30-episode AI Shorts series budget: 45-second episodes, priced

A 30-episode series of 45-second episodes costs about $96.25 on Wan 3.0 at 480p and about $830.16 on Seedance 2.5 at 720p, including voiceover, music, a timeline render and Sume's 5.5% fee. Neither model makes a 45-second clip in one call, so each episode here is a 30-second clip plus a 15-second clip. The ranges come from the repo's rate sources and the assumptions listed below.

Why a series budget is a different question

TechCrunch reported on 2026-09-23 that YouTube Shorts now supports series with seasons and episodes, with a rollout to YouTube Partner Program creators. A season is a repeatable unit, so the useful number is the cost of one episode multiplied out, not the price of one clip.

Assumptions

• Each episode is 45 seconds, built as one 30-second clip and one 15-second clip, both at the same resolution.
• Voiceover is 600 characters per episode. That is an assumption for this worked example, not a Sume default.
• Music is one generation at the catalog price of $0.125.
• The timeline render is billed per output minute at $0.10; 45 seconds is 0.75 minute, so $0.075. The docs call this a reserve ceiling, so the final bill can be lower.
• The 5.5% platform fee is applied once to the whole series amount, floored to the micro-dollar.

Per-episode and per-series arithmetic

Video uses Sume's list-times-1.25 sell prices; Wan is priced per second and Seedance 2.5 by video tokens. Voiceover is 600 x $0.0475 per 1,000 characters.

What moves the number

Resolution is the biggest lever: for Wan 3.0, the 720p rate is exactly twice the 480p rate, so the video line doubles. Switching Wan to Seedance 2.5 changes the video line by a larger factor because Seedance bills for tokens, which scale with pixels, seconds and a 24 fps factor. The voiceover, music and timeline lines together are small next to any video line.

Guarding the run

Because each job reserves its price at submit, a 30-episode batch needs the full amount in the balance or the later jobs get a 402. Read GET /v1/balance first and compare it with the last column. The batch render post covers splitting the series into two groups of 15.