September 5, 2026
Invoicing AI creative work to a client: real cost, price grid and clauses to plan for
What a production really costs in credits, why invoicing at cost price is the worst possible idea, how to build a per-deliverable package, and the three clauses that stop a job going wrong.
Frank HoubreFounder of Imaginode
The trap every beginner falls into
Invoicing at production cost condemns you to derisory rates: a thirty second video costs less than three euros in credits, which says nothing about what it is worth to the client.
The first job comes in, the client asks for a price, and the reflex is to start from cost. I spent two euros in credits, I spent three hours, I invoice a hundred euros. It is logical, it is honest, and it is the surest way never to make a living with these tools.
The problem with that logic is that it exposes a piece of information the client has no reason to know and that does not concern them. They are not buying your credits. They are buying a video that will sell their product, or that saves them a five thousand euro shoot.
We are going to put the real figures down, because you need them to steer your margin, then build a grid that stands up. One note up front: these are my choices and my method, not a market study. Adapt them to your market and your level.
BalanceWhat a production really costs, in credits
A finished visual comes to around sixty credits and a thirty second film to about 200, that is less than three euros of technical cost.
Let us start with the real cost, calculated on the catalogue. A finished visual: about twenty attempts on Flux Schnell at 1 credit to find the composition, then three finals on a good model at 5 credits. Total around 35 to 65 credits depending on the output model.
A thirty second film in six shots: the storyboard in stills costs about forty credits, the six five second video shots on Kling 2.5 Turbo cost 156 credits, and the edit costs nothing since it is computed on your machine. Around 200 credits in total.
In euros: on the Creator plan at 42 euros for 3,100 credits, that film comes to less than three euros of technical cost. You could therefore produce about fifteen thirty second films within a single monthly plan. That is the figure you must never put in a quote.
Why the client is not buying credits
The client buys a result, a deadline and someone taking responsibility: the cost of the tool is not part of what they are assessing.
Put the question differently. When a client hired a studio before, did they pay the price of the film stock? Did they ask what the lights cost in electricity? Never. They paid for a result.
What they buy from you is three things. A result they cannot produce themselves, a deadline they would not get elsewhere, and someone who takes responsibility if it does not work. None of the three is measured in credits.
The mental shortcut to break: your tools are cheap, therefore your work has no value. That is false. A caterer does not invoice the price of the eggs. And a client who asks you to lower your price because it is made by AI is mostly telling you they are buying the wrong product.
The three ways to invoice, and the one that holds
The hourly rate punishes speed, per-visual pricing rewards volume at the expense of quality, and the per-deliverable package is the only model aligned with these tools.
First option, the hourly rate. It has a fatal flaw here: the better you get, the faster you go, the less you earn. You spent three years learning to produce in one hour what used to take ten, and you are punished for it. Avoid.
Second option, unit pricing, so much per delivered image. It works for volume production, an e-commerce catalogue for example, and it is very readable for the client. The risk is that the client counts images rather than quality, and the discussion slides towards the number.
Third option, the per-deliverable package, and that is the one I recommend. A visual identity, a campaign of six visuals, a thirty second film. The client buys a finished thing, you stay free in your method, and your speed gain stays your gain.
Building your package: the question to ask
Start from what the deliverable replaces for the client, not from what it costs you: a product shoot avoided, a film shoot avoided, a stock library avoided.
The right question is not what does it cost me, but what does it replace. A series of product photos replaces a studio shoot with rental, photographer and retouching. A professional portrait replaces a photo session. A cinematic ad replaces a shoot.
Find out what those services cost in your region, from real providers. Those are your reference points. You are not going to match them, otherwise the client has no reason to change, but you will know what scale you are on.
Then position yourself clearly below the old world, and far above your technical cost. The space between the two is enormous, and that is your room to manoeuvre. A client saving sixty percent against a shoot is happy, even if you spent three euros in credits.
The clause that saves the job: revisions
Without a number of revisions written into the quote, AI production becomes an infinite loop because the client knows regenerating is quick.
Here is beginner mistake number one, and it only shows up on the third job. The client knows you generate, so they know a variation takes two minutes. They ask for one, then another, then go back to the first.
Write the number of feedback rounds included in the quote, and what happens after that. Two rounds included, each additional round invoiced at such a rate. It is not distrust, it is what any agency has always done, and clients understand it perfectly.
