What is one AI credit worth in dollars? Runway, Vidu, Pika, Topaz

A credit is not a unit of anything: it is $0.01 on Runway's developer API, $0.005 on Vidu's API, about $0.0111 on a Pika plan, and between $0.08 and $0.12 on Topaz's API. The same 100 credits is therefore $1.00, $0.50, $1.11 or $8 to $12 depending on whose they are, which is why dollars per finished second is the only fair comparison.

The four credit values

Each vendor prints its own conversion, in different places. Runway's pricing guide says credits can be bought at $0.01 each. Vidu's pricing page says $0.005 each. Pika lists plan fees and credits, so the rate is derived. Topaz's API page prints a per-credit price per tier.

Why the credit count misleads

Vendors choose what a credit buys. Runway's page prices a Gen-4.5 second at 12 credits, which is $0.12. Vidu's page prices a Q3-turbo 720p second at 11 credits, which is $0.055. The credit counts look similar and the dollar prices differ by more than 2 times. Topaz's credits are a different kind of unit entirely: its page ties one credit to a 32 MP enhance output, not to a second of video.

So never rank tools by credits per clip. Convert with the table, divide by the clip length, and then count only the seconds you keep.

What Sume uses instead

Sume's API has no credit unit. The wallet is in US dollars, and the usage docs say balance is USD-denominated, with compatibility fields that can show rounded cent values as credits. Usage rows are reserved, captured or refunded, so a figure in the ledger is already a dollar figure you can add to the other columns above.

That removes the conversion step, not the comparison step: you still need the per-second rate for the model you will call, from the catalog or the API pricing page.