ClipCost · Last checked Oct 16, 2026 · Prices from verified data

How much does 1 minute of AI video cost?

The honest answer in two numbers: what one 60-second attempt costs, and what a usable minute costs once retries are billed. Both, from verified rates only.

Price your minute Compare 30s & 60s

Quick answer

One minute of general AI video costs $3.00–$24.00 for a single attempt on verified rates, and about $9.00–$72.00 per usable minute with 2 retries. Cheapest verified general rate is Veo 3.1 Lite (720p API) at $0.05/sec: $3.00 / $9.00. Seedance 2.0 at 480p is $4.20 / $12.60, MiniMax H3 at 768P is $4.80 / $14.40, Runway Gen-4 Turbo is $5.76 / $17.28 on Standard annual credits, and Runway Gen-4.5 is $13.82 / $41.47. Talking-presenter video is cheaper per minute but is a different product. Kling is not priced here — its per-generation cost is unverified.

Basis: every rate verified Oct 16, 2026 in assets/data.js. “Usable” = 3 attempts (1 + 2 retries), the calculator convention. 60s figures are rate × 60 (or credits/sec × 60 × plan $/credit); usable = single-try × 3. Finished 60s video is usually stitched from short generations. Estimates (Luma buckets, Hailuo per-second derived) and unverified tools (Kling, Vidu, Descript generation) are excluded from the ranking tables.

Cost of 1 minute: single-try vs usable

†Pika credit value $0.00889 applies on both Starter annual ($8/mo, 900 credits) and Creator annual ($28/mo, 3,150 credits), but only Creator includes a commercial licence. Rows are sorted in the surrounding text by general-video usefulness, not strictly by price, because resolution and access differ — read the Rate column before comparing a 480p API row with a 720p subscription row. Full working in the calculator.

Notice what the table is really showing: a 24× spread inside general video alone, from $3.00 to $72.00 for the same finished minute depending on model and resolution, before you have paid for voice, music or editing. “AI video costs about X per minute” without a model, resolution, access route and retry count is not a price — it is a slogan.

Presenter minutes are a different market

If your minute is a person talking to camera, presenter tools win by an order of magnitude — HeyGen Avatar III works out at about sixteen cents a finished minute on Creator annual credits before retries. If your minute is cinematic B-roll, landscapes, product shots or anything the presenter cannot mime, they are not substitutes at any price. Pick the table that matches the shot, not the cheapest cell on the page.

Single vs usable: why retries dominate

Retries are not a pessimism setting. Hands, faces, text, motion and prompt adherence fail often enough that planning for 1–3 regenerations per keeper is normal. Because every tool in the main table bills per generated second or per credit, a failed attempt costs exactly as much as a successful one. That is why the usable column is simply three times the single-try column — and why a creator averaging four attempts should multiply by four instead.

Plan limits then decide whether the usable price is even purchasable on a given tier. Runway’s Standard plan holds 625 credits: one minute of Gen-4.5 needs 720 credits for a single attempt, so Standard cannot cover even one single-try minute of Gen-4.5, let alone a usable minute at 2,160 credits. Turbo (300 credits per minute-attempt) fits two single attempts, still not one usable minute. Bigger plans and Runway top-ups (minimum 1,000 credits for $10, $0.01/credit, never expire) change the cash story — our Runway cost-per-video page works that blended maths in full. Pika has the mirror-image trap: Wan credits are cheap, but the Starter tier carrying that credit price has no commercial licence.

Traps that make a minute cost more than the table

• Stitching: Gen-4.5 makes 2–10s generations and Veo makes 8s native clips. A minute is an edit, and failed joins cost time and sometimes re-generations.
• Resolution jumps: Veo Standard is 8× Lite per second; Seedance rises from $0.07/sec at 480p to $0.374/sec at 1080p. Price the resolution you will publish, not the demo resolution.
• Access route: the cheapest rows are API prices (Gemini API, BytePlus, MiniMax). They have no monthly minimum, but they assume API workflow and self-editing. Subscription rows are browser-easy and expire monthly.
• Credit expiry: Runway Standard/Pro credits reset, Pika credits refresh monthly, Kling membership credits expire after 1 month. An unused balance raises your effective per-minute cost above every figure above.
• Video-input and add-ons: Seedance’s table rate is the no-video-input rate; video-input is token-priced and higher. MiniMax can bill input media beyond free allowances. Audio, upscaling and expressive-motion add-ons vary by tool — check before generating.
• What is not included: voiceover, music licensing, captions, stock, editing software and your time. For many channels those exceed the generation bill.

Not priced here, deliberately: Kling (per-generation unverified — see how to estimate from in-product costs), Vidu and Descript generation (not verified), and Luma, whose per-second figure is a bucket-derived estimate (720p: 100 credits/5s, but 300 credits/10s, so a linear minute would mislead). If a tool matters to you and is missing from the table, that absence is information.

Sources & method

Rates verified Oct 16, 2026 in assets/data.js against official pages for Veo, Seedance, MiniMax, Pika, Runway, HeyGen and Hedra. All minute figures are transparent arithmetic from those rates — no new external price introduced. Try other durations and retry counts in the calculator, compare headline tools on compare, or see the overall cheapest AI video generator ranking and the FAQ.

FAQ

How much does 1 minute of AI video cost?

On verified rates, one 60-second attempt ranges from $3.00 (Veo 3.1 Lite 720p API and Hedra Character-3 720p API, different video types) to $24.00 (Veo 3.1 Standard). A usable minute with 2 retries is roughly triple: $9.00 to $72.00. Runway Gen-4.5 is $13.82 single-try and $41.47 usable on Standard annual credits.

Why is a usable minute about three times the single-try price?

Because ClipCost costs a usable video as 1 generation plus 2 retries — 3 paid attempts. Every attempt is billed per second or per credit on the tools listed, so retries multiply the minute linearly. If you average fewer retries, your cost falls proportionally.

What is the cheapest way to make 1 minute of AI video?

By verified rate, Veo 3.1 Lite at $0.05/sec ($3.00 single-try, $9.00 usable per minute) for general video via API, and Seedance 480p ($4.20/$12.60) and MiniMax H3 768P ($4.80/$14.40) close behind. Talking-presenter tools are cheaper per minute but make a different kind of video.

Is a 60-second video one generation?

Usually no. Runway Gen-4.5 generates 2–10 seconds at a time and Veo generates 8-second native clips, so a finished minute is normally stitched from several generations. The per-second maths still applies, but editing time and failed stitches are extra.

Does Kling cost less for a minute of video?

We cannot verify that. Kling's plan credits and expiry are verified, but its per-generation credit cost was not publicly verifiable on Oct 16, 2026, so ClipCost does not state a Kling cost per minute. Check the in-product cost in your Kling account.

What else adds to the cost of a finished minute?

Voiceover, music, editing, captions, stock, upscaling and your time are not in these generation figures. Subscription waste matters too: a plan whose credits expire unused raises your effective cost above the per-second rate.