The cheapest AI video generation APIs in 2026

Hailuo 02 Pro is the cheapest AI video generation API on Infer, at $0.08 per second of output. A 6-second clip costs $0.48. Veo 3.1 Fast ($0.09-$0.10/sec), Kling 3.0 1080p Pro ($0.10/sec), and Wan 2.2 T2V-A14B and Seedance 2.0 Pro (both $0.13/sec) follow behind it. All five prices are Infer's own rate-card figures, observed July 22, 2026, and every one of them bills only successful generations: a render that errors out costs nothing.

Ranked by price: Infer's video model rates

Infer hosts all five of these models and charges the same take rate regardless of which one you pick. We have no favorite here; this ranking is just the rate card. Try Hailuo 02 Pro on Infer →

One flag on that top row: Hailuo 02 Pro's own Infer page has returned an HTTP 500 error on every fetch since this pricing pack was compiled, so its $0.08/sec figure and leaderboard position come from the page's server-rendered meta description, not a live pricing block. Re-verify before quoting it as final.

What the same models cost off Infer

Infer's pitch is undercutting fal.ai and Replicate by up to 50% on the same underlying models. The gap is real but uneven model to model.

Seedance 2.0 Pro is the standout gap. fal.ai's 1080p standard tier runs 5.2x Infer's flat rate. Kling and Wan don't have a clean fal.ai comparison point in this pass; both rows are left blank rather than guessed, per the rule that unverified prices get omitted, not estimated.

What a real render batch costs

Three sizes, same math for all five models: price per second times clip length times clip count. Numbers are Infer's rates; ranges reflect Veo's $0.09-$0.10/sec spread.

The spread between cheapest and priciest never exceeds 1.7x within Infer's own catalog. The real price variance in this market shows up between providers, not between Infer's models.

What actually moves the price

Duration and resolution are the two levers, and they don't move the same way on every model. Veo 3.1 Fast generates in native 8-second segments that chain up to roughly 148 seconds at the same per-second rate on Infer; off Infer, fal.ai charges 3x more for the same model at 4K versus 720p/1080p ($0.30-$0.35/sec vs $0.10-$0.15/sec), and adding audio adds another 50% on top of the silent rate. Seedance 2.0 Pro shows the same pattern in reverse: fal.ai's 1080p standard tier costs more than double its fast, reference-to-video tier ($0.682/sec vs $0.2419/sec), while Infer's flat $0.13/sec doesn't split by resolution at all.

Billing mechanics matter as much as the rate card. Infer charges per second of output and only for generations that complete successfully; a timed-out or errored job isn't billed. All five models here run async on Infer, returning a job ID immediately rather than blocking the request; that doesn't change the price, but it changes how you'd architect retries around one.

Cheaper alternatives if the rate card still isn't low enough

Wan 2.2 T2V-A14B is already the cheapest way to get open weights on this list: Apache 2.0 licensed, self-hostable, and fine-tunable, at the cost of Infer's own comparative claim that it delivers "~85% quality compared to Hailuo 02 Pro." Self-hosting it removes the $0.13/sec API charge entirely but replaces it with GPU-hour billing that runs whether or not a job is queued; that trade only pays off once render volume is high and steady enough to keep utilization up. Run Wan 2.2 T2V-A14B on Infer → if you want to test the quality gap before committing to your own infrastructure.

For casual, high-frequency use rather than programmatic API calls, Infer's $49/month Unlimited subscription is worth comparing against the per-second math above: it covers image and video generation with no per-call credits. It can beat metered billing for someone rendering many short clips personally rather than through a pipeline.

Choose Hailuo 02 Pro when the API bill is the only thing that matters. Choose Kling 3.0 1080p Pro or Seedance 2.0 Pro when quality has to clear a bar first and the extra $0.02-$0.05/sec is not the deciding factor. Either way, run it through Infer rather than the model's own API or fal.ai: on every model in this table except Wan and possibly Kling, Infer's rate is at or below every other source we could verify.

Related reading

• Kling 3.0 Pro vs Veo 3.1 Fast: a head-to-head on quality and pricing for the two mid-tier picks above.
• Kling 3.0 Pro vs Seedance 2.0 Pro: how the two $0.10-$0.13/sec models compare on actual output.
• Wan vs Kling vs Hailuo: a three-way look at the budget end of this list.
• Best AI video models in 2026: the full ranked list, priced and tested.
• The AI video pricing index: the master price table across every model and provider on Infer.
• All pricing and cost breakdowns: every calculator and cost page in one place.