RenderDrama

What a second of AI video costs, channel by channel

The four shapes a published price takes here

Every line on this ledger begins as one of four shapes on a vendor's own page: money against a second, credits against a second, a recurring plan price, or a recurring credit allowance. Two of them reach a rate, and two of them stop short of one. As of 2026-09-12.

The four shapes, ordered by how far each sits from a rateThe four ways a price is printed on the channels tracked here, stacked from the shape that is already a rate per second down to the shape that cannot become one without a figure the vendor has not published. The gap between the second and third rows is where a channel stops being comparable with the rest of the ledger.Already a rateCurrency per secondA figure in money against one second of output. Goes on theledger as published, once the tier beside it is read.Credits per secondHalf a rate. Becomes money wherever the same vendor also printswhat one credit costs.Plan pricesBuys a period of access. Carries no quantity of finishedpicture, so nothing divides into it.Monthly credit allowanceper planA quota that resets. The same quota buys different runtimesdepending on the tier spending it.Needs a figure nobody published
Fig. 1 The order is not a ranking of channels. It is the amount of published arithmetic still missing before a line becomes a price per finished second.

These are not categories invented for the site. They are the four ways the channels tracked here actually print a price, and each turns up in the first column of tables scattered across the ledger, the unpriced entries and the method page. Until now those cells pointed nowhere.

What separates them is whether the shape carries a unit. Money against a second carries one. Credits against a second carries one and waits on a second figure before it means anything in money. A plan price carries a period rather than a quantity of output, and an allowance carries a quantity of credits rather than a quantity of picture.

Each page below puts the same three questions to one shape: why the ledger keeps it as a column of its own, what a line in that shape actually records, and what it still declines to tell a buyer. The channel-by-channel figures stay where they were — these pages are about the column, not the cell.

1The shapes

  • Currency per second — A figure in dollars against one second of output needs no conversion, and is still unusable until the page names the resolution it belongs to.
  • Credits per second — Credits against a second of output are half a rate.
  • Plan prices — A monthly plan price buys access for a period, not a quantity of finished picture, which is why so few of them ever convert into a rate per second.
  • Monthly credit allowance per plan — An allowance is a quota of credits that resets, and the same quota buys different amounts of finished picture depending on the tier that spends it.

A shape earns a page here once it appears in the first column of a table on this site. A fifth way of printing a price would get one on the day a channel started using it.

Elsewhere on the ledger: Channels, Ratings, Unpriced, What each channel publishes, One model, several sellers, Single ratings, Questions, Terms, Learn, Data. How a figure earns a line is set out on the method page.

2What the seconds buy

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

It is the reference every later segment points at, which is what keeps a character's face and a location consistent across an episode.

SceneMixer, Glossary — “What is a setup image for?” (read 2026-10-13)

A short drama episode has two jobs: stop the scroll in its first seconds, and make the next episode feel necessary in its last.

SceneMixer, Writing Hooks and Cliffhangers Into a Short Drama Script (read 2026-10-13)