The cost of a kept shot

The claim

The price of a take is not the price of a shot. A channel pays for every take it generates and uses only the ones a person keeps — so the figure that matters is what a kept shot costs.

The short answer

On one recorded run — seven models, one anime first frame, one prompt, two six-second takes each — a person reviewing blind kept both Hailuo 3 Max takes, one of the two Kling 3.0 Pro takes, and nothing from the other five. Per kept shot, Hailuo cost $0.48, its price per take. Kling cost $1.344, twice its price per take. The other five models cost $9.3809626 together and left nothing to use.

The instrument

Instrument

Per take, per kept shot

Seven models, two six-second takes each from one anime first frame, judged blind. Switch the measure: what moves is what a kept shot costs.

Per generated takePer kept shot

$0.00$0.50$1.00$1.50

1. Hailuo 3 Max2 of 2 kept$0.48
2. Wan 3.00 of 2 kept$0.51
3. Kling 3.0 Pro1 of 2 kept$0.672
4. Grok Imagine Video 1.50 of 2 kept$0.85
5. Seedance 2.00 of 2 kept$0.9135
6. FLUX.3 Video0 of 2 kept$1.02
7. Seedance 2.50 of 2 kept$1.3969813

Every take is billed, kept or not.

The numbers, as a table

Per take, per kept shot

Model	Settings	Takes	Kept	Spent	Per take	Per kept shot
Hailuo 3 Max	6 s · 768p	2	2	$0.96	$0.48	$0.48
Wan 3.0	6 s · 720p	2	0	$1.02	$0.51	no kept shot
Kling 3.0 Pro	6 s · 720p	2	1	$1.344	$0.672	$1.344
Grok Imagine Video 1.5	6 s · 720p	2	0	$1.70	$0.85	no kept shot
Seedance 2.0	6 s · 720p	2	0	$1.827	$0.9135	no kept shot
FLUX.3 Video	6 s · 720p	2	0	$2.04	$1.02	no kept shot
Seedance 2.5	6 s · 720p	2	0	$2.7939626	$1.3969813	no kept shot

Switch to “Per kept shot” and watch what stays. Hailuo does not move: both its takes were kept. Kling’s bar doubles: one take paid for another. Five bars disappear, because there is nothing to divide by — their cost is still spent.

The run

• One frame, one prompt. Every model started from the same anime keyframe of two fictional characters, with the same prompt: one action beat, a static camera, Japanese 2D TV animation.
• Two takes per model. Six seconds, 16:9, from a first frame, at 720p — Hailuo at 768p. The first Hailuo take was reused from the studio’s cache of 2026-09-23; the other thirteen were made on 2026-09-27.
• Judged blind. One person at the studio reviewed the takes without the model names. The lab log of 2026-09-28 records the verdict: the five models that kept nothing showed odd backgrounds and motion — “looks AI-generated”.
• Billed as recorded. Each take’s cost is the provider’s bill, to the last digit. The whole run cost $11.6849626 for 14 takes; 3 were kept.

What the averages hide

Divide the whole run by what it kept and a kept shot cost about $3.89. That figure is true and useless: it blends the two models a person kept from with the five that kept nothing. Per model, the cheapest take was also the cheapest kept shot here. That will not always hold. A model that costs more per take and is kept more often can cost less per kept shot; this run did not have one.

Limits

• One prompt, one style, one reviewer, two takes per model. This is a record of one run, not a benchmark. Another prompt or another style can reverse the order.
• Which Kling take was kept is not recorded.
• Prices are what the providers billed on those days; rates change.
• The cost counts generation only: no writing, no editing, no reviewer’s time.

What it means for Kiju

• The Lab keeps every take with its cost, kept or not, and the ledger counts discarded takes, because they were paid.
• Keep is a person’s act in the desk too: takes sit side by side, and a take is kept only when you keep it. The tutorial Compare takes and keep one walks through it.
• A chip is the price of one take. The ledger is the price of what you kept.

Sources

• The run: the studio’s records under .studio/store/shot/ (one per take, with its bill) and the lab log of 2026-09-28 for what was kept. See Seven video models, one anime frame.
• The arithmetic: added in integer billionths of a dollar, in the browser, from those records.