AI video API pricing is all over the place right now. The same 5-second clip can cost anywhere from about $0.47 to $3.40 depending on which frontier model you call — and provider docs don't exactly make comparison easy, because every provider slices pricing by resolution tier, duration cap and audio support differently.
So I tabulated the real per-second costs across the frontier video models available through one unified API (Viddra — full disclosure at the bottom), watched the actual sample outputs side by side, and did the monthly-cost math for a realistic workload. This post is that comparison: Hailuo H3 vs Kling 3.0 as the two ends of the price spectrum, plus what everything in between actually costs.
The actual numbers
All prices are per second of generated video, pulled from the live model directory (GET /v1/models) — not from marketing pages:
| Model | Provider | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hailuo 2.3 | MiniMax | $0.0933/s (768P) · $0.15/s (1080P) | cheapest flagship-tier output |
| Hailuo H3 | MiniMax | $0.12/s (768P) · $0.20/s (2K) | MiniMax's 2K flagship, 4–15s |
| Seedance 1.0 Pro | ByteDance | $0.13/s | efficient budget tier ($0.65 per 5s) |
| Seedance 2.0 Mini | ByteDance | $0.15/s (720p) | budget tier, 4–15s |
| Wan 2.6 | Alibaba | $0.16/s (720p) · $0.24/s (1080p) | solid all-rounder |
| Kling 3.0 | Kuaishou | $0.18/s | quality flagship, 3–15s, optional audio |
| Veo 3.1 Fast | $0.20/s | 720p with native audio, speed-optimized | |
| Veo 3.1 | $0.35/s ($0.60/s with audio) | premium tier | |
| Seedance 2.0 | ByteDance | $0.47/s (720p) | 480p–4K, 4–15s |
| Seedance 2.5 | ByteDance | $0.68/s (720p) | long-form, up to 30s |
Two things jump out. First: the spread between the cheapest and priciest flagship-tier output is roughly 7x. Second: Hailuo H3's 2K tier at $0.20/s still costs less per second than most flagships charge for 1080p.
Hailuo H3: the price-performance flagship
H3 is MiniMax's current 2K-capable flagship, and its pricing structure is what makes it interesting:
- 768P: $0.12/s — this is one of the lowest per-second prices you'll find on any flagship-class video model right now
- 2K: $0.20/s — cheaper per second than Veo 3.1's $0.35/s or Seedance 2.0's $0.47/s, both of which top out below 2K at those tiers
- 4–15s per generation
768P is perfectly fine for social feeds, where most clips get compressed anyway. The 2K tier is the one I'd point at: if your content ends up on anything bigger than a phone screen, $0.20/s for 2K undercuts essentially everything else at that quality level.
If you want to go even cheaper, Hailuo 2.3 at $0.0933/s (768P) is the actual floor of the market — but it caps at 1080P, so H3 is the cheapest route to 2K.
Kling 3.0: paying $0.06/s more for motion quality
Kling 3.0 is Kuaishou's flagship and the quality reference in most side-by-sides: $0.18/s flat, 3–15s, optional native audio.
That's $0.90 for a standard 5-second clip, versus $0.60 for the same duration on H3 768P. Whether the difference justifies itself depends entirely on your use case. Kling has consistently been the model to beat on motion coherence — complex physical interactions, fast camera moves, characters doing things that require the underlying physics to hold up across frames. For hero shots in a product launch or anything with a lot of motion, that's what the premium buys you.
Don't take my word for it: you can watch real, unedited samples from both models (and download them) on the free tools page linked at the end — no signup needed to watch.
The math that actually matters
Say you're producing 30 five-second clips a month (roughly one short ad or social clip per day):
| Workload | H3 768P | H3 2K | Kling 3.0 | Veo 3.1 (w/ audio) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 clips × 5s = 150s | $18.00 | $30.00 | $27.00 | $90.00 |
| Scale ×10 (300 clips) | $180 | $300 | $270 | $900 |
At volume, the model choice is the budget. Since Kling 3.0 dropped to $0.18/s, the gap to H3 768P has narrowed to $0.06/s — reserving Kling for hero shots and H3 for routine social content still keeps your video generation line item lean without dropping anything you'd actually notice on a feed.
How I'd choose
- High volume, social resolution → Hailuo H3 768P ($0.12/s), or Hailuo 2.3 ($0.0933/s) if 768P-only is fine
- 2K output without 4K prices → H3 2K ($0.20/s) — the best per-second value of any 2K-capable flagship I've tabulated
- Motion quality is the product → Kling 3.0 ($0.18/s)
- Short ads that need sound → Veo 3.1 Fast ($0.20/s, native audio included)
- Long single-shot scenes → Seedance 2.5 (up to 30s)
One key for all of it
Full disclosure: I work on Viddra, the unified API I used to tabulate all of this — one API key for 20+ models (12 video, 5 image, 2 speech), pay-per-second billing from $0.12/s, new accounts get $1 in free credits, and top-ups get a 10% bonus. Failed tasks are auto-refunded, and you can set a monthly spend cap per key so a runaway script can't burn your balance.
The pricing table above is public and verifiable either way — the live model directory reflects per-second prices in real time, and the same numbers are on each model's page:
- Free online tools — watch and download real samples from H3, Kling 3.0, Wan 3.0, Veo 3.1 Fast and more, no signup: viddra.com/tools
- Live model directory with per-model pricing: viddra.com/models
Prices are as of writing and do change as providers update tiers — the live directory is always the source of truth. If you benchmark these models yourself, I'd genuinely like to hear where you land in the comments.
Top comments (0)