How much does it cost to make an AI short drama?

The short version, with real numbers

We have made and released several AI series with Arc, so this answer starts from what we actually spent rather than from a rate card. Across our first five short-drama series (195 episodes, 4.1 hours of finished runtime), the video provider billed us $547, or $2.26 per finished minute. Everything else on the Arc side (images, scripts, voice) brought the total to $582. That is the floor for a team that knows the tools; first projects cost more because they waste more.

Pricing a 30-episode series from scratch

A typical vertical drama has 30 or more episodes of about a minute. Our Blood Sun: The Fall of Kratos averaged 6.0 shots per episode and 11.6 seconds per shot, so a 30-episode series in that shape is 6 clips × 12 seconds = 72 seconds per episode, 180 finished clips in total. Add the 15% of re-renders we measured and you generate about 207 clips.

Model prices on this page are Atlas Cloud list prices quoted 2026-10-17 with its free /calculate endpoint, as published in our AI video price index. Source: Atlas Cloud model catalog and /calculate list prices (atlascloud.ai/models), checked 2026-10-17

Model choice is the biggest lever. The same series runs from about $124 to $1358 at list price depending on the model and resolution. List prices are a comparable baseline; providers and platforms discount some models, which is why our measured cost on Seedance 2.0 Mini was lower than its list price.

Where the money goes

• Video, almost all of it. In Arc, a Seedream 5.0 Lite reference or storyboard image costs 13 credits while one 10-second 720p clip costs 94 on Seedance 2.0 Mini and 751 on Seedance 2.0. Images are a few percent of a series.
• Re-renders. 15% of our video spend ($70) went to shots we rendered again. Clear shot descriptions and approved storyboards are what keep this down.
• The wrong model for the job. Rendering on Seedance 2.0 Fast where Mini would have done cost us $101 extra across those five series.
• Not the writing. Script planning with language models is cheap next to video, but long novels and many revisions add up; Arc bills them by length.

What it costs in Arc

In Arc you pay in credits. The 30-episode series above is about 23,391 credits on Seedance 2.0 Mini at 720p, which is $87–$175 depending on whether credits come from a large annual plan or a small top-up. The Ultra plan covers it in one month. Plans are Starter $12.90/month for 1,800 credits, Pro $49.90/month for 10,000 credits, Ultra $129.90/month for 27,000 credits, Organization $199/month for 42,000 credits.

Try your own numbers in the AI video cost calculator; its default preset is this 30-episode series.

How to spend less

1. Render the whole series on one budget model, pilot included. Switching models mid-series changes the look, and our cheapest series were the ones that never switched.
2. Keep the cast and sets small. Our simplest series had about five core characters and six to eight sets, so the same references appear in nearly every shot.
3. Approve storyboard frames before video. A frame costs a fraction of a clip.
4. Regenerate single shots, never whole episodes.
5. Render at 720p and upscale the finished cut only if the platform needs it.

Where Katechon Arc fits

Arc is built for exactly this: a multi-episode drama with a recurring cast, planned, storyboarded and rendered in one project, with an estimate before every generation. Every number above comes from series we made in it.

If you only need one or two clips, a plain text-to-video tool or a provider's own app is cheaper than a subscription. Arc also has no free plan.

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Sources

• Atlas Cloud model catalog and /calculate list prices: www.atlascloud.ai/models, checked 2026-10-17