How to Price AI Commercial Work: Stills Plus Video

What the machines cost, per second and per image

Video models charge by the second of finished output, and the price moves with resolution and with audio. As published on September 24, 2026:

• Google Veo 3.1, on the Gemini API pricing page: $0.40 a second at 720p or 1080p and $0.60 at 4K, with audio. Veo 3.1 Fast costs $0.10, $0.12 and $0.30 a second at the same sizes, and Veo 3.1 Lite $0.05 at 720p and $0.08 at 1080p.
• Runway: Gen-4.5 uses 12 credits a second and Gen-4 Turbo 5. Runway's API pricing sells credits at $0.01 each, which makes Gen-4.5 $0.12 a second. The monthly plans start at $15 for 625 credits.
• Kling 3.0, on Kling's API: $0.084 a second at 720p, $0.112 at 1080p and $0.42 at 4K without audio, bought in packages that start at $700 for 5,000 units.
• ByteDance Seedance 2.0, on BytePlus ModelArk: BytePlus's own examples price a 5-second clip at $0.76 at 720p, $1.87 at 1080p and $3.89 at 4K, about $0.15, $0.37 and $0.78 a second.
• OpenAI removed Sora 2 and its Videos API from the API on September 24, 2026, after notifying developers in March, so leave it out of new API-based quotes.

Stills are priced per image. Google's Nano Banana 2 costs $0.067 at 1K and $0.101 at 2K, and Nano Banana Pro $0.134 at 1K or 2K and $0.24 at 4K. OpenAI's GPT Image 2 costs $0.211 for a 1024 by 1024 image at high quality, $0.053 at medium and $0.006 at low.

Budget for every try

The published price is per generation, and you will not keep every generation. The agency 100 Creatives counted this across four of its 2026 campaigns: 361 image renders produced 45 usable images, about 8 per keeper, with a range from 3.2 renders per keeper on gummy supplement ads to 13.6 on a surf apparel job with one model across three locations. Food ads with motion took 12.

Video has the same problem at a higher price per try. Build your own ratio from your last job, then multiply. If each shot takes three video tries of about five seconds, a 12-shot spot is 36 clips, or 180 seconds of generated video for 30 seconds on screen. The multiplier moves the budget more than the price per second does.

A worked example: a 30-second spot and ten stills

Here is the arithmetic for a hypothetical job: a 30-second spot of 12 shots, plus ten campaign stills, priced at the rates above. The assumptions are 8 tries per usable still (the 100 Creatives average), a still first frame for every shot, and three video tries of about five seconds per shot.

• Stills: 12 first frames plus 10 campaign stills, at 8 tries each, is 176 image renders. That is $11.79 on Nano Banana 2 at 1K, or $37.14 on GPT Image 2 at high quality.
• Video: 36 clips of about five seconds is 180 seconds. That is $20.16 on Kling 3.0 at 1080p without audio, $21.60 on Veo 3.1 Fast at 1080p, or $72.00 on Veo 3.1 at 1080p with audio.
• Total model fees: about $32 at the low end (Nano Banana 2 plus Kling 3.0) to about $109 at the high end (GPT Image 2 plus Veo 3.1).

Now price the time the same way. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the 2025 median pay for film and video editors and camera operators at $36.10 an hour. That is what employers pay staff. Even at that rate, five eight-hour days of directing, reviewing, editing and finishing come to $1,444, and the model fees are 2 to 8 percent of it. Build the quote on the time.

Price the time and the usage

Price the work as a day rate or a project fee, broken into stages the client will recognize. Pre-production covers the treatment, the look bible, the boards and the casting sheet; then come generation and review, the edit, sound and grade, and delivery in every size. Count review rounds in the quote. AI makes one more version cheap to render and expensive to direct, so include two rounds and price extra rounds at your day rate.

Then price the rights separately. Photographers have long split the fee for making work from the fee for using it. The UK's Association of Photographers (AOP) describes a base usage rate that covers one country for one year in two media, or for two years in one medium, with licences of at least six months, extra territories priced as a share of the base (additional use in the US at 150% of it), and a base that "should never be less than the negotiated daily shoot-fee or day-rate." The same logic fits an AI spot. A year of paid TV and online use is worth more than one organic social post, even though the files are identical.

Put AI in the contract too. The UK advertising bodies IPA and ISBA, in their principles for generative AI in advertising, say neither agency nor client "should include AI-generated content in materials provided to the other without the other's agreement." For the finished ads, the IAB's AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework of January 15, 2026 says "Disclosure is required only when AI materially affects authenticity, identity, or representation in ways that could mislead consumers." Write down which tools you will use, what the client may do with the outputs, and who labels the ads where a platform or a law requires it.

List every deliverable, because each one is work

A brand rarely wants one file. A contest like Atlanta AI Ad Fest needs one 30 to 60 second film, but a client job usually means a 16:9 master, a 9:16 cut for Reels, Shorts and TikTok, a 1:1 or 4:5 cut for feeds, a 6-second bumper, and a set of stills in the sizes of the store, the feed and the banners. Each cut is a new edit with its own framing and its own end card, and each still size can need its own crop or a new render. Write every file into the quote with its size and length, so a request for "a few more versions" becomes a change order. Our guides to storyboards and shot lists and to the packshot and end card show how to plan those sizes from day one.

What to put in the quote

1. Pre-production: treatment, look bible, storyboard, casting sheet (fixed fee)
2. Stills: N finished photos in listed sizes, 2 review rounds (fee per set)
3. Video: 1 x 30 s master, 16:9, plus 9:16 and 1:1 cutdowns (fee)
4. Edit, sound, grade and delivery (fee or day rate)
5. Review rounds included: 2; extra rounds at [day rate]
6. Model fees: estimated at $[X], billed at cost with receipts, capped at $[Y]
7. Usage: [media], [territory], [term]; renewal at [price]
8. AI disclosure: tools used, and who labels the ads where platforms require it
9. Kill fee: [percent] if cancelled after pre-production

The model fee line does two jobs. It shows the brand that the machines are not where the money goes, and a cap protects you if a shot takes 14 tries instead of 8.

Where Overs fits: price the stills line from the plan

Overs makes the stills half of a quote easy to price, because it shows the shot plan and an estimated cost before anything renders. The estimate counts one render per photo, so multiply it by your own tries per keeper. You pay for the AI through your own OpenRouter key, and Overs adds no markup (OpenRouter charges 5.5% when you buy credits by card, with a $0.80 minimum). The free plan covers 40 photos a month, and Pro at $29 a month and Team at $99 both include unlimited photos.

Here is a 30-photo set with 10 on-model shots, priced three ways on September 24, 2026. A studio at soona's published prices comes to $2,026, and a hired crew for one day to $13,790 before usage fees, both from Overs' guide to what a product photo shoot costs. On Overs Pro, with about $0.20 of planning per run over three runs, the set costs about $36 at 3 tries a photo on Nano Banana 2 (90 renders at $0.067), about $46 at 8 tries, and about $118 at 14 tries on GPT Image 2 at high quality (420 renders at $0.211). That leaves out the hours spent choosing, about 240 images to pick 30 at 8 tries each, and some shots still belong on a real set.

Overs grew out of the process 100 Creatives, the agency Abhi Chawla founded, used to make hundreds of photos a week for hundreds of brands, and Abhi's own businesses make their images with it today. Clients review through one HTML file, and their decisions come back into Overs. It makes stills only and writes a motion prompt per photo for Seedance or Veo.

Overs is a sister product to AI Film Contests, from the same founder. Try Overs free at www.overs.studio and put a real stills number in your next quote.