A 24-door advent calendar of AI clips: cost per door and per calendar

A 24-door advent calendar made of AI clips costs $8.95 on the light plan, $17.29 on the mid plan and $36.97 on the premium plan on Sume. Each door is a card from Ideogram 4.5, a 5-second Wan 3.0 clip and a 200-character voice line, and the calendar adds one $0.125 music bed. The mid plan is a medium card at $0.075, a 720p clip at $0.63 and a voice line at $0.01 (read 2026-10-06).

An advent calendar is a good test of a content pipeline because the deadline is fixed and the unit is repeatable. December 1 is not movable, and each of the 24 doors is the same recipe with a different gift or message. The recipe is priced in three tiers below. Pick one before you start, since a calendar whose first twelve doors look different from the last twelve reads as an accident.

Build in October, schedule in December

The doors do not need to exist on the day they open, so there is no reason to generate daily. Generate all 24 in one batch in October, check each one, and schedule the publishing. A batch lets you retry a weak door in November at a normal price, rather than at midnight on December 11. Each job reserves its price when it is accepted, so the balance has to cover the batch you submit: $17.29 on the mid plan.

Budget a retake allowance of 25 percent on the clips. On the mid plan that is 6 clips at $0.63, $3.78, which brings the calendar to $21.07. On the light plan it is 6 clips at $0.32, $1.92.

• Write the 24 gift lines first, and keep each under 200 characters so every voice line bills one cent.
• Use one visual style across all cards, and quote the door number in the image only when you will check the spelling.
• Render one door at the light tier first. If the recipe works, promote only the doors you want to feature.
• Keep one music bed for every door: it is $0.125 once, not $3.00 for 24.

Price a calendar in code

Change the door count for a 12 days of Christmas version, or the tiers for a premium calendar. The script adds the single music bed and a retake allowance on the clips.

import math

TIERS = {
    "light": (0.0375, 0.32),
    "mid": (0.075, 0.63),
    "premium": (0.275, 1.25),
}
VOICE = 0.01
MUSIC = 0.125


def calendar(doors: int, tier: str, retakes: float = 0.0) -> float:
    card, clip = TIERS[tier]
    per_door = card + clip * (1 + retakes) + VOICE
    return math.ceil(round((doors * per_door + MUSIC) * 100, 6)) / 100


for tier in TIERS:
    print(tier, calendar(24, tier), calendar(24, tier, 0.25))
print("12 days, mid:", calendar(12, "mid"))

Shorter and longer calendars

The same recipe prices other calendars. Twelve days of Christmas on the mid plan is 12 doors at $0.715 plus one bed, $8.71. A 31-day countdown to a sale is $22.29, and a 7-day launch week is $5.13. The shape is linear, with the music bed as the only fixed cost, so you can quote the number before the creative is signed off.

The voice line is the one part you can write freely. A line of up to 210 characters bills one cent and a line of 211 characters bills two, so 24 doors under that limit cost $0.24 in voice across the whole calendar.

Where a calendar can go wrong

The costly mistakes are not in the clips. A door that quotes a price or a date wrongly has to be redone, and a calendar that is late is worth less than a cheap one that is on time. Put the review in the plan: one person reads all 24 cards on one day, and the balance has a 25 percent reserve for the fixes.

The live model limits are in the Video Router catalog, the card tiers are in the images docs, and the voice rate is on the API pricing page.