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Eight AI video models cost $0.05 to $0.40 a second, ranked

Ranked on each maker's own published 720p rate read on November 1, 2026, the eight models span an eightfold gap, and Google's Veo 3.1 sits alone at the top.

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·8 min read·Updated 1 day ago

Illustration: Eight AI video models cost $0.05 to $0.40 a second, ranked
Illustration: SLOP TV News. Logos are trademarks of their owners.

Key takeaways

  • Google's Veo 3.1 Lite is the cheapest of the eight AI video models ranked here, at $0.05 a second for a 720p clip with audio, per Google's own price list read on November 1, 2026.
  • Google's Veo 3.1 is the priciest of the eight at $0.40 a second for a 720p or 1080p clip with audio, eight times the Lite rate.
  • Alibaba's Wan 3.0 lists at $0.082513 a second at 720p in Alibaba's Global deployment scope, and its page shows a limited-time 30 percent off that puts the working rate near $0.058.
  • Every figure is the maker's own published rate for a 10-second, 720p, no-input-video job; no hands-on tests were run, and promos are flagged separately from list prices.

What eight AI video models cost a second, ranked

October ran on launch promotions, and the last few days of it ran on their expiry. November is where the numbers settle, so here is what a second of AI video costs across eight of the majors' current models, from the cheapest of the eight to the priciest.

A 10-second, 720p clip with no video input runs $0.05 a second on the cheapest model on this list, Google's Veo 3.1 Lite, and $0.40 a second on the priciest, Google's full Veo 3.1. The spread is eightfold.

How these are ranked. Every figure is the maker's own published rate, read from that maker's pricing page on November 1, 2026, and normalized to the same job: one 10-second clip at the maker's 720p-class setting, with no input video. Where a maker publishes a promotional rate, the entry shows both the promotion and the list price, and the ranking uses the list price so the order does not shift with a discount. No hands-on tests were run for this list; it weighs published rates only.

What is in, and what is out. The eight entries mix flagships, mid-tiers and budget tiers rather than taking one model from each maker, and cheaper draft modes sit below the floor this list starts at: MiniMax's own price table lists H3-Lite at $0.04 a second for 768p and $0.025 for 480p, and Runway's API price list prices Runway's own Gen-4 Turbo at 5 credits a second, or $0.05. Neither is ranked here. aivideocosts.com, an independent tracker that normalizes 19 models to a 10-second job, and aivideo.news were used as leads and cross-checks, and every number below was re-read on the vendor page it points to. Two models aivideocosts still lists, Luma's Ray3.14 and Ray3.2, are left out for a different reason: Luma's pricing page bills them in credits per clip rather than dollars per second (100 credits for a 5-second 720p video, 300 credits for 10 seconds), and those credits come inside monthly subscription plans with no published per-credit dollar rate, so there is no per-second figure to put on the same scale. Third-party and small-model routes that go lower than anything here, including Pruna's P-Video-2-Pro-Reference at $0.015 a second, are outside this list because they are not the majors.

1. Veo 3.1 Lite (Google)

Google's cheapest Veo tier is the lowest published rate among the big eight. Google's Veo price list charges $0.05 for each second of 720p video with synchronized audio, and $0.03 a second for a 720p clip with no audio. At 1080p the same output costs $0.08 with audio and $0.05 without.

Lite is the "fastest" tier in Google's wording, sold for ideation and drafts rather than finished shots, and it is the one Google prices below every rival flagship at 720p. If sound is what you need, the with-audio rate is the one to budget against, and it still lands at half of what the next model up, Veo 3.1 Fast, costs.

2. MiniMax H3 (MiniMax)

MiniMax's H3 family undercuts almost everyone on published list price. MiniMax's API price table bills MiniMax-H3 at $0.08 a second for 768p output and $0.13 at 2K. The family also has a cheaper high-speed tier, MiniMax-H3-Highspeed, at $0.06 a second for 768p and $0.04 for 480p, and a lighter Max tier at $0.08 for 768p.

Those 768p and 480p labels are the tell on the whole field: the sub-cent rates you see advertised are almost always for the low-resolution draft modes, and the same model costs roughly double once you move to 1080p. H3 is the model Pika post-trained into H3 Flex, so its rate sets the floor for a growing set of downstream tools.

  • Maker: MiniMax
  • Version: MiniMax H3 (Hailuo)
  • Published rate: $0.08 a second at 768p; MiniMax-H3-Highspeed tier at $0.06 a second at 768p
  • Job: 10-second, 768p clip, no input video
  • Read: November 1, 2026
  • Source: https://platform.minimax.io/docs/guides/pricing

3. Wan 3.0 (Alibaba)

Alibaba's Wan 3.0 is the closest rival to MiniMax on the bill and the one entry where the maker is running a discount large enough to reorder the field. Alibaba Cloud's Model Studio price list, last updated October 29, 2026, prices the model by deployment scope: in its Global scope, covering China Beijing, Japan Tokyo and Germany Frankfurt, wan3.0-video lists at $0.082513 a second at 720p with a limited-time 30 percent off, which works out near $0.058 a second while the promotion holds, with the 480p tier at $0.041256 and the 1080p tier at $0.165025. In the International scope served from Singapore the same 720p tier lists at $0.10 a second, also 30 percent off, and this list prices the Global scope. The higher-quality Wan 3.0 Prime has no discount in either scope: $0.127199 a second at 720p and $0.254399 at 1080p on the Global table.

