Vidu Q4 API Pricing 2026: Cost per Second and Clip Math

Vidu Q4 API pricing runs $0.045 per output second for 540p drafts up to $0.39 for 4K finals on the international list. The catch is that a 6-second 1080p attempt listed at $0.72 becomes $2.16 to $3.60 per accepted clip once you model three to five completed attempts per keeper.

This breakdown converts the official credit sheet to USD, works out 3-, 5-, 10-, and 16-second clip costs, and ranks verified reseller rates. Plan on 540p for drafts and 1080p for delivery.

How much Vidu Q4 API pricing costs per second

Vidu bills API calls in credits. The live pricing page lists 1 credit at ¥0.03125 for domestic purchases (platform.vidu.com). The USD figures below use the $0.005 per credit benchmark that resellers reference when quoting the international list, verified against the official credit table on October 18, 2026 (cheapergen.com). Vidu itself publishes credit consumption, not a USD price list, so treat the USD column as a converted equivalent.

Q4 Preview charges per completed output second by resolution tier, with no off-peak tier listed. Failed generations consume no credits, including content-moderation rejections (platform.vidu.com).

Vidu confirms Preview output from 540p through 4K with 10-bit color:

"Q4 Preview supports 540p, 720p, 1080p, 2K, and 4K output, with 10-bit color depth." — @ViduAI_official (official)

Vidu lists its own credit packs on its pricing page (platform.vidu.com), and its official account has advertised 30% off Q4 credit packages (@ViduAI_official (official)). While active, that discount matches the cheapest reseller rows below, so check Vidu's console before assuming a reseller is cheaper.

What a finished clip actually costs

Per-second rates hide the budget decision, so here are completed-clip costs at list-equivalent rates:

The 720p tier deserves a second look before you standardize on it. At $0.095/sec it costs about 79% of the 1080p rate, while 540p costs less than half of 720p. Test whether 720p quality suffices for your deliverable, otherwise draft at 540p and deliver at 1080p. One reseller review reached the same draft/skip/deliver split after house tests (unifically.com). The 4K tier more than triples the 1080p rate, which makes it a final-render tier rather than a drafting tier.

The second multiplier is creative retries, and it needs careful labeling. Technical failures and moderation rejections are unbilled, but a completed clip you discard for creative reasons is still billed. For planning, model three and five completed attempts per accepted clip. This is a sensitivity scenario drawn from video-model cost discussion, not a measured Vidu Q4 acceptance rate:

"I'd track retries instead. Most people I see burn 3 to 5 generations before a clip is actually usable…" — u/dmdbGroup (real user)

Resolution comparability is the other trap: as u/FanneMishari-35 notes in the same thread, a cheap 720p clip and an expensive 1080p clip are different value propositions depending on what you ship (reddit.com). My recommended workflow is cheap 540p direction-finding first, then rerunning winners at delivery resolution, an approach one Q4 tester describes as "test the motion, lock the direction" (@ImaStudio_ai, real user).

What Vidu Q4 can and cannot generate

Q4 Preview is image-led. Every request must contain at least one image, and there is no text-to-video mode (unifically.com). Only resolution and output duration move the price.

Specification rows above consolidate Vidu's credit sheet (platform.vidu.com), the house-tested reseller review (unifically.com), and the third-party integration guide for field behavior (viduq4.app). Q4 is a preview with no verified Q4-specific latency SLA, and I found no verifiable commercial-use statement for Preview outputs, so confirm terms before client work.

Official vs reseller: where the cheapest access is

Normalize to USD per output second first, then compare. Cuddler covers 540p to 1080p only, so 2K and 4K buyers must use Vidu direct or a full-ladder reseller.

While active, Vidu's advertised 30%-off credit promotion lands near $0.0315 to $0.273/sec, essentially matching the cheapest reseller rows. Integration shape can outweigh a 1 to 2 cent gap: the official API is asynchronous with task_id polling or callback_url webhooks and 24-hour result-URL expiry, per the independent integration guide (viduq4.app). Teams on OpenAI-style video endpoints or unified multi-model billing may save more in engineering time through a reseller.

Vidu Q4 pricing vs Q3, Kling, and Seedance

This is pricing positioning from verifiable sources, not a controlled quality shootout. No independent benchmark on identical prompts exists that I could verify, so there is no general quality winner to declare here.

Against its own family, Q4 Preview adds 2K/4K output, 10-bit color, up to 15 image references plus 3 voice references, and multi-shot camera switching, all with no per-request surcharge beyond the resolution tier (unifically.com). Q3 Turbo stays cheaper per second at 540p (about $0.026 to $0.033/sec through resellers) for teams that never need 4K or heavy referencing (cheapergen.com).

Against outside rivals, the only same-date 1080p check I could verify is UnificAlly's October 16, 2026 comparison: Q4 at $0.096/sec undercut HappyHorse 1.1 ($0.126), Kling 4.0 Pro ($0.1701), and Seedance 2.5 ($0.688), and was the only one of the four listing 4K (unifically.com). Scene-specific tester notes cut both ways and do not generalize, so budget Q4 as the cheapest iteration path and evaluate winners shot by shot.

Calling the API without surprises

Notes below come from the independent integration guide at viduq4.app, not from Vidu's official docs, and should be rechecked against Vidu's current field lists (viduq4.app):

1. Send either a single-image input or a reference-image array, not both. Copy result files to your own storage promptly, since result URLs expire after 24 hours.
2. Prefer HTTPS image URLs over Base64 where possible, since Base64 inflates the 20 MB request-body limit even when the source image is under the 50 MB cap.
3. Poll every few seconds for single jobs and use callbacks for concurrent batches. Do not assume a short client timeout is enough, since 4K jobs run longer than 540p ones.
4. Separate outcome types in your budget: technical failures and moderation blocks are unbilled, while completed-but-discarded creative attempts are billed. On a billed failure pattern, simplify first (shorter prompt, shorter duration, lower resolution) before rerunning at full cost.

Vidu Q4 API FAQ

How much does the Vidu Q4 API cost per second?

About $0.045 at 540p, $0.095 at 720p, $0.12 at 1080p, $0.19 at 2K, and $0.39 at 4K as USD equivalents of the official credit rates. Listed reseller rates run roughly 70 to 80% of those figures, with the cheapest rows at about 70 to 74%.

Are failed or moderation-blocked generations billed?

No. Vidu states failed generations consume no credits including moderation rejections, and the reseller pages I checked pass through free failed, blocked, and pre-start-canceled jobs (platform.vidu.com). Discarded but technically successful generations are still billed.

Is Vidu Q4 production-ready or still a preview?

Still a preview under viduq4-preview, with no separate GA pricing published. Avoid load-bearing automation on current rendering behavior without a fallback model.

Should I buy direct from Vidu or through a reseller API?

Compare live numbers the week you ship: Vidu's active promotion, reseller per-second rates at the resolutions you need, and integration cost. Cuddler's verified rate is cheapest per second but stops at 1080p, while 2K and 4K need Vidu direct or a full-ladder reseller.

What I would do with $10

Assumes CheaperGen verified rates (540p $0.0331/sec, 1080p about $0.089/sec) and 5-second clips: a 540p draft costs about $0.17 and a 1080p final costs about $0.45.

Start with direction-finding: burn cheap 540p generations until the motion locks, rerun two or three winners at 1080p, and reserve 4K for a single hero render funded separately.