What 100 AI videos actually cost across APIs (Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1, Kling)

Posted on Nov 5 • Originally published at revana.hashnode.dev

Disclosure: I work on Revana, one of the APIs compared here. Every number below was read off the sellers' own pages and Revana's live price list on 2026-11-05, and where someone else is cheaper the table says so. Prices in this space change monthly. Re-check them before you commit a budget.

Most "cheapest video API" posts compare one 5-second clip. That hides the things that matter once you ship: per-second rates at the resolution you actually use, whether sound costs extra, and minimums or per-clip pricing that distort short clips.

So here is a more boring and more useful question: what does it cost to make 100 eight-second videos (800 billed seconds) on each API, for the models people actually ask for: Seedance 2.5, Veo 3.1, Kling 3.0, plus Wan 3.0 and one image model, Nano Banana Pro, for reference.

You can check Revana's numbers yourself without a key:

curl -s https://api.revana.si/v1/models \ | jq '.data[] | select(.id=="seedance-2.5" or.id=="veo-3.1" or.id=="kling-3.0") | {id, price}' Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode The totals: 100 videos x 8 seconds Prices as of 2026-11-05. Cheapest per row in bold. A dash means the seller doesn't offer that model or setting.

The per-second rates behind those totals (as of 2026-11-05):

At 720p, ByteDance itself (BytePlus ModelArk, $10.70 per million tokens) works out to $0.2311/s for a 16:9 clip, and Replicate passes that rate through almost exactly. Revana is about 9% below them at $0.21/s. Kie.ai is $0.315/s and fal is the outlier at roughly $0.47/s.

At 1080p ByteDance charges a higher token rate ($11.70/M), which works out to about $0.569/s. Revana is $0.52/s. fal now sells 1080p too, at a higher token rate that it puts at about $1.164/s, and Replicate doesn't list 1080p for Seedance 2.5 at all. If your output is 1080p, that difference is $38.88 per 100 clips against ByteDance, $216 against Kie.ai and $515.20 against fal.

Two Seedance details that change the bill more than the headline rate does:

Google's Vertex AI list price for Veo 3.1 with audio is $0.40/s at 720p and 1080p. fal, Replicate and Revana all sell it at exactly that. Kie.ai sells an 8-second 1080p Veo 3.1 clip for 255 credits (about $1.275), which is roughly $0.16/s, or 40% of Google's own price. Their Veo 3.1 Fast is $0.325 per 8-second 1080p clip against Google's $0.96.

If Veo is all you need and you can live with Kie.ai's per-clip packaging, it's the cheapest on this list by a wide margin today. Revana is only slightly below list on Fast ($0.11/s vs Google's $0.12/s at 1080p).

Kie.ai is cheapest ($0.151/s Pro with audio). fal ($0.168/s) and Revana ($0.17/s) are effectively tied. Replicate is double ($0.336/s for pro-audio). Note that Replicate charges $0.168/s for Kling 3.0 Standard without audio, so check which variant a page is quoting before comparing.

Revana $0.14/s, Kie.ai $0.16/s, fal $0.20/s at 1080p. Over 800 seconds that is $112 vs $128 vs $160. Kie.ai's page notes that reference-video seconds are billed on top of output seconds, and that applies everywhere.

For stills (which most video pipelines need for first frames), the spread is wide. Revana is $0.04 per 1K/2K image, Kie.ai $0.09, Google's own Gemini API $0.134, fal and Replicate $0.15. At 4K it's $0.08 / $0.12 / $0.24 / $0.30 / $0.30. If you make storyboards or start frames by the hundred, this line matters more than any video line above.

Failed generations. Video models refuse prompts, time out, and hit capacity. ByteDance's docs say it charges only for successfully generated videos. Revana does the same: a failed generation's cost_usd is 0. Before you multiply your expected volume by a rate, check each seller's policy on failures, plus your own retry rate. A 10% failure rate on a seller that bills failures is a 10% surcharge.

Minimums and packaging. Per-clip pricing (Kie.ai's Veo) is great for 8-second clips and wasteful if you only need 4. Some sellers also set a per-generation minimum, so read the fine print before you plan a batch of 4-second clips.

Credits vs dollars. Kie.ai sells credits at roughly $0.005 each, with a 10% bonus on larger top-ups. Revana uses 100 credits = $1. Convert everything to dollars before comparing.

Prices move. Several of these pages say prices are "in beta" or "subject to change". Treat the table as a snapshot of 2026-11-05, not a contract.

Whichever API you use, compute the cost from the live price list and set a hard cap per job. With Revana that's one unauthenticated call and some arithmetic:

import json, urllib. request models = { m [ " id " ]: m for m in json. load ( urllib. request. urlopen ( " https://api.revana.si/v1/models " ))[ " data " ]} def clip_cost ( model_id, resolution, seconds, audio = False ): price = models [ model_id ][ " price " ][ " usd " ] key = f " { resolution } +audio " if audio and f " { resolution } +audio " in price else resolution return round ( price [ key ] * seconds, 4 ) for model_id, res, audio in [( " seedance-2.5 ", " 1080p ", True ), ( " veo-3.1 ", " 1080p ", True ), ( " kling-3.0 ", " 1080p ", True )]: one = clip_cost ( model_id, res, 8, audio ) print ( f " { model_id: 14 } { res } 8s: $ { one:. 2 f } per clip, $ { one * 100:,. 2 f } per 100 " ) Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Then pass that per-clip figure as max_cost_usd on each request so a single job can never cost more than you planned:

curl -s https://api.revana.si/v1/generations \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $REVANA_API_KEY " \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "Idempotency-Key: batch-2026-11-05-clip-001" \ -d '{ "model": "seedance-2.5", "input": {"prompt": "a paper boat drifting down a rain-soaked street, low angle", "resolution": "1080p", "duration": 8, "aspect_ratio": "16:9", "audio": true}, "max_cost_usd": 4.16 }' Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Takeaways Seedance 2.5: Revana is the lowest list price I found at both 720p ($0.21/s) and 1080p ($0.52/s); ByteDance and Replicate are next at 720p. Veo 3.1 and Veo 3.1 Fast: Kie.ai is far below everyone, Google included. Kling 3.0: Kie.ai is a little cheaper, with fal and Revana close behind.

Replicate's Kling is the most expensive. Wan 3.0: Revana is a little cheaper than Kie.ai at 1080p; fal is the most expensive. Nano Banana Pro images: Revana at $0.04 is less than half of the next seller.

No single API wins every row. If you use several models, the real decision is whether one key and one request shape for all of them is worth a few percent on some rows. That's the trade Revana is built around: one POST /v1/generations for 200+ models, charging only for successful generations.

All prices as of 2026-11-05, from: api.revana.si/v1/models; kie.ai/seedance-2-5, /veo-3-1, /kling-3-0, /wan3.0-video, /nano-banana-pro; fal.ai model pages; replicate.com model pages; docs.byteplus.com ModelArk pricing; cloud.google.com Vertex AI pricing; ai.google.dev Gemini API pricing.

Try it: revana.si has one API key for 200+ video and image models, with live prices on revana.si/pricing.