What the resolution step costs on Vidu

Vidu prices three resolutions at three and a half, six and seven and a half cents a second. Just over double from bottom to top across three tiers is the flattest resolution curve published by any channel here. As of 2026-09-22.

Inclusion rule. Resolutions with a published per-second figure on the API price page, for the reference-to-video model the page prices. Other models on the same channel are listed on the channel entry. Order. Ascending by resolution.

1Where Vidu sits in this column

Inclusion rule. Channels publishing a rate at more than one resolution on the same page. A channel with a single figure has no step to price. Order. Alphabetical by channel name.

2The steps get smaller as the resolution rises, which is unusual

Three and a half to six is a rise of about seventy per cent; six to seven and a half is a quarter. Almost every other channel here does the opposite, keeping the lower steps cheap and charging heavily for the top tier.

The practical effect is that the deliverable tier costs nearly what the demo tier costs. A production generating at 1080p pays a little over double the bottom figure, where the same decision costs four times as much on one channel and seven on another.

3A flat curve makes the advertised figure nearly honest

Every channel advertises its cheapest tier. The gap between that figure and the one a buyer actually pays is the real measure of how misleading a rate card is, and here the gap is about four cents a second.

Over a fifteen-minute episode that difference is a few tens of dollars rather than a few hundred. It is the kind of spread that lets a budget be written before the delivery resolution is settled, which almost nothing else in the register supports.

4The off-peak halving sits on top of the whole curve

The same page states that off-peak generation is half the normal price, and it is not attached to a single tier. So the flattest curve here also has a conditional floor of under two cents a second at its bottom end.

That makes scheduling a pricing decision rather than a logistics one. A production willing to generate outside peak hours is buying at a rate no unconditional figure in the register reaches, and the condition is published rather than negotiated.

• Q3 reference-to-video
  $0.035, $0.06 and $0.075 per second at 540p, 720p and 1080pVidu, API prices / recorded 2026-09-12
• Conditional discount
  Off-peak generation is half the normal pricestated on the same pageVidu, API prices / recorded 2026-09-12

5The production behind the price

Price aside, what goes into the seconds behind “Vidu resolution step” is described in SceneMixer's guides:

Each segment is generated on whatever tier was selected at the time, and the episode composites them together.

SceneMixer, 480P, 720P or 1080P: Which Tier to Pick — “Can I mix tiers in one episode?” (read 2026-10-13)

It rewrites one episode's storyboard from its outline, discarding that episode's segments and videos.

SceneMixer, Checking the Summary, and What “Re-parse” Means — “What does Re-parse in step 3 do?” (read 2026-10-13)

6Sources

Read from the API price page published at platform.vidu.com on 2026-09-22. The rate this column sits beside is on Vidu; what the register accepts as published is on the method page. The same column on other channels: Veo, Sora. Every column: what each channel publishes.