JSON video API pricing, cheapest per minute in 2026

Rendobar’s Compose API charges $0.04 per minute of rendered video with no subscription, which makes it the cheapest JSON video API here at 100 and 1,000 minutes a month. Zvid is cheaper in two cases: a small monthly volume its free plan covers, and a yearly Business plan used past about 1,240 minutes a month. The other services cost more than Compose at all three volumes, from about three times as much to hundreds of times.

I build Rendobar, and I’d argue Compose costs less, renders faster and does more than the other JSON video APIs. This post is about the price only, so it prices seven services from their own pricing pages, all read on 2026-10-20, and keeps the cases where Rendobar loses in the table.

Three monthly volumes, seven services#

What each service costs for 10, 100 and 1,000 minutes of 1080p video a month, on the cheapest published option that covers it:

How each cell follows from the vendor’s page:

• Rendobar: minutes × $0.04, billed per second with a 15-second minimum per render. The $5 signup credit covers the first 125 minutes.
• Zvid: one credit is one second of Full HD. The free plan gives 1,200 credits a month, 20 minutes, with videos up to 5 minutes. Hobby gives 190 minutes for $20 a month or $120 a year. Business gives 100,000 credits, 1,666.67 minutes, for $99 a month or $594 a year.
• Shotstack: pay as you go is a $10 block of 50 minutes that lasts 12 months, so 10 and 100 minutes cost 20 cents each. At 1,000 minutes the $99 Pro plan’s 750 minutes plus 250 top-up minutes at its 13.2-cent rate beats Scale at $199.
• JSON2Video: one credit is one second at any resolution. Pre-paid packs never expire, so I count what you use: 10 minutes from the $49.95 pack of 7,200 credits is $4.16, and 100 minutes from the $99.95 pack of 15,600 is $38.44. At 1,000 minutes, Startup’s 500 minutes plus 500 more from $99.95 packs comes to about $292. Its free plan is left out because it is watermarked and not for commercial use.
• Creatomate: credits are width × height × fps × seconds ÷ 100 million, so 1080p at 30 fps uses about 37.3 a minute. 10 minutes fits Essential ($54 a month, 2,000 credits), 100 minutes fits Growth ($129 a month, 10,000), and 1,000 minutes needs Beyond’s 50,000. The pricing page showed Beyond only as $3,290 a year, $274 a month.
• Bannerbear: video animations cost 2 credits per second of output. 10 minutes is 1,200 credits, past the $49 Automate plan’s 1,000, so Scale at $149. 100 minutes is 12,000 credits. The page lists larger Scale options without their prices, so the published fit is Enterprise at $299 for 50,000.
• Plainly: renders from After Effects templates, and every exported second counts against a monthly allowance. Starter is $69 for 50 minutes, Explorer $134 for 100, and Pro’s 600 minutes are not enough for 1,000, which leaves Unlimited from $1,500 a month. Yearly billing takes about 30% off.

Monthly billing is the default here, with Zvid shown both ways because its yearly plan changes the ranking. Taxes, AI asset generation, storage and voice-overs are left out everywhere. All figures are list prices for 1080p, and Rendobar’s renders up to 1080p at 30 fps on every plan, including Free.

The lowest rate each service sells#

Volume tables hide where each price list bottoms out, so here is the lowest per-minute rate each vendor publishes, at full use:

Zvid’s Business plan undercuts Compose’s list rate once you render more than $49.50 ÷ $0.04, about 1,240 minutes a month, and stays ahead up to its 1,667-minute allowance. Its pricing page also advertises enterprise pricing “up to $0.015/minute” on custom terms, with no public plan behind it. If your volume is steady and above that line, and you can pay a year upfront, Zvid is the cheaper bill, and I would tell you to take it.

Rendobar’s Pro and Studio plans add 25% to credit you buy, which brings purchased Compose minutes to 3.2 cents. That narrows the gap with Zvid at full use. It does not close it.

What each billing unit punishes#

The unit matters most when your output changes shape. A team moving from 1080p at 25 fps to 4K at 30 fps pays about 4.8 times as many Creatomate credits for the same minutes. On Compose, 4K at 60 fps for a plain edit needs the Studio plan at $29 a month and renders at the same $0.04, while animated graphics stop at 1080p and 30 fps on every plan.

Speed is not in this table#

None of these vendors publishes a render-time benchmark I could compare like for like. Shotstack’s docs estimate about 20 seconds of rendering per minute of video, JSON2Video’s give 30 to 90 seconds for a one-minute video, and I found no figure from the others. On our measurements Compose renders a 21-minute timeline in 373 seconds, about 18 seconds per minute, and the compose changelog has the before and after on our own engines. Those are three different methods, so I am not ranking speed here.

The per-vendor posts go deeper on features and migration: Shotstack alternative, JSON2Video alternative and Creatomate alternative. For what a timeline request looks like, JSON to video API, one timeline to MP4 walks through one.

If your code writes the video and your volume moves month to month, I would start on Compose: it is the lowest price here with nothing to commit to. Revisit the choice when you are rendering more than about 1,240 minutes every month and can pay a year ahead, because at that point Zvid’s Business plan is the number to beat.