Wan 3.0 price: Alibaba US Virginia rate vs the Sume per-second bill

Wan 3.0 has more than one price. Alibaba's Model Studio documentation lists the US (Virginia) region at $0.041256, $0.082513 and $0.165025 per second for 480p, 720p and 1080p. Alibaba's launch post gives $0.05, $0.10 and $0.20 per second, and Sume bills $0.0625, $0.125 and $0.25.

The three numbers are not a contradiction. They are a regional rate, a headline rate, and a rate with Sume's billing on top.

What are the three rate cards?

Alibaba's Wan 3.0 page (updated September 28, 2026) shows the Virginia figures. The launch post from August 13, 2026 shows the rounded headline figures. Sume's catalog lists the fal rate of $0.05, $0.10 and $0.20 from 2026-08-24 and bills that list times 1.25, rounded up to the cent for each job.

What does the difference cost on a real clip?

A 10-second 720p clip is about $0.83 at the Virginia rate and $1.25 billed on Sume. The Sume figure includes the 25 percent on top of the provider list, and the whole job is one request with one balance.

What do you get for the Sume rate?

Sume does not ask you to open a regional cloud account. You call POST /v1/videos with model: "wan-3.0", pay from the workspace balance, and read the billed amount in usage.cost on the poll response. The same request shape also reaches Seedance, Kling, Grok Imagine Video and MiniMax, so changing model is a field edit.

If you already run in Alibaba Cloud with committed spend and need the Virginia region, the first-party rate is lower. That is a decision about where you already have accounts, not about the model.

• Same model, same duration range on Sume: 2 to 30 seconds.
• 480p, 720p and 1080p, with text-to-video, image-to-video and reference-to-video.
• No regional endpoint to choose; Sume's published contract carries bare catalog ids.

How do you check the billed price yourself?

Submit one 2-second 480p job and read the number back. Expect $0.13 (2 seconds at $0.0625, rounded up).

import os, time, requests

BASE = "https://api.sume.com/v1"
H = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SUME_API_KEY']}"}

job = requests.post(f"{BASE}/videos", headers=H, json={
    "model": "wan-3.0", "prompt": "A leaf spins on still water",
    "duration": 2, "resolution": "480p"}).json()
while True:
    s = requests.get(job["polling_url"], headers=H).json()
    if s["status"] in ("completed", "failed", "cancelled"):
        break
    time.sleep(8)
print(s["status"], s.get("usage"))