Cast Pricing (powered by E3D)
How credits work, what each tier unlocks, and what a render actually costs.
Credits
Recommended: pay with a card. Buy fixed credit packs on the Cast workspace via Stripe (Starter / Creator / Pro). No wallet required.
Cast also accepts E3D credits. 1,000 credits = 1 E3D or wE3D on-chain, before discounts. Buy with Ethereum E3D or Base wE3D at the same rate. Holders of E3D get a 20% discount on on-chain credit purchases when a qualifying wallet is connected.
Credits are spent once, at job submission time — quoting a job is always free and never spends credits.
Card packs (USD)
| Pack | Credits | Price | Roughly covers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 2,000 | $9 | ~4 YouTube renders | |
| Creator | 10,000 | $29 | ~20 YouTube renders | |
| Pro | 50,000 | $79 | ~100 YouTube renders |
Tiers
Tiers set your size, length, duration, and retention limits. The Free tier is a safe preview: it never spends real credits on rendering and always runs as a watermarked dry-run, no matter what you submit — real renders start at Starter.
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What a job costs
Every render has a base credit price by preset, plus a variable component for transcript-input jobs (see below). Pro tier gets a discount on every price on this page.
| Job | Input | Base credits (Starter/Free/Studio) | Base credits (Pro) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short (9:16) | Uploaded audio or source URL | 150 | 125 |
| YouTube (16:9) | Uploaded audio or source URL | 500 | 400 |
| Transcript short (9:16) | Pasted transcript text | 100 + length surcharge | 75 + length surcharge |
| Transcript video / TTS video (16:9) | Pasted transcript text | 125 + length surcharge | 100 + length surcharge |
| Revision (thumbnail, metadata, subtitle style) | — | 50 | 40 |
| Archive to IPFS | — | +50 | +25 |
Why pasted transcripts have a length surcharge
When you paste transcript text instead of uploading audio, Cast synthesizes narration for the entire transcript before rendering — so the real cost scales with how much text you paste, not which preset you pick. The surcharge is 5 credits per 1,000 characters (4 per 1,000 for Pro), added on top of the base price above. A short paste of a few hundred characters barely moves the price; a Studio-tier transcript at the 200,000-character limit costs meaningfully more than a short one, in proportion to what it actually takes to produce.
Uploaded-audio jobs (Short, YouTube) don't carry this surcharge — their cost is already covered by the flat preset price above regardless of audio length, up to your tier's duration limit.
Example
A Starter-tier Transcript short job from a 2,000-character paste: 100 base + 10 surcharge (2 × 5) = 110 credits = 0.11 E3D.
Get exact numbers for your own job before you spend anything: quote it first with the API (POST /api/cast/jobs/quote — free, no credits spent) or from the Cast workspace.