Planning an AI content budget across agency clients
One client's project running over budget should not quietly draw down credit meant for another. Agencies running AI video, image or voiceover work for multiple accounts need a per-client estimate before production starts, not a shared pool everyone draws from.
Open the calculator →Why a shared credit pool causes problems
A single subscription or API balance shared across clients makes it hard to tell which account is actually profitable. If Client A's campaign needed twice the expected retries, that cost is invisible unless you tracked usage by project from the start. Separate the question "can we afford this subscription" from "is this specific client's project priced correctly," because a healthy account-wide balance can still hide a client you are losing money on.
Estimate per client, not per month
Before quoting or starting a deliverable, run the specific output count, duration and AI-generated share through a calculator for that project alone. Treat the result as the floor cost of the generation work, separate from your labor, strategy and revision time. This is the number to compare against what you billed the client for AI production specifically, not your full retainer.
Building in a margin for retries
Client work tends to need more revision rounds than a solo creator's own content, both because approval chains add opinions and because brand guidelines are stricter. Set your attempt factor assumption higher for client deliverables than you would for your own experiments, and treat the difference as a real cost of doing agency work, not a rounding error.
Comparing providers before you commit a client's budget
Running the same brief against multiple providers before locking in a quote can reveal a meaningfully cheaper path to the same deliverable, particularly when a lower AI-generated share paired with existing brand assets meets the brief just as well. Do this comparison before the client budget is fixed, not after you have already spent it on the first provider you tried.
Compare providers for a client project →Common questions
Should each client get a separate provider account?
Not necessarily, but you should track usage per client even on a shared account, so a single project's overage is visible before it affects margin on unrelated work.
How much retry margin should agency quotes include?
There is no universal number; the point is to set a deliberate attempt-factor assumption for client work and revisit it once you have data from a few real projects.
Does this calculator account for agency markup?
No, it estimates the underlying generation cost only. Your markup, strategy time and revisions are a separate line you add on top.
Sources and corrections
Provider prices used in the calculator are linked on the tools page and explained in full in our calculation methodology. Report a correction with the affected scenario.