MiniMax H3 Pricing: Cost per Clip and the Cheapest Way to Use It (2026)

MiniMax H3 costs $0.08 per second at 768P and $0.13 per second at 2K on MiniMax's own pay-as-you-go API, as of 4 November 2026. That makes a 5-second clip $0.40 or $0.65 and a 10-second clip $0.80 or $1.30. The lowest price in the H3 family is MiniMax-H3-Lite at $0.025 per second at 480P, so the best price depends on which tier and resolution you actually need.

This guide covers every H3 rate on MiniMax's price card, what resellers charge on top, the billing details that change your total, and what H3 costs in credits on Kenerate AI if you would rather skip the API.

How much does MiniMax H3 cost per second?

All of these rates come from MiniMax's pay-as-you-go pricing page, read on 4 November 2026. Prices are in US dollars per second of output video.

Three rules from the same page are worth knowing. Audio input is free on the flagship models. Text-to-video, image-to-video, first-and-last-frame and reference jobs all share one unit price for a given model and resolution. And MiniMax describes Highspeed as balancing quality and speed for everyday content, and Lite as the lower-cost option for creative exploration and batch generation.

What does a 5, 10 or 15 second H3 clip cost?

Multiply the rate by the seconds you render. These are plain output costs on MiniMax's API, with no paid reference inputs.

Lite at 768P costs the same per second as Highspeed at 480P, so if you are choosing between those two on price alone, you get the higher resolution from Lite. Whether the output quality holds up for your shot is something to test with a few short clips, because MiniMax does not publish a quality comparison between the tiers on its price page.

What is the cheapest way to access MiniMax H3?

The cheapest paid route is MiniMax's own API, because resellers we checked either match its list price or add to it. A few options, from lowest cost to highest effort or markup:

1. MiniMax API, Lite tier. $0.025 per second at 480P for drafts and batch work.
2. MiniMax API, full H3. $0.08 or $0.13 per second when you need the flagship model.
3. A zero-markup router. OrcaRouter says it lists H3 at MiniMax's rates with 0% markup (13 October 2026). That helps if you already route other models through one key.
4. A reseller with a small markup. You pay a little more for a different API, dashboard or billing setup.
5. A browser studio such as Kenerate. You pay the most per second, and in return you need no API key, no code and no separate MiniMax account.

The open weights look free but are not the cheapest route for most people. More on that below.

How do reseller prices compare?

Reseller rates change often, so treat these as dated snapshots and check the live page before you commit.

Atlas Cloud's figures come from its own access guide, and Segmind's come from its launch explainer, which notes its API accepted only 2K when that piece was written. Both companies sell the access they are describing, so read their comparisons with that in mind. The same goes for this post, since Kenerate sells H3 too.

Do MiniMax subscriptions or video packages cover H3?

No. MiniMax's pricing page says Video Packages do not support H3 yet, so on the platform H3 is pay-as-you-go only. Atlas Cloud reports the same for the Token Plan, and adds that packages run $1,000 to $6,000, last a month, and reset unused balance on expiry.

The Hailuo web and mobile apps are a separate product with their own prepaid credits. We could not find an official per-second H3 rate for them, and third-party guides disagree on the numbers, so check the in-app quote before you buy rather than trusting a figure from a blog.

Is drafting at 768P and regenerating to 2K cheaper?

Only when you need three or more takes. MiniMax-H3-Regeneration bills $0.05 per second of output plus $0.05 per second of input video, so upgrading a finished 768P clip adds $0.10 per second.

Here is the maths for a 10-second shot:

The two routes tie at two takes, and that holds at any clip length, because the numbers scale per second. If your prompts usually land first time, go straight to 2K. If you tend to iterate, draft at 768P. Drafting on Lite would save more, but MiniMax lists Regeneration under MiniMax-H3 only, so confirm the source clip works before you plan around that.

What else changes your MiniMax H3 bill?

The per-second rate is rarely the whole story. Watch these items:

• Reference video. Input seconds are billed at the same rate as output, so a 10-second output with a 5-second reference clip at 2K is 15 billed seconds, or $1.95.
• Reference images. The first 5 per task are free on the flagship models, and only 2 on H3 Max.
• Omitted duration. Atlas Cloud's API tests found a request with no duration billed 5 seconds, while the playground defaulted to 8. Always pass it explicitly.
• Conflicting inputs. The same tests, run on Atlas's endpoint, found that sending a first frame together with references was billed in full and the first frame was dropped without an error.
• Bad URLs. A broken image link in those tests still finished and was billed in full, while requests rejected at submission cost nothing.
• Failed jobs. MiniMax's page says failures and security-review hits are not deducted under Video Packages, but it does not state this for pay-as-you-go H3. Check your usage log.

Is MiniMax H3 free to run yourself?

The weights are free to download, but running them is not free. MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3 on Hugging Face is a 33B-parameter model, and its example server command uses 4 GPUs. Default output is 768P, and 2K needs a separate regeneration step.

The licence matters as much as the hardware. The MiniMax H3 Community License applies worldwide except the EU, UK, South Korea and USA, and people there have to request a licence from MiniMax. Companies whose commercial products earn over $20 million a year need written authorization, and commercial products must display "MiniMax H3" in their interface. If you only make occasional clips, the API at $0.40 per clip is hard to beat once you price up four GPUs.

How much does MiniMax H3 cost on Kenerate AI?

Kenerate runs two tiers in the AI video generator, billed in credits per second, with the same balance covering every other model in the studio. Video needs a paid plan, which means any one-time credit pack from $15 for 1,300 credits, with no subscription.

In dollars, a credit works out to about 1.15 cents on the $15 pack and about 1 cent on the $199 pack (20,000 credits).

To be plain about it, that is roughly 2.5 to 4 times MiniMax's API rate at the same resolution. If you are a developer rendering at volume, use the API. Kenerate makes sense when you do not want to write code, manage keys or top up another account, and when you want H3 next to Seedance, Kling, Veo and Wan on one balance. The $15 pack covers 13 five-second H3 clips at 768p or 6 five-second H3 Pro clips at 2K.

Reference mode on the base tier costs more: 12.5 credits a second at 480p or 31.25 at 768p, plus 5 credits per reference image, and reference clip seconds are billed like output seconds. H3 Pro keeps its normal rate, with 5 reference images free and 15 credits for each one after that. So at 768p with references, Pro is often the better deal: a 5-second clip with two images is 167 credits on H3 and 150 on Pro.

How do you keep H3 costs down?

Whichever route you pick, the same habits save money:

1. Test short. Render 4 or 5 seconds to judge a prompt, then go long only on the keeper.
2. Draft low. Use 480P or 768P until framing and motion are right.
3. Write tighter prompts. Fewer failed takes beat any discount. Our MiniMax H3 prompt guide covers reference roles and shot order.
4. Stay inside the free references. Use five images or fewer unless a sixth really changes the result.
5. Compare models before you commit. H3 may not be the best value for every shot, and MiniMax H3 vs Seedance 2.0 breaks down where each one fits.

For full specs, sample clips and supported inputs, see the MiniMax H3 model page and the wider MiniMax model family.

Which MiniMax H3 option should you choose?

Prices move, and H3 has only been on the market since 31 July 2026, so check MiniMax's page before you budget a large job. The rates above were correct on 4 November 2026.