Reference
Pricing & billing
Pay as you go: per second of video, per image, from your API balance.
How billing works
The API is pay as you go. You add funds to your API balance (in US dollars) and each generation is paid from it: videos per second, images per image. No subscription and no plan needed — every tier and every duration is available, and the files have no watermark.
- The price is taken from your balance when you submit the request, and fixed at that moment.
- You're charged when a generation is submitted and finishes processing, whatever its outcome. See When you're charged.
- Your balance is in
GET /api/v1/developer/me(billing.balance_usd). Jobs and images paid from it carrybilling: "api_balance",cost_usd(the price) andcharged_usd(the amount charged). - Every charge, top-up and adjustment is listed in the Console, with a CSV export.
When you're charged
You're charged when a generation is submitted and finishes processing, whatever its outcome — succeeded, failed, stopped by the video model's safety checks, timed out or cancelled. Requests rejected before processing (invalid input, insufficient balance, limits) are never charged.
Price list
Live prices. A video costs its duration × the tier's price per second.
| What | Price (USD) | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Video — Draft | $0.10 | per secondFastest and cheapest |
| Video — Standard | $0.18 | per second |
| Video — Pro | $0.26 | per secondBest quality |
| Audio add-on | $0.02 | per secondTalking photo and sound sync, on top of the tier |
| Image — Flash | $0.06 | per image |
| Image — Pro | $0.12 | per image |
| Character | $0.10 | per character |
| Recap | $0.30 | per recap |
| Story assembly | $0.05 | per story |
| Edit render | $0.05 | per started minute of output |
| Enhance | $0.05 | per started minute of output |
Also available as JSON, no key needed: GET /api/v1/developer/pricing.
Examples
A 5-second Draft costs 5 × $0.10 = $0.50. A 10-second Pro clip costs 10 × $0.26 = $2.60. Talking photo and sound sync add $0.02 per second on top of the tier.
- A 5-second Draft video$0.50
- A 10-second Standard video$1.80
- A 10-second Pro video$2.60
- A 5-second Draft talking photo$0.60
- 100 Flash images$6.00
Adding funds
Top up in the Console by card (Stripe): $5 minimum, $5,000 maximum per top-up. Funds usually appear within seconds. Receipts and saved cards are in the Stripe billing portal, linked from the Console.
Your API balance never expires. Top-ups are non-refundable, except where required by law. If a top-up payment is later refunded or disputed with your bank, API usage is paused and any amount owed is shown in the Console; your next top-up settles it first.
Out of balance?
Create requests return402 insufficient_balance and nothing is made. The message says your balance and the price, for example “Your API balance is $0.20 and this costs $0.50.” Add funds →Auto-recharge
Turn on auto-recharge in the Console and choose a threshold and an amount — for example “when my balance falls below $10, add $25”. It charges the card saved with your first top-up. If a charge fails, auto-recharge turns off and we email you.
Safe retries
Retrying a create request with the same X-Qulture-Request-ID returns the original job and never charges twice.
Concurrency limit
Up to 20 generations can run at the same time per account. One more returns 429 concurrency_limit; wait for a job to finish and retry. Need more? Email support@joinqulture.com. The per-key rate limits apply too.
Studio plans & connectors
Your API balance is separate from Studio plans. Studio plans and credits pay for what you make in the Qulture apps; the API balance pays for API keys created in the Console. The ChatGPT and Claude connectors (MCP) use your Studio plan credits, not your API balance. Balance and credits can't be converted into each other.