On list price Wan 3.0 sits just above MiniMax H3 and just below Kling 3.0. On the promotional rate it drops to nearly the Veo 3.1 Lite level, which is why the ranking uses the $0.082513 list figure and treats the discount as a temporary move. On the International rate of $0.10 it would rank above Kling 3.0 instead, which is why the scope is named here.

4. Kling 3.0 (Kuaishou)

Kuaishou bills Kling in its own units rather than dollars, so the rate has to be worked out from the price list. Kling's API pricing page charges Kling 3.0 at 0.6 units a second for 720p video with no audio and 0.9 units with audio; Kling 3.0 Turbo is 0.8 and Kling 3.0 with audio at 1080p is 1.2.

To turn units into money, use Kling's smallest API package: $500 buys 3,250 units, which is about $0.154 a unit. That puts Kling 3.0 at roughly $0.09 a second for 720p without audio and about $0.14 with audio, so the no-audio figure is the one that ranks here, and the audio version prices alongside Grok Imagine. Kling is also the model most often resold, and the reseller rate can differ from Kuaishou's own.

  • Maker: Kuaishou
  • Version: Kling 3.0
  • Published rate: 0.6 units a second at 720p, no audio, about $0.09 at Kling's $500 package unit price
  • Job: 10-second, 720p clip, no input video
  • Read: November 1, 2026
  • Source: https://kling.ai/dev/pricing

5. Veo 3.1 Fast (Google)

The middle Veo tier is twice the Lite rate and a quarter of the flagship. Google's Veo price list gives Veo 3.1 Fast $0.10 a second for 720p video with audio, $0.12 at 1080p, and $0.08 a second for 720p without audio.

It is the price point most creators will hit if they want finished, sound-on output without the flagship premium, and it lands within a cent or two of Kling 3.0 and Wan 3.0 once their audio and resolution terms are matched. Above Fast and below the flagship there is no cheaper Google tier, and the ladder reads as three steps: Lite for drafts, Fast for everyday work, and full Veo 3.1 for the finished take.

6. Grok Imagine Video 1.5 (xAI)

xAI's Grok Imagine Video 1.5 is the first entry with a clean dollar-per-second rate for every resolution. xAI's model page lists $0.08 a second at 480p, $0.14 a second at 720p and $0.25 a second at 1080p, plus $0.01 for each image or audio input, with preset voices free.

That is a steeper climb than any other model in the list between its own resolutions, so the 720p rate is nearly double the 480p rate. Grok also sits on the wrong side of the price-per-clip math once you add references: each image you feed it is another cent, and image-to-video counts the start frame.

7. Kling 4.0 (Kuaishou)

Kuaishou's newest flagship is also its priciest, and it is discounted on two of the platforms that carry it. Kling's API price list bills Kling 4.0 at 1.0 units a second for 720p with no input video and 1.5 units at 1080p, which at Kling's package unit price of about $0.154 works out near $0.15 a second at 720p and $0.23 at 1080p. Kling 4.0 includes audio, and its price list shows no audio toggle.

On Runway's API price list, the same model is listed at 15.7 credits a second at 720p, cut 20 percent to 12.56 credits through November 30, 2026. That reseller promotion is separate from Kuaishou's own rate, and it is the kind of discount that will read as a price rise when it ends. Kling 4.0 sits just above Grok Imagine and well below the Google flagship.

  • Maker: Kuaishou
  • Version: Kling 4.0
  • Published rate: 1.0 unit a second at 720p, about $0.15 at Kling's $500 package unit price
  • Job: 10-second, 720p clip, no input video
  • Read: November 1, 2026
  • Source: https://kling.ai/dev/pricing

8. Veo 3.1 (Google)

Google's flagship Veo 3.1 is the most expensive rate on this list, and by a wide margin. Google's Veo price list charges $0.40 a second for 720p or 1080p video with synchronized audio, and $0.60 a second at 4K. Strip the audio and Veo 3.1 drops to $0.20 a second at 720p or 1080p, which is still four times the Lite rate for the same 10 seconds.

Ten seconds of sound-on Veo 3.1 at 720p costs $4.00, against $0.50 for the same job on Veo 3.1 Lite and $1.00 on Veo 3.1 Fast. Google's older Veo 2 sits even higher, at $0.50 a second, so among the current models ranked here the flagship holds the top rate. For a creator weighing the top of the line, the flagship rate is roughly eight times the cheapest second in the whole field.

Sources

  1. cloud.google.com
  2. platform.minimax.io
  3. alibabacloud.com
  4. docs.x.ai
  5. kling.ai
  6. docs.dev.runwayml.com
  7. aivideocosts.com
  8. aivideo.news
  9. sceneos.io