# What one AI generation actually costs (markdown mirror)

Source: https://aiapi-pro.com/blog/media-generation-cost-measured-2026

Measured from NovAI usage logs over the 30-day window ending 2026-10-22: 336 paid media generations, free-tier calls excluded.

## Measured distributions

| Modality | Calls | Median | p90 | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image - Seedream family | 79 | $0.034 | $0.046 | $0.092 |
| Image - WAND Vega | 44 | $0.069 | $0.146 | $0.146 |
| Video | 121 | $0.308 | $0.462 | $1.231 |
| 3D | 17 | $0.277 | $0.369 | $0.369 |
| Speech (TTS) | 75 | $0.0008 | $0.0019 | $0.004 |

Sample sizes matter: video (121) and images (123) are reasonably populated; 3D (17) is directional.

## Four findings

1. **Video is roughly 9x an image.** Median video clip $0.308 vs $0.034 for a Seedream image - a 5-second clip is 120+ frames.
2. **Speech is effectively free at the margin.** 73 paid speech calls cost $0.28 total; billed per character, ~40x below an image.
3. **3D is video-adjacent.** Median $0.277 per generation, p90 $0.369.
4. **List price is a floor.** Seedream lists from $0.027, but the measured median is $0.034 because real requests use higher resolutions and pro tiers.

## At scale

| Workload | At measured median |
|---|---|
| 1,000 images | $34 |
| 1,000 video clips (5s) | $308 |
| 1,000 3D models | $277 |
| 1,000 speech clips | $0.80 |

200 clips/month is about $62 - the same budget buys ~1,800 images.

## FAQ

**What does one AI video generation cost?**
Median $0.308 per generated clip across 121 paid video calls in 30 days, with a 90th percentile of $0.462 and a maximum of $1.231. Price depends on model, resolution and clip length.

**What does one AI image cost?**
Median $0.034 for Seedream-family images and $0.069 for WAND Vega images. List prices start lower (about $0.0215) for the cheapest model at base resolution; the measured median is higher because real requests use higher resolutions and pro tiers.

**Why is text-to-speech so much cheaper?**
Speech is billed per character, not per second of GPU compute. 73 paid speech calls cost $0.28 in total - a median of $0.0008 per call.

**Is 3D generation more expensive than video?**
In this sample they are close: median $0.277 per 3D generation versus $0.308 per video clip. But the 3D sample is small (17 calls), so treat it as directional.