Cheap Seedance 2.5 API with reference video: from $0.06 a second

Reference video price per second

Add a public https URL in the video input and the call is priced at the reference-video rate for the resolution you asked for. Without a video input the call is priced at the plain rate. The model page is Seedance 2.5.

Both columns are dollars per second.

How the seconds are counted

A reference-video call is billed on two lengths: the clip you get back and the reference clip you send. A 10 second output made from a 5 second reference is 15 billable seconds. At 720p that is $2.25. The same call at 480p is $0.90, and at 1080p $5.10.

Use a short reference. Every second of it is billed at the same rate as a second of output, so a 3 second reference costs less than a 10 second one. POST /v1/estimate with the same body returns the exact total, including the reference seconds, for free.

Reference video price on other platforms

Some platforms do not charge for the seconds of the reference clip, and some do. When you compare, count the same seconds on both sides: the output only, or the output plus the reference.

When a reference video is worth it

A reference video is worth paying for when the new clip has to follow something that already exists: the motion of a take you filmed, the framing of an ad you want to remake, or a character's movement you want repeated in a new scene. If you only need a clip from a prompt or one image, the plain rate is lower and has no reference seconds to count.

Draft first. Run the idea at 480p with a short reference, and look at the result. A 10 second output from a 3 second reference at 480p is 13 billable seconds, which is $0.78. When the take works, render the keeper at 720p or 1080p. The same 13 seconds is $1.95 at 720p and $4.42 at 1080p, so drafting at the smallest size saves most of the cost of the experiments.

Call it

curl -s -X POST https://vidlab.ai/v1/estimate \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"seedance-2.5","input":{"resolution":"720p","duration":10,"video":"https://example.com/reference.mp4"}}'

The answer holds variant, units and price_usd. To start the clip, send the same body to POST /v1/generations with Authorization: Bearer $VIDLAB_API_KEY, a max_price_usd set to the estimate and an Idempotency-Key. Poll GET /v1/generations/{id} until it succeeds. The key comes from the environment and never goes in the command.