What a TikTok or Instagram video import costs on Sume: $0.15

Importing a public TikTok or Instagram video into Sume costs a fixed estimate of $0.15 per accepted import. The call is POST /v1/media-imports: you send a public URL, Sume fetches the video, mirrors it to durable media.sume.com storage and records it as a workspace asset. That price is per import, not per second or per megabyte, so a 9-second Reel and a 90-second clip cost the same.

This page covers what the $0.15 is attached to, which URLs are rejected, and how to budget a batch. Sume's video inspect, video frames and video analyses docs all say the same thing about intake: the clip must already live on Sume, and POST /v1/media-imports is how a social URL gets there. The price comes from the operation description in Sume's API source, which the docs point to as the live OpenAPI; confirm it against GET /v1/catalog before you commit a large batch.

What does the $0.15 pay for?

One accepted import creates a queued media_import job and a mimp_ resource. Sume fetches the media, copies the bytes to media.sume.com and registers a workspace asset with status mirrored. The result is a durable Sume URL you can hand to the tools that refuse the open internet.

The fixed price covers the fetch and the mirror, not anything you do afterwards. Each later step is billed on its own rate card, and several are free. The table lists the usual next steps for a reference clip.

Which URLs does an import accept?

Only public TikTok and Instagram video URLs. A YouTube link or any other host is rejected with unsupported_platform, and the practical size cap is about 2 GB. The request body is strict: url is required, get_transcript is an optional boolean, and the usual communication fields (mode, webhook_url, wait_timeout_seconds) apply.

Two things Sume does not do. It does not accept a private or login-gated post, because the URL must be public HTTPS. And it does not make the import a license: the file lands in your workspace so your tools can read it, but whether you may reuse the footage is a rights question Sume cannot answer for you.

import os
import requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://api.sume.com/v1/media-imports",
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SUME_API_KEY']}",
        "Idempotency-Key": "import-demo-001",
    },
    json={"url": "https://www.tiktok.com/@example/video/1234567890"},
    timeout=30,
)
print(resp.status_code)
print(resp.json())

How much do 25, 100 or 1,000 imports cost?

Multiply by $0.15. The wallet is USD-denominated, so there is no credit conversion to do.

Does a retry charge me twice?

Send an Idempotency-Key on every import. Sume's docs say a replay with the same key returns the original job instead of creating a second one, which is the protection against a double $0.15 after a timeout. Without a key, a client that retries after a dropped connection can create a second job, and the second job is a second import.

The usual money rules from Errors and rate limits apply: a wallet that cannot cover the reserve gets 402 insufficient_credits before work starts, and 429 queue_full means workspace capacity is full. To see what one import actually cost, read its row in the ledger with GET /v1/usage?job_id=..., described in the Usage docs. Do not sum ledger rows by hand: a refunded row keeps its hold amount.

How do I keep import spend down?

• Shortlist before you import. A trending or keyword search returns public watch URLs and metadata, so filter on views and relevance first and import only what you will inspect.
• Import once and reuse the media.sume.com URL. Probe, stills, frames, trim and detach all take the Sume URL, so you never pay $0.15 twice for the same clip.
• Use the free tools first. Probe and stills cost nothing, so look at a clip before paying for a transcript.
• Use one key per retry. Generate the idempotency key from the source URL so a re-run of your script cannot import the same post twice.