The first time an AI video bill caught me off guard, it was a thirty second clip I rendered four times to fix one bad camera move. Nothing fancy. Just a product shot with a slow push in.
That single shot, rendered four times on a premium model with audio on, cost more than a whole month of my image generation. I'd been thinking in clips. The model was thinking in seconds, and so was the invoice.
That's the trap with AI video in 2026. Almost nobody charges per video anymore. They charge per second of finished footage, and the price per second swings wildly depending on which model you point at the prompt.
So this is the ranking nobody puts on their marketing page. Every major text to video model, sorted by roughly what one second of output costs, with the resolution you actually get and who each one is the best value for.
The Ranking By Price Per Second
Here's where the major models land as of early June 2026. I've kept these as defensible approximates, not razor numbers, because per-second pricing shifts almost monthly and the same model often costs different amounts on different platforms.
One thing to read carefully before the table. Some of these prices include native audio in the same pass, and some give you a silent clip you'll have to score separately. That changes the real cost more than the sticker number does.
| Model | Who Makes It | Approx Price Per Second | Max Resolution | Best Value For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Veo 3.1 Lite | About $0.05 to $0.08, audio included | 1080p | Cheapest way to get Google quality with sound baked in | |
| Runway Gen-4 Turbo | Runway | About $0.05, no audio | 720p to 1080p | Fast iteration and motion control when you'll add sound later |
| Hailuo 02 | MiniMax | About $0.045 to $0.10, mostly silent | 768p to 1080p | Cheap, expressive character motion for short clips |
| Sora 2 | OpenAI | About $0.10 per second, base tier | 720p | Strong prompt understanding at a surprisingly low base rate |
| Veo 3.1 Fast | About $0.10 to $0.15, audio included | 720p to 1080p | Audio plus video in one pass without the premium price | |
| Kling 3.0 | Kuaishou | Roughly $0.10 to $0.22, audio adds more | 1080p | Cinematic motion and physics for the money |
| Runway Gen-4.5 | Runway | About $0.25, no audio | 1080p | Pro creative control and the editing ecosystem around it |
| Seedance 2.0 Fast | ByteDance | About $0.24 per second | Up to 2K | Long unified audio and video clips up to 15 seconds |
| Sora 2 Pro | OpenAI | About $0.30 at 720p, up to $0.50 plus at true 1080p | 1080p | Consistent characters and the best prompt adherence |
| Seedance 2.0 Standard | ByteDance | About $0.30 per second | Up to 2K | Top tier audio plus video quality for hero shots |
| Veo 3.1 Standard | About $0.40 to $0.75, audio included | Up to 4K | The highest end output when budget isn't the constraint | |
| Luma Ray 3 | Luma Labs | Credit based, plus a flat unlimited plan near $30 a month | 1080p | Heavy creators who want predictable flat-rate billing |
| Pika | Pika Labs | Subscription and credit based, no clean per-second rate | 1080p | Stylized social clips and quick fun effects |
Notice that Luma and Pika sit at the bottom on purpose. They don't really sell you seconds. They sell credits or a flat monthly plan, so there's no honest per-second number to rank them by. If you generate a ton, that flat ceiling can beat every metered model above it.
The cheapest sticker price almost never wins. A model at five cents a second that needs three re-rolls to land a shot is more expensive than one at fifteen cents that nails it first try.
Why The Prices Differ This Much
A 15x spread feels insane until you see what's actually moving the number. Four things drive it.
The first is resolution. A second of 4K is roughly four times the pixels of 1080p and far more than 720p, and you pay for pixels. This is why Veo 3.1 Standard at the top and Veo 3.1 Lite near the bottom are the same family at very different prices.
The second is whether audio comes in the same pass. Veo and Seedance generate synchronized sound with the video, which is a heavier job than producing a silent clip. Runway and Sora hand you silence, so they look cheaper per second until you remember you still have to score the thing.
The third is raw model size and speed. The Fast and Lite tiers aren't just marketing. They're smaller or more aggressively optimized versions that trade a little fidelity for a much lower compute cost, and that saving lands straight in your bill.
The fourth is hosted versus native. Run a model through its maker's own API and you pay their rate. Run the same model through an aggregator like fal.ai or Replicate and you might pay a little more for the convenience, or sometimes less when they negotiate volume. The model is identical. The price isn't.
If you want the quality and feel comparison rather than just the money, read our Sora vs Kling vs Runway comparison, then come back here to do the budget math.
My honest take after a lot of rendering. For most people the right model isn't the cheapest or the best, it's the cheapest one whose output you don't have to fix. Re-rolls are the silent line item that wrecks budgets, and they never show up on a pricing page.
How To Actually Lower The Bill
Knowing the per-second rate is half the battle. The other half is not wasting it. A few moves cut a video bill more than switching models ever will.
Draft on a cheap model, finish on an expensive one. Block out your shot, framing, motion, and timing on Veo Lite or Hailuo where a re-roll costs pennies. Once the shot is locked, render the final pass on the premium model. You only pay top rate for the takes you keep.
Keep clips short and stitch later. Most of these models bill per second of output, so a 10 second hero clip you only use 4 seconds of is six wasted seconds at premium rate. Generate to the length you need, not the length the slider defaults to.
Turn audio off when you don't need it. If you're scoring everything yourself in post anyway, paying for native audio generation on every take is pure waste. Pick a silent model or a silent tier and add sound once.
Shop the same model across providers. Because aggregators host the identical Kling or Veo or Seedance weights, the exact same generation can cost you a different amount on fal.ai, Replicate, or the maker's native API. It takes two minutes to check, and on a big batch the difference adds up to real money.
And start every project at a lower resolution than you think you need. A 720p draft proves the shot works for a fraction of the 1080p or 4K price, and only the final keeper has to render at full size. Most viewers never notice the difference on a phone screen anyway.
Budget one and a half to two times the sticker price for any real project. Failed generations, re-rolls, and trimmed footage all bill at full rate, and they're not optional. They're how video work actually goes.
That last buffer is the number people forget. A model at ten cents a second isn't a ten cent project once you account for the takes you throw away, and pretending otherwise is how you end up surprised by the invoice like I was.
Which One Should You Actually Pick
Strip it down to use case and the choice gets simple.
If you're on a tight budget and just need clips that look good, start with Veo 3.1 Lite or Runway Gen-4 Turbo. You get near top tier quality at the bottom of the price ladder, and Lite even hands you audio in the same pass.
If you want the best prompt understanding and consistent characters across shots, Sora 2 base is shockingly cheap to start, and Sora 2 Pro is where you go when a scene has to be exactly right. You'll pay more per second, but you'll re-roll less.
If you care most about cinematic motion and physics, Kling 3.0 punches far above its price, and Seedance 2.0 is the one to reach for when you need longer unified clips with audio already attached.
If budget is no object and you want the absolute ceiling, Veo 3.1 Standard at up to 4K with native audio is the high end, full stop. Just don't point it at draft work.
And if you generate constantly, look hard at Luma's flat unlimited plan. A metered model is cheaper for occasional clips. A flat plan wins the moment your volume gets serious, because the per-second meter stops mattering.
For the broader landscape of what's worth paying for this year, the best AI tools roundup covers the full stack beyond just video.
One last thing, and it's the whole reason this post exists. Every number here moves. New tiers ship, fast variants get cheaper, aggregators reshuffle their rates, and a model that's a bargain in June can be repriced by August. Whatever you read here, open the model's own pricing page and check the rate before you commit a real budget, because the only number you can trust is the one on the checkout screen today.