Search for the best video generation model and the first thing you meet is a contradiction. In the same week, four of the pages Google puts on page one named four different winners. fal.ai’s comparison, dated September 8, 2026, ran one identical eight-second prompt across ten generators and put Seedance 2.5 first. llm-stats.com’s leaderboard, updated September 15, 2026, ranks Kling v3 first on 1,394 blind votes. runware.ai’s collection, updated in August 2026, gives “best overall” to Veo 3.1. And the top organic result for this query is a Reddit thread whose author ranked Adobe Firefly first — a verdict the comments spent two hundred replies dismantling. None of these four is a bad page. They disagree because they are measuring different things, and once you see why, a single champion stops being the useful question.
So this page answers a different one. Below is a filter procedure for the 112 video models on sale through Modellix as of September 15, 2026 — 26 text-to-video routes, 58 image-to-video routes and 28 video-to-video routes across nine provider families — where the constraints you cannot move go first and the price goes last. It is written for people putting video generation inside something they are building, over a hosted API: self-hosted weights, local generation and the hardware those need are a different discipline and outside this page’s scope. If what you want is a finished tool with a timeline and a render button, this is not that page either, and our roundup of AI video generators is a better place to start. One disclosure before the tables: Modellix distributes all 112 of these routes, which means the per-second prices below include our cheapest margin and our most expensive one, and you can check every figure against the model page it came from.
The short version. Published generation ceilings top out at 30 seconds (two routes), and most of the catalog stops at 15. 4K is offered by six of the 34 routes we checked field by field, and on the Veo family 1080p and 4K are only available at an 8-second duration. 16 routes publish native audio generation — and the default is “on” for some of them and “off” for others. Exactly one route of the 34 publishes a last-frame input. Per-second list prices across all 112 run $0.0050 to $1.4400, and 88 of them publish a range rather than a number, because a parameter you control moves the price.
Why the four “best video generation model” lists disagree
Put the four verdicts side by side with how each was reached, because the method is what makes them incomparable:
| Source (page date) | Its winner | How it decided | Commercial position |
|---|---|---|---|
| fal.ai, 10 Best AI Video Generators (dated Sep 8, 2026) | Seedance 2.5 | One identical 8-second prompt across 10 models, with fal’s own per-model price column | Sells the models it ranked |
| llm-stats.com leaderboard (updated Sep 15, 2026) | Kling v3 (arena 1934) | 1,394 blind votes across 12 models reviewed, TrueSkill scoring | Each section funnels to its own playground |
| runware.ai, Best Video AI Models (updated Aug 2026) | Veo 3.1 | Expert picks + production notes; states it runs a fixed internal eval set but does not publish the results | Sells inference |
| Reddit r/generativeAI, top organic result | Adobe Firefly | One person’s credits, one person’s test, later disputed in the comments | Discloses a credit partnership with Adobe |
Four sources, four winners — and the differences are structural, not sloppy. The method differs: a fixed prompt rewards temporal coherence on the exact shot type it used; blind arena voting rewards whatever looks best without knowing the prompt; editorial picks reward production reliability. The prompt class differs: a single 8-second text-to-video prompt cannot tell you which model handles a 30-second narration script or a product demotion with a reference image. The roster churns between pages, which is why the four lists name overlapping but different model families at all. And three of the four are selling something, which the page text does not always lead with.
The churn is measurable rather than rhetorical. Across the four pages we read in full for this article, Google Veo, Kling, ByteDance Seedance, Alibaba Wan and MiniMax Hailuo appear on all four. OpenAI Sora, Luma and Pika appear on two — down from the days when a video-model list would start with them. Lightricks LTX-2 is on all four lists and on none of the 112 routes in this catalog, while Higgsfield shows up in this query’s related searches and on none of them either: the SERP’s roster runs ahead of what any single catalog carries, in both directions. Drop the roster question and something more stable appears underneath: what a model can be asked to do, which is published in its request schema and does not change depending on who is writing the list. The same boundary, drawn on the API side rather than the tool side, is in the API-side comparison of video models. That surface is what the next five steps walk through.
