Running Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0 and Seedance 2.0 side by side: what a 10-second clip actually costs

For Medium / dev.to. Byline: Osman Söylemez. Canonical: set to the Reelina blog post if you cross-post it there later; otherwise leave Medium as canonical. Numbers are from reelina.ai/en/models/prices as of October 2026; the index is live, the article is a snapshot.

Most "which AI video model is best" posts compare output quality and stop there. The question I kept getting from people who actually ship video was different: for the same ten seconds, what does each one cost me, and does image-to-video cost more than text-to-video? I run a studio that serves 200-odd video models on one balance, so I have charged prices for all of them rather than vendor rate cards. Here is what the numbers say.

The per-second rate is the only fair comparison

Every vendor prices by the clip, and every vendor's shortest clip is a different length. Veo 3.1's is eight seconds, Kling 3.0's and Seedance 2.0's five. Compare per clip and Veo looks like the expensive one; compare per second and it is cheaper than Kling.

Dollar figures at roughly one cent per coin, the entry-plan rate. At the top of each family the picture flips again: Kling 3.0's 4K tier is five times its Std tier, Veo 3.1's full model four times its Fast tier. The name you search for ("kling 3.0 price") is really the cheapest tier's price, and the tier you end up publishing on is usually not that one.

Image-to-video does not cost more

This surprised me. Across all 208 video models in the index, the median rate for text-to-video and for image-to-video is identical: 21.6 coins per second. Kling, Seedance, Veo, Hailuo and Vidu all price the two modes the same within a tier. What moves the price is resolution and duration, not whether the shot starts from a picture. If you are drafting from stills because you assumed it was the cheap path, it isn't the cheap path; it is the controllable one, which is a better reason.

The spread is 185×

The cheapest usable video model in the index runs at 0.8 coins per second (LTX 2.3 Quality). The most expensive tiers (Hailuo 02 and 2.3 Pro) run at 148. Same ten seconds of footage, 185× the price. Nobody should pay the top rate for a draft, and nobody should ship from the bottom rate, which is why the only workflow that makes financial sense is the one every studio already uses:

1. Draft on the cheapest tier until the shot is right. Twelve 5-second shots on Vidu Q2 Std: 480 coins, about $4.80.
2. Re-run only the keepers on the tier you will publish. The same twelve on Kling 3.0 4K: 6,480 coins, about $64.70.
3. Total for a 60-second piece with real drafts: about $70. Drafting on 4K from the start would have been $130.

What I would pick, by job

• Talking-head or product shots from a still: Seedance 2.0. Cheapest per second of the big three, and image-to-video costs the same as text.
• Longer establishing shots: Veo 3.1 Fast. The eight-second minimum is a feature here, and its per-second rate beats Kling.
• Motion control and 4K finals: Kling 3.0. You pay for it; pay for it only on the shots that need it.
• Drafting everything: Vidu Q2 at 8 coins per second, or LTX if you can live with its ceiling.

Where the data is

The full table, 355 image, video and sound models with coins, dollars, clip length and per-second rate, is at https://reelina.ai/en/models/prices. It is read from the live catalogue on every load, there is a CSV, and it is CC BY 4.0, so quote it with a link. If a number here disagrees with the index, the index is right and this article is old.

Disclosure: I'm the founder of Reelina. The prices are what Reelina charges; vendors' own API prices are a different number for a different product.