The stack
What your pipeline costs
Four inputs, one monthly number, and every figure in it carries the row of the appendix it came from. The calculator does not estimate what the book never priced — it names those lines instead of quietly putting a zero in them.
The bill
| Line | Per month | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Video generation | $55.47 per month | Veo 3.1, standard $0.40/s — Appendix B, checked 2026-10 |
| Lip-sync | $9.24 per month | Lip-sync, 1080p $4.00/min — Appendix B, checked 2026-10 |
| Electricity | $9.13 – $15.21 per month | $0.30–$0.50 — Appendix B, checked 2026-10 |
Total: $73.84 – $79.92 per month
Most of the bill: Video generation — 69%
What this refuses to price
- Image generation — the appendix carries no unit price for most of this category, and the cost per usable image depends on your rejection rate, which only you know.
- Voice — priced per million characters, and characters come from your script length, not from video length. Dividing one by the other would be a guess.
- Editing, upscaling and storage — no price in the chapters.
- Distribution — free on every platform the book covers, but each one requires a declaration.
A number nobody can source is worse than no number: you would budget against it. The book prices these lines where it can, and says where it cannot.
Next
- Appendix B — 11 categories, 46 tools — the full table, with the substitute to reach for when a vendor disappears.
- Appendix D — calculators and worksheets — the break-even and contribution-margin maths this monthly number feeds.
- Chapter 12.5 — the quarterly audit — checkpoints 22 and 27 re-verify these prices. Re-run this page after them.