okay so i'm on the red line right now and just saw anthropic dropped new pricing. obviously this means i gotta sit down and actually math out what i'm spending across models again because last time i did this was like 3 months ago and apparently that's ancient history now
so real quick, here's what i'm actually paying for video generation rn. sora 2 is my main driver for the music video shorts, and they changed rates again. i'm spending like $200-250 a month there depending on how much iteration i do. runway gen-4 for secondary shots is maybe $80 a month, veo 3 for like experimental stuff probably $40. that's roughly $320-370 total on just generation
then you add in all the other stuff, right. claude subscriptions for prompt iteration and script writing, runway for effects, bunch of smaller tools. honestly i'm probably at like $500+ a month on tooling which sounds nuts but when you're trying to pump out consistent content it adds up fast
what bugs me is i can't tell if i'm actually being price gouged or if this is just what happens when tools get popular. like sora 2 raised prices twice in like 6 months. runway keeps bundling features in weird ways so you can't tell what you're actually paying for. and now anthropic moves too
i'm thinking about trying some of the open source stuff more but honestly the time cost of setting that up vs just paying to have it work is... it's a trade. especially when i'm on a train trying to figure out my budget lol
anyone else doing a full audit of what they actually spend across everything? would be curious if i'm high or if this is normal for people doing this stuff seriously