Sora's $0.10 to $0.70 per second: what replaces it

Luma's pricing guide says Sora cost $0.10 to $0.70 per second, with a Batch API at 50% off, and that the Sora API was sunset on Sept 24, 2026. The replacement on Sume is a per-second catalog id from GET /v1/videos/models; Sume does not offer a batch discount, so cut cost with lower resolutions and shorter drafts.

What the guide reports

These figures come from Luma's guide, read on the date shown. They describe a product that has been withdrawn, so use them as history to size a migration, not as a price you can still buy.

Pick a replacement id

Sume's catalog is queried, not guessed: GET /v1/videos/models returns each id with its resolutions, durations, aspect ratios and pricing_skus. Sume bills the provider list price times 1.25 on every model, reserved on submit from the workspace USD balance.

The docs name several ids with different limits: seedance-2.5 takes 4-30 seconds at 480p, 720p and 1080p, wan-3.0 takes 2-30 seconds, and gemini-omni-flash-1.1 takes 3-10 seconds with native audio. Other catalog models top out at 15 seconds. If you do not want to choose, model: "sume/auto" lets Sume pick, but pin an id when cost and output must repeat.

No batch discount: draft cheaper instead

The Sume docs reviewed for this post describe no batch tier or batch discount. The practical lever is resolution: models that offer 480p can be used for drafts, with the final render at 720p or 1080p only for the winners. Check the per-resolution price in pricing_skus first, since not every model prices resolution linearly.

Send an Idempotency-Key on every submit so a retried script does not double-bill.

• List the catalog before choosing an id.
• Draft at the lowest resolution the model offers.
• Re-run only winners at 1080p.
• Idempotency-Key on every submit.

# draft at 480p, then re-run the winner at 1080p
curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/videos \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: draft-001" \
  -d '{
    "model": "seedance-2.5",
    "prompt": "A glass bottle on a stone ledge at sunrise, slow dolly in",
    "resolution": "480p",
    "duration": 6
  }'