Veo 3.1 Lite retires October 22: cheapest 8-second clips on Sume

Veo 3.1 Lite costs $0.05 per second at 720p on Google's Gemini API, so an 8-second clip is $0.40, but the Lite preview id shuts down on October 22, 2026. The cheapest Sume rows for an 8-second clip bill $0.30 at Omni 360p and $0.50 at the 480p tiers of Wan 3.0 and MiniMax H3.

Lite's limits

Google lists Lite at $0.05 per second at 720p and $0.08 at 1080p, with 4K unavailable, and says audio is included by default. Lite offers no extension, no reference images and no 4K, and its durations are 4, 6 or 8 seconds, with 1080p only at 8 seconds. Because the preview id ends on October 22, a price comparison is useful only for planning the switch.

Eight seconds, line by line

Sume bills list times 1.25 per row and rounds up to cents. List prices below are the fal rates recorded in the Video Router doc; the Google row is Google's own page.

Compute your own mix

Paste your monthly clip counts into the snippet to see where a lower tier saves real money. It uses the catalog list rates, the 1.25 multiplier, and cent rounding per job.

import math

LIST = {"omni-360p": 0.03, "wan-3.0-480p": 0.05, "minimax-h3-480p": 0.05,
        "omni-720p": 0.10}
clips_per_month = 500
seconds = 8

for name, rate in LIST.items():
    per_job = math.ceil(round(rate * seconds * 1.25 * 100, 6)) / 100
    print(f"{name:16} ${per_job:.2f} per clip  ${per_job * clips_per_month:,.2f} per month")

When the cheapest row is the wrong row

A price table is only a starting point. The quickest honest test is to render the same prompt on two rows at the same length, and compare the clips next to the billed amounts in usage.cost.

• If you need a person speaking in sync, check the audio line of the row first.
• If you need 1080p, compare Omni 1080p at $0.15 list per second, not the 360p price.
• If you need reference images, Lite had none, and Omni on Sume takes up to 10.
• If you need 30 seconds in one shot, look at rows with a longer duration range.

Quality is the other column

A 360p clip is a preview, not a deliverable. Use the cheap tier to approve the motion and the prompt, then render the keeper at 720p or higher. The rows differ in features too: the wan-3.0 row notes audio, and minimax-h3 has native stereo audio with 768p as its native size, per the Video Router table. Read capabilities from the live catalog before you commit to one.