Also define what a round is: one batch of remarks sent in one go, not fourteen messages spread over three days. That sentence alone will save you dozens of hours over a year.
The storyboard as an approval milestone
Getting six thumbnails approved before producing the video moves corrections to the cheapest stage and creates a written point of agreement.
The best protection against back and forth is not a clause, it is a milestone. Before producing a single second of video, send the storyboard: six thumbnails showing each shot.
At that stage a correction costs 3 credits and ten minutes. The client says the third shot does not work, the light is too cold, they want a wider shot on the second. Perfect, that is exactly when they should say it. The full method is in storyboarding with AI before paying for video.
And the approved storyboard becomes your point of agreement. What was approved was approved: if the client changes their mind later, that is an additional feedback round, and the conversation stays calm because it was written down. Invoice that milestone inside the package, it is part of the work.
Splitting the quote into steps the client understands
A quote in three lines, art direction, production, edit and delivery, is understood and defended better than a single lump sum with no detail.
A single package of fifteen hundred euros with no explanation triggers a negotiation. The same amount split into three readable lines is discussed far less.
Line one, art direction and shot breakdown: visual research, storyboard, approval. Line two, production: generating the shots, character consistency, corrections. Line three, edit and delivery: assembly, sound, exports in the requested formats.
The client sees work rather than a price. And if the budget does not fit, you have three dials to adjust instead of one: fewer shots, a single delivery format, no custom sound. Without that split, the only variable is the total price, and that always ends the same way.
Whether to say that you use AI
Announcing the method in the quote avoids the late discovery, and many commission contracts now contain a clause on the subject.
My position is clear: I say so, and I write it in the quote. Not as a headline, but as one line about method. Three reasons.
First because it will come out anyway, and learning by surprise six months later that a campaign was produced this way puts the client in an awkward position with their own boss. Second because many commission contracts now contain a clause about AI use, and it is better to read it before signing than to discover you have just breached it.
Third because it is an argument. You are not someone hiding a method, you are someone who has mastered it. The client who picks you knows why, and the one who is bothered by it walks away before the job rather than in the middle of it.
The rights you transfer, and the ones you cannot
You can transfer exploitation rights on what you deliver, but you cannot guarantee a legal monopoly on a generated image: separate the two in the contract.
Delicate subject, to be handled cleanly in the quote. You can perfectly well transfer to the client the exploitation rights on the deliverables: they use them, distribute them, adapt them. That is what they expect and it raises no difficulty.
What you cannot guarantee is that nobody will ever use a close image. Copyright protection of a raw generation is weak, and it rises with the amount of human work you put in. So do not promise an exclusivity you do not control.
The subject deserves to be understood before signing anything, and I covered it fully in can you sell an AI-generated image, with the four situations where you take a real risk: named artist styles, trademarks, real faces and model licences.
Steering your margin without thinking about it
Track the credit cost per job rather than per generation: a Creator plan covers about fifteen thirty second films, which makes the margin very predictable.
You do not need cost accounting. Just note the total credits per job, once, at the end. After three jobs you will have your orders of magnitude, and they will barely move.
Useful markers: around sixty credits for a finished visual, about 200 for a thirty second film, around 40 for a full storyboard. The exact price appears on the button before every click, and the public calculator lets you price a project before quoting it.
On plans, Starter gives 900 credits for 13 euros, Creator 3,100 for 42 euros and Studio 10,500 for 145 euros, with commitment-free top-ups from 300 credits for 5 euros. The detail is on the pricing page. If your technical cost exceeds five percent of what you invoice, you are invoicing too low, not paying too much for the tool.
The jobs I turn down
A job with no brief, a per-visual job with unlimited revisions and a job demanding a guarantee of legal exclusivity are refused before they start.
Three cases where I say no, and I learned all three the hard way. The client with no brief who expects you to find what they want: that is an art direction job disguised as a production job, to be invoiced as such or refused.
Unit pricing with unlimited revisions: you generate endlessly for a fixed amount, it is mathematically losing and the relationship ends badly. And the client who demands a written guarantee of legal exclusivity on the visuals: you cannot give it honestly, so do not give it.
For everything else, these tools now let you deliver in two days what used to take a team and three weeks. That value is real, and it is billable. If you are starting out on the production side, the beginner mistakes will stop you burning your margin on useless generations.