How Do Kinovi Credits and Pay-as-You-Go Billing Work?

Kinovi uses a pay-as-you-go credit balance rather than subscriptions or seat licenses. You top up credits, and each API call or Studio generation deducts from that same balance based on the model's published rate. Rates are listed per second for video models and vary by resolution and whether you supply a reference video; image, audio, and other model types are priced per task. The same credit balance works across both the API and the Studio interface, so you don't manage separate wallets for programmatic and interactive use.

The core billing model

Kinovi's catalog is built around one shared credit pool:

• Pay-as-you-go credits — you spend credits only when you run a model. There is no indication of a monthly minimum or subscription tier in the available material.
• One balance, two surfaces — the same credits cover API calls and Studio usage. Generating in Studio and calling the API draw from the same account.
• Rates published per model — the pricing page and model catalog list current rates, so you can estimate cost before running a job.

How rates are structured

Pricing is not a single flat number. It depends on the model, the output resolution, and the input mode.

Video models: priced per second

Video generation is billed by output duration in seconds. The rate changes with resolution and with the type of input:

For example, the catalog lists Seedance 2.5 at $0.2205/s on Kinovi versus $0.1197/s + 5 video on Fal.ai for the base tier, with Kinovi showing a 46% saving at 480p. At 720p the Kinovi rate is $0.2717/s against $0.4730/s on Fal.ai (43% saving), and at 1080p it is $0.6604/s against $1.1640/s (43% saving). Reference-video variants are cheaper per second than the corresponding base tier — for instance, 480p + reference video is $0.0737/s on Kinovi.

Seedance 2.5 Video Edit and Video Extend are also listed per second, with 480p-reference at $0.0737/s and 720p-reference at $0.1612/s. Note that for Video Edit at 1080p + reference video, both Kinovi and Fal.ai show $0.3947/s with no saving marked.

Image, audio, and other models

The catalog also lists image and audio models — including Midjourney V8, GPT Image 2, NanoBanana 2, Nano Banana Pro, Seedream 5.0 Pro, and Suno Music — alongside video models from ByteDance, Alibaba, OpenAI, Google Gemini, MiniMax, and others. These are priced per task rather than per second. Check the current model rates on the pricing page for the exact figure, since rates change as new model versions ship (for example, Seedance 2.5 is now available alongside Seedance 2.0).

Estimating your cost

Because billing is per second or per task, you can estimate spend before running anything:

1. Pick the model and variant — e.g., Seedance 2.5 base vs. Fast vs. Mini.
2. Choose the resolution — 480p, 720p, or 1080p.
3. Decide on input mode — text-only or with a reference video.
4. Multiply the rate by your output duration (for video) or count tasks (for image/audio).

For a 10-second 720p Seedance 2.5 clip at $0.2717/s, the credit cost is about $2.72. The same clip at 1080p ($0.6604/s) is about $6.60. Running the 480p reference-video variant ($0.0737/s) for 10 seconds costs about $0.74.

What to watch for

• Rates are current, not permanent. The catalog shows live model IDs and rates, and new versions (like Seedance 2.5) arrive with their own pricing. Re-check the pricing page before budgeting a large batch.
• Reference-video modes are not always cheaper. They usually are for Seedance 2.5, but the 1080p Video Edit case shows parity with Fal.ai, so don't assume a discount.
• Per-second billing rewards shorter outputs. Trimming duration or dropping resolution has a direct, proportional effect on cost.
• The shared balance means API and Studio spending compete. If you generate heavily in Studio, that reduces credits available for API calls, and vice versa.

To see the full current rate table and confirm which models are live, visit the Kinovi pricing page and the model catalog.