Kling vs Hailuo vs Seedance vs Wan: Real AI Video Cost in 2026

Verification date: September 20, 2026. Video prices, promotions and model lineups change quickly.

1. What each price actually buys

The model names, resolutions and duration limits follow the providers' documentation; the 24 fps figure for Seedance comes from independent reporting. The "clip length" for Kling and MiniMax means 30 or 60 seconds needs several stitched generations; Seedance and Wan can produce 30 seconds in one pass.

All prices below are for plain text-to-video or image-to-video. Reference-video, editing and extension jobs bill differently: MiniMax charges $0.04 per image after the first five and bills video input by duration, Seedance counts input-video duration in its token formula, and Wan's earlier reference-to-video route billed input plus output. These workflows are not included in the comparison below.

Pixels are not equal either. If MiniMax's 768P is 16:9 (1366×768), its frame has roughly 14% more pixels than 720p, and its 2K tier is larger than 1080p. Treat cross-lab rows as comparable classes, not identical products.

2. Verified pricing, by lab

Kuaishou / Kling

• Consumer credit rule: Kling's VIDEO 3.0 guide (February 6, 2026) charges credits per second. Native audio: 12 credits at 1080p and 9 at 720p. No native audio: 8 at 1080p and 6 at 720p. Voice control adds 2. Kling has since added native 4K at 30 credits per second.
• API dollars per second: the API is billed separately from consumer plans, on prepaid resource packages. Multiple reports give per-second rates that equal the published credit ratios × $0.014 per credit: $0.084 (720p, no audio), $0.112 (1080p, no audio), $0.126 (720p, audio), $0.168 (1080p, audio), $0.42 (4K). Kuaishou's public developer pricing page does not expose a directly comparable dollar rate. Third-party resellers advertise lower rates (from $0.075 per second for Kling 3.0); those are host prices, not Kuaishou's rate.
• Model distinction: The $0.11 (720p) and $0.14 (1080p) rates match Kling's Omni variant with audio (0.8 and 1.0 API units per second, according to one independent report). Standard VIDEO 3.0 with audio is $0.126 and $0.168.

MiniMax / Hailuo

• The current model is MiniMax H3. MiniMax's own pricing page lists Hailuo 2.3, 2.3 Fast and Hailuo 02 as legacy; only H3 is in the current video table.
• (MiniMax pay-as-you-go page): H3 is billed per second: $0.08 for 768P and $0.13 for 2K. H3-Max, a 480P/768P variant, is $0.05 (480P) and $0.08 (768P). Audio input is free, and the first five reference images are free. H3 is not covered by MiniMax's prepaid video packages.
• Audio,: MiniMax says H3 generates video with native stereo sound. There is no separate audio charge.
• Legacy reseller rate: The $0.08 per second figure for 1080p Hailuo 02 Pro is a fal.ai reseller rate for the legacy model. MiniMax's own legacy Hailuo 02 price was $0.49 for a 6-second 1080P clip (about $0.082 per second) and $0.28 for 6 seconds at 768P.

ByteDance / Seedance

Seedance bills by video token, not by second, and there are two separate routes.

The token formula is (input video seconds + output video seconds) × width × height × fps ÷ 1024 (Volcano Engine documentation). For text or image input at 24 fps, that gives us (CALCULATION):

• A 5-second 720p clip costs ¥7.56 at the listed rate: 108,000 tokens × ¥70 per million = ¥7.56, or ¥1.512 per second.
• Do not treat RMB as a global rate. To put it in dollars we assume an illustrative ¥7.2 per US$1 (MODELING ASSUMPTION, not a quoted rate): ¥1.512 becomes about $0.21 per second, and ¥7.56 about $1.05 for five seconds. Under that assumed exchange rate, the international BytePlus rate for the same 720p clip, $1.156, is roughly 10% higher. The dollar figure for the mainland route is an illustration, not an official price.
• The 1080p list rate is not directly published in the cited documentation. BytePlus's documentation ran a 28%-off promotion for 1080p through September 17, 2026, "starting at approximately USD 0.41 per second." Dividing by 0.72 gives about $0.569, which matches independent reports. The $0.5686 figure is therefore an estimate, not a confirmed list rate. The promotion has expired.
• International access: BytePlus documents Seedance 2.5 with 480p, 720p and 1080p outputs and sells it in USD.
• Access caveat. One tracker reported on July 31 that Volcano Engine business customers could see Seedance 2.5's price but not yet activate the API. Current mainland API activation remains unclear from public sources.

