Use what you have
Own footage, an existing transcript, your own voice and local rendering can avoid generation API charges. Hardware, electricity and your time still have costs.
Choose a capability, then a provider
Keep your choices.
See the trade-offs.
A tool can earn its place through useful output, clear costs and a handoff you can test. These examples help you compare approaches; the calculator does not contact any service.
Local, hosted or a mixture
What are you
actually buying?
A subscription to an app and a separately billed API can have different allowances. Compare the route you intend to use.
Pay per task
Hosted services may bill by tokens, audio minutes, image outputs, characters or generated seconds. Alternatives and retries can add up.
Swap with a test
Compare quality, privacy, rights, timing detail, output format and availability. Similar billing units do not make two services interchangeable.
A planning estimate, not a quote
Build a small
production budget.
USD API rates checked on 30 October 2026. You can change every rate. Quantities cover the whole experiment, including billable alternatives.
Keep the output contract clear
A provider can change.
Your brief can travel.
Before changing a service, try the same small task and check what survives the handoff.
| Capability | Compare the service | Keep with the output |
|---|---|---|
| Planning | Reasoning quality, context, privacy, structured output and tool charges | Brief, evidence, chosen options and model settings |
| Transcription | Word timestamps, speakers, language, noise and upload terms | Words and source times in a common format |
| Images | Reference handling, resolution, consistency, rights and token extras | Prompt, references, dimensions and provenance |
| Video | Duration limits, aspect ratio, motion, audio and failed-task billing | Generated duration, frame rate, source references and attempts |
| Voice | Pronunciation, pacing, identity permissions and character billing | Script, voice choice, timing and consent where relevant |
planning / Google
Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite
Standard paid tier. Output includes thinking tokens. Grounding, caching and other tools can add charges.
Official rate sourceplanning / Anthropic
Claude Sonnet 5.5
Base token rates. Cache writes, tool use and some execution features have separate prices.
Official rate sourcetranscription / Deepgram
Nova-3 Monolingual
Published pay-as-you-go rate, billed per second. Multichannel duration and optional add-ons can increase the bill.
Official rate sourcetranscription / ElevenLabs
Scribe v2
API rate of $0.22 per audio hour, converted here to minutes. Keyterm prompting and transcript editing are separately priced.
Official rate sourceimage / Google
Gemini 3.1 Flash Image
Output-image component only at 1K. Text/image inputs cost $0.50 per million tokens; text/thinking output costs $3 per million. These extra charges are not captured by the image-count line. Larger outputs cost more.
Official rate sourceimage / Black Forest Labs
FLUX1.1 [pro]
Legacy model listed in the official price guide at four credits per image; one credit equals $0.01. Check endpoint availability before selecting it.
Official rate sourcespeech / Google Cloud
WaveNet
Legacy voice tier, equivalent to $4 per million characters after any eligible allowance. Count spaces and relevant markup. This estimate does not apply free allowances.
Official rate sourcespeech / ElevenLabs
Flash / Turbo
API price excluding taxes. Voice availability and the permissions needed for the intended use still need checking.
Official rate sourcevideo / Runway
Google Veo 3.1 Fast
Rate with generated audio; one Runway credit equals $0.01. Audio defaults on. Some failed tasks can still be charged. Use all billable generated seconds, including alternative takes.
Official rate sourcevideo / fal
Google Veo 3.1 Fast
The same model through another host, with generated audio. 4K uses different rates. Availability, terms and limits can differ between hosts.
Official rate sourcePublished rates can change. Free allowances, discounts and cached inputs are not assumed in the estimate. Recheck the selected endpoint before a substantial batch.