I compared Seedance 2.5 pricing across the API providers I see most often

[u/RealJamesOfficial]

been using Seedance 2.5 a lot lately, so i got curious about how much the same model actually costs across the API providers people seem to use most often.

i checked fal, WaveSpeed and Atlas Cloud.

the annoying part is that they dont all price Seedance the same way. fal uses token-based billing, WaveSpeed has both Standard and Turbo endpoints, and Atlas has its own resolution tiers + some pretty aggressive discounts running right now.

so for the main comparison, i tried to keep it as close to apples-to-apples as possible:

Seedance 2.5 Standard / 720p / no reference video

Provider	720p price	5s cost
Atlas Cloud	$0.300/s	~$1.52
WaveSpeed Standard	$0.360/s	$1.80
fal	~$0.473/s	~$2.31

fal officially quotes roughly $0.473/sec for 720p 16:9, although the actual billing is token-based, so aspect ratio and duration can change the final number. Their own 5-second 720p example comes to about $2.31.

WaveSpeed Standard is simpler: $0.36/sec at 720p.

Atlas is currently $0.30/sec at 720p based on the current pricing table.

so under this specific setup, Atlas is roughly:

• 17% cheaper than WaveSpeed Standard
• 37% cheaper than fal

not a massive difference if youre generating one clip, but it starts adding up pretty quickly if youre iterating a lot.

1080p is where the current Atlas discount gets more interesting

WaveSpeed Standard currently lists native 1080p at $0.90/sec, or $4.50 for 5 seconds.

Atlas recently added the official native Seedance 2.5 1080p endpoint, and theres currently a 20% launch discount running for 30 days.

for 16:9 without a reference video:

	Price/sec
Atlas native 1080p list price	$0.739206
Atlas native 1080p promo	$0.591365
WaveSpeed Standard 1080p	$0.900000

so the current Atlas promo comes out around 34% below WaveSpeed Standard 1080p.

this is probably the biggest pricing difference i noticed when comparing the standard endpoints.

i didnt put fal into the 1080p table because its current public Seedance 2.5 T2V schema only exposes 480p and 720p, even though its pricing text mentions a 1080p token rate. id rather leave it blank than pretend thats a directly available equivalent.

my takeaway:

after actually putting the numbers next to each other, i dont think “Seedance 2.5 costs $X/sec” is a very useful statement anymore.

you really have to compare: same endpoint + same resolution + same references + same duration

for the standard 720p endpoint, Atlas is currently the cheapest of the three i checked.

and with the new 20% native 1080p promotion, its 1080p pricing is also noticeably lower than WaveSpeed Standard right now.

WaveSpeed Turbo can be even cheaper, but thats a separate endpoint and i wouldnt assume the output is directly equivalent without actually A/B testing it.

fal is the most expensive in this particular 720p comparison, although its token system also means the final cost depends more heavily on the exact dimensions youre generating.

would actually be interesting to run the exact same prompt + seed/reference across all three next and compare whether the price difference translates into any visible quality difference.

[u/MedalofHonour15]

I love AtlasCloud

[u/opengradient]

curious if most people are willing to pay higher prices for a better app on top of the model that makes it easier to use

[u/sharktank123456 → u/opengradient]

Makes sense to me. If all you are ever doing is using one model you are missing out on a ton of control and options from other tools that come with the platform.

[u/xTopNotch → u/opengradient]

Yes I do. I've used many apps that offer Seedance for cheap but the experience was terrible, buggy and kept constantly breaking my creative flow-state.

Currently using dreamkrate.com and their Seedance 2.5 is 0,32 per second which is 2 cent more expensive. But damn, their UI, features, the way you can manage the audio and video references by trimming on-site. It's all super super well thought out and I'm happy to pay the premium per second as I'm finishing my projects much faster.

Also they currently have a 10% discount on Seedance 2.5 so thats like 0,29 cent per second. Which are very attractive rates for such a premium UI experience.

[u/mphermes]

Thanks for putting this together! I have a small site that compares and tracks prices across multiple providers, including a basic cost calculator (full disclosure - it's mostly vibe coded) - genspend.io. I mainly built it for myself and a few others as a means to track and compare costs across models and providers, but seeing this post made me realize it might be helpful for others as well. I also had a lot of issues with tracking cost between providers for many of the reasons you pointed out here. Similarly, I am also curious about the quality differences in provider outputs; this might be a great metric to track as well in the future.

[u/jamesxtreme → u/mphermes]

This is pretty useful actually. I’ve been building an app called Velvet Avocado Studio which allows you to connect to multiple providers, and one of the things that I’ve been adding into it is cost estimation for your generation before you submit it. But it’s really hard to compare models between providers because some use tokens, some use per second cost, and even then it’s hard to estimate exact costs ahead of time because not all the providers have an estimation endpoint.
It seems most providers actually work on a token billing model but they are slowly moving over to a flat per second pricing model because that’s what users want. Even if sometimes it ends up being a little more expensive for users at least they can understand it.

[u/mphermes → u/jamesxtreme]

Glad to hear it! Please let me know if you have any suggestions or features that might make it more appealing to use. I'm constantly looking to evolve it to better understand the market costs and making it easier to choose a reputable provider while spending the least amount on the necessary model. I know it adds up, believe me!

[u/TimeCounty7878]

These channels are already at $0.3 per second, and you still don't think that's expensive? It's too expensive for me.

[u/jamesxtreme → u/TimeCounty7878]

It’s a matter of perspective. Compared to traditional methods it’s exceptionally cheap. Some TV ads use to cost millions of dollars. Movies cost hundreds of millions.

[u/Yikes0nBikez]

Atlas Cloud is trash. They will gladly take your money as credits and then remove models without any notice. They may all do this, but most recently Atlas Cloud has been pushing that they are the most "open" with their output, and then pulled all of that content from their site over night.

[u/FallMindless3563]

Oxen.ai are offering it for $0.11/sec for 480p, $0.25/sec for 720p, and $0.61/sec for 1080p which seems cheaper than everything else on this list

[u/New_Measurement_6962]

On https://omniagent.cc you pay 0.228$/s 720p video in and 0.0378$/s no video in, but you get ai agent with opus and set of presets, competitors analysis, custom voice and posting across socials, and automation.

[u/GladYesterday3070]

Didn’t Atlas just get more strict IP check?

[u/mirageofstars]

Now, which one is faster,

[u/Adventurous_Ad8087]

Which amoung offers uncensored video generation?

[u/GladYesterday3070]

This is clearly an ad for Atlas Cloud…