What a minute of finished footage costs

At published rates a minute of generated video runs from about $0.60 at the cheapest figure in the register to roughly $25 at Kling's 4K rate of $0.42 a second. LTX-2.5 alone spans $5.40 to $23.40 a minute depending on settings. As of 2026-09-22.

Inclusion rule. Channels with a published per-second figure. The minute figure is that figure times sixty and nothing else: no regeneration, no compositing, no failed attempts. Order. By the lowest figure in each row.

1This is arithmetic, not an estimate

Every number here is a published rate multiplied by sixty. No assumption has been added about how many attempts a usable minute takes, because that would turn a checkable figure into a guess wearing the same clothes.

The practical consequence is that these are floors. A real minute of usable footage costs this much plus whatever was generated and discarded, and the discard rate is the number nobody publishes.

2The within-channel spread is as wide as the between-channel spread

One channel here covers a four-fold range on its own, depending on settings. That is roughly the same range that separates the cheapest channel from the most expensive at comparable resolutions. A production that has not decided its settings has not narrowed its budget by choosing a vendor.

Which is the argument for costing a specific configuration rather than a brand. The ledger keeps the settings in the row for that reason.

3Why a minute rather than an episode

A minute is short enough that the arithmetic stays honest and long enough to feel like something. An episode figure would need an episode length, and episode lengths vary more than the prices do, so the number would be mostly an assumption about format.

Anyone who wants the episode figure can multiply. What this page will not do is pick a length, multiply, and present the result as though it were a published fact about cost.

• Wan 2.2 Ultra Fast
  $0.01 per secondthe cheapest published second recorded hereWaveSpeed AI, prices / recorded 2026-09-22
• Veo 3.1 Lite
  $0.05 per secondthe lowest published Veo rateGoogle, Gemini API prices / recorded 2026-09-12
• Published per-second price
  $0.084 to $0.168 per second at 720p to 1080p, and $0.42 per second at 4KKling AI, developer prices / recorded 2026-09-12
• LTX-2.5
  $0.09 to $0.39 per secondrange across settingsLTX Studio, API / recorded 2026-09-12

4What the seconds buy

Price aside, what goes into the seconds behind “A minute, costed” is described in SceneMixer's guides:

Measured across every job that finished successfully on scenemixer.com in the thirty days to 20 September 2026: analysis of a whole book runs about 2 minutes 49 seconds at the median, one episode's storyboard 1 minute 54 seconds, one video segment 3 minutes 20 seconds, and compositing an episode 3 minutes 52 seconds.

SceneMixer, Turn a Novel into a Video Series with AI — “How long does it take to produce one episode?” (read 2026-10-13)

Sixty to a hundred and twenty seconds is the working band for vertical short drama, and the outline paces for it.

SceneMixer, AI Drama for TikTok & Reels — “How long should a feed episode be?” (read 2026-10-13)

5Sources

Each figure is read from the vendor page linked in the ledger, checked 2026-09-22. How a figure qualifies is on method; what a rate leaves out is on limits and unspent credits and parallel generations. Nearby: Who publishes, Clip ceilings, Expiry.