How to Show AI Video Generation Costs to Users Before They Hit Render

A developer building an image-to-video workflow around Grok Imagine 1.5 Preview has outlined a design pattern that displays estimated credit costs to users in real time, before they submit a generation request. The approach ties cost estimation directly to form controls — duration and resolution — so the displayed price updates instantly as users adjust settings, rather than revealing charges only after submission. Credit rates in the described implementation vary by resolution, with 480p charged at 1.6 credits per second and 720p at 3 credits per second, rounded up to a whole credit. The developer argues that surfacing costs client-side is a product-design issue, not merely a billing one, since hidden pricing can lead new users to unknowingly exhaust limited free allowances on a single render. The post also recommends structuring each AI model as a data object to prevent invalid control combinations and reduce inconsistencies between the interface, documentation, and underlying API.