Pricing models and where costs hide
Vendors price in four main ways: per seat, per credit or generation, per finished asset, or a platform fee with metered usage. Each shifts risk differently. Credits are the hardest to compare, because a minute of video and a still image consume very different amounts, and the rate at which credits convert into outputs can change. Ask for a price per typical deliverable (a product image, a short video, a localised page of copy) at your expected volumes, the overage rate, whether unused credits expire and a cap on renewal increases. Model the cost at double your expected usage too, because successful pilots grow.
Usage transparency
A single monthly total helps nobody. Ask for usage reported by team, brand, market and job type, ideally down to the asset, so costs can be allocated and waste spotted, such as a market generating hundreds of versions that never run. Confirm how failed or rejected generations are counted, and whether reports show which model a job used, since model choice can drive cost. For agencies, Synthetic White supports usage-based billing per client, each client in its own tenant with its own brand hub, and every asset carries a record of the model that made it, which makes this kind of reporting auditable.
Rights terms: ask for the wording
Rights are where assumptions do the most damage. Get written answers on who owns outputs, what rights the vendor gets over your inputs and for how long, whether any customer data trains any model (the vendor's or a provider's), whether the models are cleared for commercial use, and whether the vendor may show your outputs in its own marketing. If an IP indemnity is offered, read its conditions, exclusions and cap rather than the sales summary. Security runs alongside: IT will send its standard questionnaire, and the answers on model providers, retention and data location belong in the contract as well as the questionnaire.
Exit terms and data portability
Plan the exit before signing. Assets are the obvious part: originals at full resolution, with metadata. Less obvious and often more valuable are the brand hub's rules, saved elements, templates, approval histories and the per-asset provenance records legal may need years later. Agree export formats, the window after termination in which you can export, the cost of doing so, and certified deletion afterwards. In the EU, the Data Act's switching rules for data processing services have applied since 12 September 2025, and switching charges must disappear from 12 January 2027; check how they apply to your contract.
Updated 25 September 2026