What a video ad really costs in 2026
Real rates, not ranges: from $1.50 for 15 seconds on Kling 3.0 to $8.10 on Veo 3.1. How that compares to production, and what you are actually paying for.
Ask what a video ad costs and you almost always get "it depends". That is honest and useless. So here are concrete numbers from our own rate table, with an explanation of where each one comes from.
The short version
- A 15-second vertical ad starts at 75 credits. On the Start plan that
works out at roughly $4 per finished ad.
- The most expensive model on the list costs 405 credits for the same
length — about $21 per ad.
- The five-fold spread is not a markup. It is what the models themselves cost.
- A failed generation is not charged, and the ceiling is three attempts.
The table these numbers come from
| Model | Credits per 15s | Ads per month on Start | Per ad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kling 3.0 | 75 | 37 | ~$4.00 |
| Veo 3.1 Lite | 80 | 35 | ~$4.26 |
| Veo 3.1 Fast | 125 | 22 | ~$6.65 |
| Seedance 2.0 | 170 | 16 | ~$9.05 |
| Veo 3.1 Standard | 405 | 6 | ~$21.55 |
The arithmetic is plain: the Start plan is $149 for 2,800 credits a month. Divide the credits by the rate and you get how many finished ads that is; divide $149 by that number and you get the cost per ad. Nothing here is a "website rate" — the credit figures come from the same config file the billing code charges against, so the page and the invoice cannot drift.
Why the models cost different amounts
A more expensive model is not "a better picture" in some general sense. It is three specific things:
- Holding a character across shots. In cheap models a person's face
drifts from scene to scene. For an ad where the hero appears once, that does not matter. For a series of posts with the same character, it does.
- Complex camera movement. An orbit around the product, hard stops, a
focus pull — the things a cheap model turns into mush.
- Lip-synced speech. Lips matching words is charged separately and is
almost always more expensive than the video itself.
If the ad is a product shot with simple movement, the cheap model gives you the same result. That is exactly why we default to it.
Compared to how this is usually done
A shoot day with an operator, lighting and an edit runs into thousands and takes two to three weeks from brief to finished file. For that money you get a package of several clips.
A freelance editor working with stock footage is cheaper, but slower on feedback: a revision takes a day, not a minute.
The real difference is not the price per clip but the price of being wrong. If an expensive shoot does not land, you are not reshooting it tomorrow. If a $1.50 clip does not land, you make three more and compare.
What is included in that $1.50
- The idea. You do not brief the system — it decides what to shoot.
- A storyboard you see before a single credit is spent.
- Three attempts if the result does not satisfy you.
- Captions and a vertical format built for the feed.
- Post copy written separately for each network.
So $1.50 is not the price of a file. It is the price of a finished post.
What these numbers do not cover
Honestly, about the limits:
- The price does not include your check before publishing. The material
is produced by third-party models, and we do not guarantee rights to it.
- Plan credits do not roll over into the next month. Packs bought on top
of a plan last 12 months.
- Platform-licensed music is not available through any API — not for us and
not for anyone else.
Working out your own budget
Three posts a week is roughly 12 clips a month. On the cheapest model that is 900 credits — $18 of generation. On the most expensive, $97.
The exact figure for your own volume is easier to get from the sliders on the pricing page, which also shows which plan it lands on.