Step 1 — Set your duration cap first, because it eliminates the most models
Duration is the constraint that removes the most routes with the least argument, and it comes in two flavours that a plain “max length” column hides. Some models take a continuous range — you ask for 23 seconds and get 23 seconds. Others offer a discrete set you must pick from. Both are published, in the duration field of each model’s request schema, in seconds, as of September 15, 2026. (Wherever this page says “the 34 routes we checked field by field”, that is the 25 text-to-video and image-to-video routes covered individually here plus nine task-specific ones — lip-sync, avatar, upscaling and video-editing routes — read the same way. Everything else on the page is catalog-wide counts over all 112.)
Published maximum single-generation duration across the 34 routes checked field by field on docs.modellix.ai, September 15, 2026. Two routes reach 30 seconds; the Veo 3.1 family is the only group whose ceiling is 8. Two Hailuo routes offer exactly 6 or 10 seconds, with no value in between.
| Published ceiling | Routes | Notes on how you specify it |
|---|---|---|
| 30 s | alibaba/wan3.0-t2v, bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v |
Continuous: integers 2–30 and 4–30 respectively |
| 16 s | viduq3-pro-t2v, vidu/viduq3-turbo-t2v |
Continuous, maximum 16 |
| 15 s | Seedance 2.0 (t2v, fast-t2v), Kling v3 (t2v, turbo-t2v), MiniMax H3, Wan 2.7, HappyHorse 1.1, PixVerse v6 and c1, SkyReels, and the three Grok Imagine routes |
Continuous |
| 10 s | minimax/hailuo-2.3-t2v, minimax/hailuo-02-t2v |
Discrete: 6 or 10 only |
| 8 s | google/veo-3.1-t2v, veo-3.1-fast-t2v, veo-3.1-lite-t2v |
Discrete: 4, 6 or 8 only |
The two 30-second ceilings read, verbatim in the request schema: Video duration in seconds. Allowed values are integers from 2 to 30 for wan3.0-t2v, and ...integers from 4 to 30 for seedance-2.5-t2v.
The difference matters more than the number. If your product renders a fixed 12-second slot, kling/kling-v3-t2v can be asked for 12 seconds and minimax/hailuo-2.3-t2v cannot — it will give you 10 and leave you trimming. If your clip is 5 seconds, the 30-second ceiling buys you nothing and you should be filtering on something else. This is also the first place where a model’s own documentation tells you something the comparison posts do not: kling-video-o1-t2v caps at 10 seconds and disables multi-shot as a documented limitation, alongside the audio note in Step 3.
After this step you should be holding two or three ceiling tiers, not one — and the routes above 15 seconds are a short enough list to read individually. Longer than 30 seconds in one generation does not exist in this catalog; the alternatives are the extension routes (pixverse/v6-video-extend, skywork/video-extension-single-shot, xai/grok-imagine-video-extend) or multi-shot generation stitched downstream, which is a different job with different failure modes. The API-side mechanics of a plain prompt-to-video call are in our text-to-video API guide.
Step 2 — Then resolution, and the coupling that no table puts next to it
Resolution ceiling is the second filter, and on its own it is a simple sort: six routes reach 4K, one sits at 2K, and the rest cap at 1080p or 720p. What makes it useful is that resolution and duration are coupled, and the coupling is published per model:
Resolution ceilings for the 34 routes checked field by field on docs.modellix.ai, September 15, 2026. The 4K tier is six routes: Veo 3.1 in its text-to-video, image-to-video and fast variants, Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, Seedance 2.0 and Kling v3.
| Resolution ceiling | Routes (checked field by field, September 15, 2026) |
|---|---|
| 4K | google/veo-3.1-t2v, veo-3.1-i2v, veo-3.1-fast-t2v, google/gemini-omni-1.1-flash-t2v, bytedance/seedance-2.0-t2v, kling-v3-t2v |
| 2K | minimax/minimax-h3-t2v (768P/2K, defaults to 2K) |
| 1080p | vidu/viduq3-pro-t2v, viduq3-turbo-t2v, alibaba/wan3.0-t2v, wan2.7-t2v, happyhorse-1.1-t2v, bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v, kling/kling-v3-turbo-t2v, kling/kling-video-o1-t2v, pixverse/v6-t2v, pixverse/c1-t2v, skywork/skyreels-t2v, xai/grok-imagine-video-1.5-i2v |
| 720p | grok-imagine-video, grok-imagine-video-i2v, bytedance/seedance-2.0-fast-t2v |
Now the part that separates a parameter table from a usable constraint, because it is where shortlists break late. On the Veo 3.1 text-to-video reference the documentation states: “1080p and 4k are only available for 8-second duration.” The 4K capability is real, but only at the longest clip the model makes — so a project that needs 4K and a 5-second cut is not a Veo 3.1 project, and if you are already on this family, the Veo 3.1 API reference is the page that lists everything else the route exposes. The same family’s image-to-video route carries the same rule for its duration: 8 case.
