How Much Does Seedance 2.5 Cost? Full Rate Breakdown
Seedance 2.5 costs $0.118589 to $0.461856 per second of finished video. Worked totals per clip, the rules that add billable seconds, and what stays free.
How much Seedance 2.5 costs comes down to two numbers: the per-second rate for the resolution you render at, and how many seconds the platform decides to bill. A ten-second 1080p clip is about $4.62. The same ten seconds at 480p is about $1.19. There is no seat licence on top of that and no minimum spend, and the two to five minutes a render takes are not billed.
The second number is where the surprises live, because the seconds billed and the seconds you asked for are often different.
How much does Seedance 2.5 cost per second
Each resolution carries two rates. The lower one applies to any request that includes a reference video. The higher one applies to everything else, including generation from a prompt alone and generation from still images.
| Resolution | Generation only | With a reference video |
|---|---|---|
| 480p | $0.118589 | $0.071153 |
| 720p | $0.266824 | $0.160094 |
| 1080p | $0.461856 | $0.275904 |
1080p is 3.9 times the 480p rate for generation-only work, and 1.7 times the 720p rate. The resolution field moves your bill further than any other setting in the request, and it is the one most people set once and never revisit.
Cost per video at the lengths people actually use
Clips run from 4 to 30 seconds, with 5 seconds as the default. At the generation-only rates:
| Length | Resolution | Approximate cost |
|---|---|---|
| 4 seconds | 480p | $0.47 |
| 5 seconds | 480p | $0.59 |
| 10 seconds | 480p | $1.19 |
| 10 seconds | 720p | $2.67 |
| 10 seconds | 1080p | $4.62 |
| 30 seconds | 1080p | $13.86 |
Thirty seconds at 1080p is about $13.86, and that is the ceiling for one request, since 30 seconds is the longest clip this model produces in a single pass. Cost scales linearly with length at a fixed resolution, so any length between the rows above can be read off the per-second rate directly.
The three rules that push the total above the rate card
A reference video is charged for its own length. Attach a source clip and its duration is added to the output duration before the rate applies. The per-second rate drops when a reference is present, which offsets part of this, but the seconds go up. A ten-second source producing ten seconds of output bills twenty seconds at $0.275904, about $5.52, against $4.62 for the same output generated from a prompt.
Any request containing video has a floor of five thirds of the output duration. A two-second source with a five-second output adds up to seven billable seconds, and the floor puts it at nine. Nine is what you pay. The floor dominates whenever the source clip is short relative to the output.
duration: -1 reserves at the cap. Letting the model pick the length reserves credits as though the clip will run the full 30 seconds, then refunds the difference once the real duration is known. The refund arrives, but the reserve has to clear first, so a thin balance returns a 402 on a clip that was going to cost a dollar.
What Seedance 2.5 does not charge for
Reference images are free, all 30 of them. Reference audio is free, all 10 tracks. Only reference video adds billable seconds.
Polling the task endpoint while a render runs is free, so there is no reason to poll slowly. Generation averages 2 to 5 minutes and none of that wall time is billed; only the seconds of finished video are.
Failed jobs are refunded in full. That includes refusals from content moderation, which come back as error 80006. A refused render costs you the wait and nothing else.
Four ways to bring the cost per clip down
Render at the resolution you deliver at. If the finished file goes into a surface that transcodes everything to 720p, a 1080p render bought pixels nobody receives at 1.7 times the price.
Set duration explicitly. Naming the length avoids the 30-second reserve and the 402 that can follow it on a low balance.
Prefer reference images to reference video wherever either would work. Images cost nothing in billable seconds, while a clip adds its own length and drags the request onto the five-thirds floor.
Iterate at 480p and finish at 1080p. Six five-second takes cost about $3.56 at 480p and about $13.86 at 1080p, and the prompt you are hunting for reads the same in both.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a 30-second Seedance 2.5 video cost? About $13.86 at 1080p with no reference video attached. Thirty seconds is the maximum length for a single generation, so that figure is the per-request ceiling.
How much does Seedance 2.5 cost per video at the defaults? The default duration is 5 seconds. At 480p that is roughly $0.59, at 720p roughly $1.33, and at 1080p roughly $2.31.
Do I pay for failed generations? No. Failed jobs are refunded in full, and that covers moderation refusals returned as error 80006.
Why was my bill longer than my clip?
One of three things: a reference video added its own seconds to the total, the five-thirds floor applied, or you sent duration: -1 and are looking at the 30-second reserve rather than the final charge.
The short version
Seedance 2.5 costs between $0.118589 and $0.461856 per second of finished video depending on resolution, with lower per-second rates when a reference clip is attached. Ten seconds at 1080p is about $4.62, five seconds at 480p is about $0.59, and the 30-second maximum at 1080p is about $13.86. The rate card is the easy half of the answer to how much Seedance 2.5 costs. Watch the reference-video seconds, the five-thirds floor and auto-duration reserves, because those are what separate a bill from the number you calculated.
