How Much Does One Minute of AI Video Cost?

Jonhisking · October 2, 2026

AI video models are priced per second of output, and the prices look small: ten cents here, forty cents there. Multiply by sixty and by the number of attempts it takes to get a usable shot, and a one-minute video can cost anywhere from a few dollars to well over a hundred. Here is what one minute costs on the main video APIs, and how to keep the number down.

One minute of 1080p video with audio

API list prices checked September 30, 2026, multiplied out to 60 seconds:

* No public per-second price from the maker; the rate shown is Runway's API price for that model.

Cheaper at 720p, or without sound

Dropping to 720p, or turning audio off where a model charges for it, cuts the price a lot:

Kling 3.0, for example, charges $0.112 per second at 1080p without audio and $0.168 with it: sound adds 50%.

The number that actually matters: attempts

Nobody gets a usable one-minute video from one generation. Most models produce clips of 5 to 10 seconds, so a minute is 6 to 12 clips, and each clip often takes 2 to 4 tries before the motion, faces and timing look right. A realistic budget is the list price times three.

On Veo 3.1 at 1080p, that turns $24 into roughly $72 for one finished minute. On Veo 3.1 Fast, $7.20 becomes about $22.

How to spend less

1. Draft cheap, finish expensive. Find the right prompt and framing on a draft or lite model at 720p, then render only the final take on the premium model.
2. Generate short. A 5-second test clip shows whether a prompt works for half the cost of a 10-second one.
3. Skip audio you will replace. If music and voice-over are added in editing anyway, use a silent mode where the model offers one.
4. Use image-to-video. Starting from a still you already like gives far more predictable results than text alone, which means fewer retries.
5. Check resolution needs. Social feeds compress video heavily. 720p is often indistinguishable from 1080p on a phone.

Price your own project

The AI video cost calculator lets you set clip length, number of clips, resolution and audio, and ranks every model by total cost.

Prices change often. Confirm on the provider's pricing page before a large job.