MiniMax’s two Hailuo routes couple in opposite directions — the Hailuo 2.3 reference caps its ten-second output at 768P, while minimax/hailuo-02-t2v renders 1080p up to ten seconds. Same vendor, opposite tradeoff, which is the clearest illustration of why two models from one family still need separate rows:
Duration–resolution coupling as documented per model on docs.modellix.ai, September 15, 2026. minimax/hailuo-2.3-t2v caps its 10-second output at 768P, while minimax/hailuo-02-t2v renders 1080p up to 10 seconds — same vendor, opposite tradeoff.
| Route | The documented coupling |
|---|---|
google/veo-3.1-t2v, veo-3.1-fast-t2v |
1080p and 4K only at 8-second duration |
google/veo-3.1-i2v |
Same 8-second requirement when a last frame is supplied |
minimax/hailuo-2.3-t2v |
“10 seconds duration only supports 768P” — conversely 1080p stops at 6 seconds |
minimax/hailuo-02-t2v |
Renders 1080p up to 10 seconds without downscaling |
After this step the shortlist is usually three to five routes, and it is now a list of specific routes rather than model families — which is what you want before looking at money, because the price moves with exactly these two parameters.
The google/veo-3.1-t2v model page at modellix.ai, captured September 15, 2026. The price badge is a range rather than a number because the two selectors underneath it — duration and resolution — are what move it, which is the same coupling described in the table above.
Step 3 — Decide whether you need native audio, and check the default
Audio is the axis where the market’s own language is least precise. “AI video with sound” in the consumer tools usually means a music bed and a voiceover added after generation. Native audio means the model generates synchronized speech, music or effects in the same pass — and that is a schema field, so it is checkable. Of the 34 routes we checked field by field, 16 publish native audio generation — fifteen text-to-video routes plus google/gemini-omni-1.1-flash-v2v on the video-to-video side. One route publishes that it has none, and nine of the text-to-video routes publish nothing either way.
Native audio as published per model on docs.modellix.ai, September 15, 2026. ByteDance Seedance 2.0/2.5 and Alibaba Wan 3.0 default audio on; PixVerse v6/c1 and SkyReels default it off, so an unset parameter means silence.
| How audio appears in the schema | Routes |
|---|---|
| Summary states synchronized/native audio | google/veo-3.1-t2v, veo-3.1-fast-t2v, google/gemini-omni-1.1-flash-t2v, alibaba/happyhorse-1.1-t2v, alibaba/wan2.7-t2v, vidu/viduq3-pro-t2v, kling/kling-v3-turbo-t2v |
| Boolean switch, default on | bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v, seedance-2.0-t2v, seedance-2.0-fast-t2v (generate_audio), alibaba/wan3.0-t2v (audio) |
| Boolean switch, default off | pixverse/v6-t2v, pixverse/c1-t2v (generate_audio_switch), skywork/skyreels-t2v (sound, and not supported in its mode=fast) |
Enum native / off |
kling/kling-v3-t2v |
| Documented as absent | kling/kling-video-o1-t2v: “No native audio; duration capped at 10s; no multi_shot.” |
| Nothing published | google/veo-3.1-i2v, veo-3.1-lite-t2v, xai/grok-imagine-video, grok-imagine-video-i2v, grok-imagine-video-1.5-i2v, minimax/hailuo-2.3-t2v, hailuo-02-t2v, minimax-h3-t2v, vidu/viduq3-turbo-t2v |
That last row is not a “no”. It means the vendor’s documentation for that route does not state the capability, and we are not going to infer it from a sibling model or a review post — so treat those nine as unverified and test one request if audio is load-bearing for you. Note also the default column: shipping a talking-head clip from bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v gets audio you did not explicitly ask for, while the same request against pixverse/v6-t2v comes back silent until you set generate_audio_switch — how PixVerse v6 exposes its audio switch walks through that route’s parameter surface. Both defaults are documented; neither is guessable from a spec sheet that only says “audio: yes”.
