What does one usable second of AI video actually cost?

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Quick read

• Cheapest published API rates: Hailuo 2.3 Fast at 768P (about $0.032/s, sold as $0.19 per 6-second clip), Kling 2.6 and Kling 2.5 Turbo at 720p without audio ($0.042/s, per Kling's API docs), and Veo 3.1 Lite, Wan 3.0 480P and MiniMax H3-Max 480P ($0.05/s).
• Premium tiers cost about 10x more: Veo 3.1 Standard with audio is $0.40/s, and 4K pushes most models to $0.30-0.60/s.
• Subscription platforms can come out cheaper per second than the raw APIs, but only if you use the credits before they expire.

Cost per second by model (official API list prices)

Prices as of the date shown; confirm on the provider's site.

API prices are pay-as-you-go, cover one generated second at the listed resolution, and exclude taxes. Wan prices are for Alibaba Cloud's International deployment; other regions differ.

Cheaper via third-party APIs (resellers)

These pay-as-you-go platforms resell the same models. Only rows that undercut the official API price above, or add a price the official list doesn't publish, are shown. fal.ai, WaveSpeed and OpenRouter charge the official rate for Kling 3.0 and Veo 3.1 Standard, and Replicate charges about 2x for Kling 3.0 at 720p and 1080p, so they are not listed separately. RunningHub’s “Economy” routes (which RunningHub says are cheaper but don’t guarantee stability) and EvoLink’s per-video “Beta” routes are left out.

Prices as of the date shown; confirm on the provider's site.

Kie.ai bills in credits; its pricing page lists credits and the dollar price side by side, which works out to $0.005 per credit. Higgsfield labels its Kling and MiniMax API rates 50% off a list price that matches the official rates, and doesn't say when that discount ends. Its Wan 3.0 API offer is shown at 60% off, and Higgsfield’s pricing data lists an end time of Oct 31, 2026, 8:00 PM AST (source, 2026-10-18). RunningHub's Kling 3.0 Standard and Pro tables don't label resolution. EvoLink shows its prices as a discount on its own reading of the official rate; we list only the price it charges. These are independent third-party resellers, not Kling, Google, MiniMax, ByteDance or Alibaba, and not endorsed by them. Reseller prices can change without notice, and output quality, queue times and failure handling may differ from the official API.

Reseller sites, in the order they first appear in the table: Kie.ai, Higgsfield (main site; its API is at open.higgsfield.ai), RunningHub, EvoLink, OpenRouter, PiAPI, fal.ai. Also mentioned above: WaveSpeed and Replicate. The Kie.ai, Higgsfield, RunningHub and WaveSpeed links are affiliate links; I may earn a commission if you buy through them.

Cost per second by platform (subscriptions)

Platforms sell credits, and each model uses a different number per second. Where a platform publishes credits per second, we show the dollar cost for one reference model. Where it doesn't, the cell says n/a.

Prices as of the date shown; confirm on the provider's site.

Magnific (formerly Freepik) uses more credits for other models. On Premium's annual price, Seedance 2.5 720p (440 credits/s) works out to about $0.242/s, Veo 3.1 4K with audio (520 credits/s) to about $0.286/s, and Hailuo 2.3 Fast (25 credits/s) to about $0.014/s. Kling app per-second costs are for 4K output, the only rate shown on Kling's membership page (sign-in required, as of Oct 18, 2026; check current pricing). Dreamina's per-second figures come from the video counts it advertises during a promotion and will change when the promotion ends.

“Unlimited” plans: real or not?

Short answer: real, but narrow. On every plan we checked, “unlimited” covers only certain models, often at lower resolution or in a slower queue, and comes with fair-use rules.

AI dubbing: cost per dubbed minute

Prices as of the date shown; confirm on the provider's site.

$/min = plan price ÷ included dubbing minutes, assuming every minute is used. ElevenLabs minutes are worked out from its published 3,000 credits per minute for watermark-free automatic dubbing.

Dubbing tools, in table order: ElevenLabs, Rask AI, Perso AI, HeyGen. The ElevenLabs link is an affiliate link; I may earn a commission if you buy through it.

Methodology

• Every price comes from the vendor's own pricing page or API documentation, read on the “checked” date. No reseller blogs, except where a row is clearly flagged.
• API rows: the listed per-second price. Where a vendor prices per clip (Hailuo 2.3), we divide by the clip length and say so.
• Platform rows: $/s = (plan price ÷ credits) × credits per second for the named reference model. We use the annual price where only annual credit totals are shown.
• “Usable” seconds: list prices assume you keep every generation. Use the adjuster to divide by your real keep rate.
• Prices are in USD, before tax and any first-month promotions unless stated. If a number isn't published, it's n/a.
• Affiliate links: some visit links earn a commission (see the note at the top). They don't change which rows are listed, their order or the prices shown.

Guides

• Kling AI pricing in 2026: cost per second and plans. Kling 3.0 API rates, app plans and Runway resale prices, dated.
• Kling API pricing in 2026: official and reseller rates. Kling 3.0 per-second prices from Kling, Kie.ai, fal.ai, WaveSpeed, PiAPI, Replicate and Runway, dated.
• RunningHub AI pricing in 2026: what the video API costs. RunningHub per-second prices for Kling 3.0, Veo 3.1, Seedance 2.0, Wan 3.0 and Hailuo against Kie.ai and the official APIs, dated.
• OpenArt pricing in 2026: plans, credits and video costs. Monthly vs annual prices, credits and estimated cost per video, dated.

Change log

• 2026-10-18: launch. 45 model/API rows and 23 platform plan rows (8 platforms), plus 14 dubbing plan rows (4 tools), all checked against official pages. Higgsfield marked n/a (pricing page unreadable without JavaScript).
• 2026-10-18 (update): added a table of third-party API resellers, Higgsfield plan rows and its unlimited terms from the official pricing page, and a pricing note.
• 2026-10-18 (update 2): added RunningHub, EvoLink and OpenRouter reseller rows from their own model pages, and a RunningHub pricing guide.
• 2026-10-18 (update 3): added visit links (some are affiliate links) and a commission disclosure; no prices or rankings changed. Added the end date Higgsfield shows for its Wan 3.0 discount.

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