Alibaba / Wan

• The current model is Wan 3.0, not Wan 2.2. Alibaba Cloud Model Studio exposes wan3.0-video and an accelerated wan3.0-video-prime.
• (Alibaba Cloud documentation, updated September 11, 2026): Wan 3.0 Prime in the Singapore (international) region is $0.068 per second at 480P, $0.14 at 720P and $0.28 at 1080P. Other regions list about $0.0636, $0.1272 and $0.2544.
• Standard rates: an Alibaba Cloud blog post gives $0.05, $0.10 and $0.20 per second (480P, 720P, 1080P) without naming the region or model ID. Independent reports attach these to the Standard model, with a 30% promotion through September 24, 2026. Because the cited documentation does not specify the model ID, treat these as reported rates rather than confirmed standard-model pricing; the comparison uses list rates and does not apply the promotion.
• Audio: Alibaba's guide says Wan 3.0 natively generates dialogue, background music and sound effects. A secondary report says audio can be switched off without changing the rate.
• Access: the API was still labelled preview, with reports of application-only access, and Wan 3.0 has no downloadable weights. Wan 2.2 remains the open-weights option. Whether a new international account can call Wan 3.0 today is.
• Legacy reseller rate: The $0.13 per second figure was a third-party host's rate for Wan 2.2.

3. Normalized cost: dollars per second and per footage length

Formula: Raw cost = seconds × price per second. Where a lab bills by token, the per-second price comes from the token formula above. We keep resolutions, audio settings and labs on separate rows, and we do not publish one "cheapest" number.

Calculations use the rates in Section 2. Kling API, Seedance international and Wan Standard use reported rates; MiniMax H3 and Wan Prime use vendor-published rates. Kling and MiniMax rows for 30 and 60 seconds assume two or four 15-second generations stitched together; Seedance and Wan can generate 30 seconds in one pass. Kling's "no audio" row is shown only for reference: silent and audio-included prices are different products.

Audio makes rows non-equivalent. Kling's audio adds 50% to its per-second rate (12 versus 8 credits at 1080p). MiniMax, Seedance and Wan do not publish a separate audio price, so their numbers already include sound. If you will add your own soundtrack anyway, Kling's silent rate is the relevant Kling number, but the other labs still charge their audio-included rate (Wan reportedly charges the same with audio off). Soundtrack production costs are excluded from these estimates.

Draft tiers. Lower resolutions can make cheap previews before a final render (CALCULATION):

4. Real cost per usable second

Formula: Effective usable cost = raw generation cost ÷ usable-generation rate. The 50%, 70% and 80% rates are MODELING ASSUMPTIONs. They are not measured provider success rates, and this article makes no claim about any model's actual hit rate.

CALCULATION. The multipliers are 1.25× at 80%, 1.43× at 70% and 2.0× at 50%.

Why rerolls can matter more than list price.

1. A usable-rate swing is a large multiplier. Falling from 80% to 50% multiplies your cost by 1.6×. The gap between Kling at 720p ($0.126) and Wan Standard at 720p ($0.10) is 26%. A drop in your own usable rate that you did not budget for erases it.
2. Long single-pass clips concentrate the risk. A failed 30-second Seedance 720p attempt costs $6.94; a failed 15-second Kling 720p attempt costs $1.89. Longer single passes save stitching but make each miss more expensive.
3. Failed jobs and unusable jobs are different. MiniMax's package documentation says failed or security-rejected videos are not deducted, and independent reports say Alibaba and BytePlus bill only successful generations. A completed clip you reject for quality may still be billed.
4. Big gaps still count. A roughly 3× list-price difference survives a wide range of reroll assumptions: MiniMax H3 at 768P with only 50% usable ($0.160 per second) is still cheaper than Seedance 2.5 at 720p with 80% usable ($0.289).

5. Consumer plans: only Kling can be converted

Consumer credits are a separate product from the API. We convert credits to dollars only where the current model's credit rule is documented. That is true for Kling VIDEO 3.0 only (12 / 9 / 8 / 6 credits per second, Section 2). MiniMax's consumer credit rule for H3, Dreamina's Seedance credits and Wan's creator-site credits were not verified, so we do not convert them.

Kling's membership page lists monthly allowances of 660, 3,000, 8,000 and 26,000 credits. An app-store listing shows Standard at $10, Pro at $37 and Premier at $92; independent reports put Ultra at $180. The comparison uses list prices.

CALCULATION. Read these with care:

• The per-second figure assumes you burn every credit. Credits expire monthly, so using half of Ultra's allowance doubles the effective price.
• Rerolls consume credits. At 70% usable, Ultra's 1080p-audio footage costs $0.119 per usable second (a MODELING ASSUMPTION).
• Prices vary. First-month offers and renewal prices differ from list (secondary reports give $127.99 for Ultra's first month and $159.99 at renewal), and secondary reports say Kling's Basic plan is not licensed for commercial use.
• A subscription grants no API access. The API bills separately.

Heavy Ultra users get a better deal than API developers only under some assumptions. At list price and full credit use, Standard users pay more per second than the API does ($0.182 against $0.168 at 1080p with audio), while Pro ($0.148), Premier ($0.138) and Ultra ($0.083) are lower.