{
  "id": "video",
  "route": "/guides/how-to-calculate-ai-video-generation-cost/",
  "anchor": "cite-video",
  "title": "A generation rate is not the cost of an approved second.",
  "intro": "The same fictional 30-second ad reaches a USD 126 budget at 25% assumed acceptance and USD 106.50 at 100%. Fixed editing work remains in both cases. Acceptance is an input, not a measured success rate for any model.",
  "columns": [
    "Assumed acceptance (%)",
    "Charged attempts",
    "Generated seconds",
    "Usable seconds (by assumption)",
    "Generation USD",
    "Review USD",
    "Editing USD",
    "Total USD",
    "USD per usable second"
  ],
  "rows": [
    [
      25,
      24,
      120,
      30,
      6.0,
      20.0,
      100.0,
      126.0,
      4.2
    ],
    [
      50,
      12,
      60,
      30,
      3.0,
      10.0,
      100.0,
      113.0,
      3.7666666666666666
    ],
    [
      75,
      8,
      40,
      30,
      2.0,
      6.666666666666667,
      100.0,
      108.66666666666667,
      3.6222222222222222
    ],
    [
      100,
      6,
      30,
      30,
      1.5,
      5.0,
      100.0,
      106.5,
      3.55
    ]
  ],
  "note": "Retained Runway Dev API Gen-4 Turbo tariff: 5 credits/second at USD 0.01/credit, checked 16 October 2026. Standard 720p image-to-video, suitable input image required, no audio priced. Six five-second approved clips; one review minute per charged attempt at USD 50/hour; two editing hours at USD 50/hour. No free credits are assumed in this scenario. Tax, FX, reference-image creation, storage, premium exports, audio, rights and other excluded costs are not included. This is allocated usage, not the minimum prepaid purchase. Rounded attempts do not guarantee delivery. On the page and figure, USD money amounts are displayed to two decimal places, and USD per usable second to four; CSV and JSON retain full precision for reproduction. Totals use the unrounded values.",
  "sourceLinks": [
    {
      "label": "Runway developer API pricing",
      "url": "https://docs.dev.runwayml.com/guides/pricing/"
    },
    {
      "label": "Original reproduction kit",
      "url": "/resources/ai-video/2026-10-16-v3/METHOD.md"
    }
  ],
  "created": "2026-10-18",
  "sourceDate": "2026-10-16",
  "evidence": "Original derived planning analysis; not observed customer or product outcomes",
  "retainedInputs": [
    "public/resources/ai-video/2026-10-16-v3/acceptance-sensitivity.csv",
    "public/resources/ai-video/2026-10-16-v3/scenarios.json",
    "public/resources/ai-video/2026-10-16-v3/METHOD.md"
  ],
  "citation": "BenPicks. A generation rate is not the cost of an approved second. Version 2026-10-18. https://benpicks.com/guides/how-to-calculate-ai-video-generation-cost/#cite-video"
}