Same API call, three different prices

I'm on the buying end of these AI APIs, not the pricing side, so tell me if this is just normal.

I stopped eyeballing my account balance and reconciled an actual batch of video generation jobs. Same model, same settings, three different prices:

my own price table: $0.17/sec
the vendor's pricing page: $0.34/sec
the cost field on the job response itself: $0.374/sec

So even the vendor's published rate came in under what the API actually charged me. A clip I budgeted at $1.02 billed at $2.24.

Best guess is a surcharge for the resolution I picked, but nothing said so when I submitted the job.

The other thing that surprised me: it bills at submit, not at delivery. Every retry and every clip I throw away still costs full price.

For people who do this for a living, do published rates get used for anything past a rough sanity check, or is measuring your real cost first just assumed at this point?

2 comments

Same API call, three different prices

PricingSaaS

skool.com/pricingsaas

The first stop for SaaS pricing and packaging.

Leaderboard (30-day)