders, and you have looked at every shot twice. If six pass, the total is about $37, so the saving disappears; the ladder pays when fewer than about half of your first drafts survive. Keep one more number in mind, the price of a single shot, because a failed or rejected job should be rerun alone rather than as part of a new wave.

Whichever route you choose, the jobs docs show how to read results, and usage.cost on each finished job is the figure to reconcile against your balance.