The alibaba/wan3.0-t2v model page at modellix.ai, captured September 15, 2026. The audio field sits at true before you touch anything, which is why a call against this route arrives with a soundtrack unless you turn it off — and the same panel is where duration and resolution, the two parameters from Steps 1 and 2, are set.
If you do not need the model to speak, the cheaper shape is usually two stages: generate silent video, then drive it with a lip-sync route — skywork/sky-lipsync at $0.0120/sec, vidu/lip-sync at $0.0200/sec, pixverse/lipsync at $0.0400/sec as of September 15, 2026 — and bring your own audio. Those take an audio file as an input, which is a different capability from generating sound; the upload path is covered in Step 6.
Step 4 — Match the input you actually have
Most real projects are not text-to-video at all, and the catalog reflects it: 58 of the 112 routes are image-to-video, 28 are video-to-video, and 26 are text-to-video. Within that there are separate families for reference-to-video (11 routes, where a subject or style image conditions the output) and first-last-frame (six dedicated -fl2v routes). Picking a family is a bigger decision than picking a brand inside one.
Input mode across all 112 video routes on sale at Modellix on September 15, 2026. Image-to-video is more than twice the size of text-to-video, which is the single most useful thing to know before you start comparing model names: most of this catalog expects you to bring a picture.
Two details from the schemas that a spec sheet will not tell you. First, reference-image limits are published per route and they differ by an order of magnitude: bytedance/seedance-2.0-v2v accepts up to 9 reference image URLs, alibaba/wan2.7-videoedit up to 4, google/veo-3.1-i2v up to 3, and the Grok Imagine image routes take exactly one starting frame. Second, first-and-last-frame conditioning is almost never exposed as a parameter on the general routes. Of the 34 we checked, exactly one publishes a last-frame input: google/veo-3.1-i2v, whose lastFrame field carries the constraint that duration must be 8 when it is used. Everywhere else the capability exists as a separate model — minimax/minimax-h3-fl2v, minimax/hailuo-02-fl2v, vidu/viduq3-pro-fl2v, viduq3-turbo-fl2v, pixverse/v6-fl2v, pixverse/c1-fl2v — which is why “does this model support first and last frames” is the wrong question and “is there an fl2v route for this vendor” is the right one.
One trap worth naming, because it reads like support and is not: ByteDance’s return_last_frame parameter in the Seedance routes is documented as “Whether to return the last frame of the generated video” — it hands you the final still as an output, and does not let you condition the generation on a last frame. Reading it as first-last-frame support is an easy mistake and an expensive one if you build a pipeline around it.
After this step you know your route family and your input count, and the remaining question is what the surviving routes cost — which is Step 5, where the price ranges you have been ignoring until now finally apply. Reference images and first frames have to reach the model first, and that upload path has a retention limit worth reading before you design around it (Step 6).
Step 5 — Only now compare per-second price
Price last, because it is the parameter most likely to change your answer by a factor of ten while looking like the most objective one. Here is the surviving shortlist from the previous steps, priced from live model pages on September 15, 2026:
Per-second list prices, floor and ceiling, for the routes covered in this article, read from live Modellix model pages on September 15, 2026. A bar twice as tall as its neighbour does not mean one model costs twice what the other does — it means the same model costs different amounts at different settings.
| Route | Per-second list price | What constrains it |
|---|---|---|
google/gemini-omni-1.1-flash-t2v |
$0.0338~$0.3041/sec |
4K and native audio, but a 9× range across its settings |
google/veo-3.1-lite-t2v |
$0.0450~$0.0720/sec |
The narrowest range in the group: 1.6× across its settings |
vidu/viduq3-pro-t2v |
$0.0450~$0.1200/sec |
16-second ceiling, 1080p |
alibaba/wan3.0-t2v |
$0.0500~$0.2000/sec |
30-second ceiling, 1080p, audio on by default |
pixverse/v6-t2v |
$0.0500~$0.2300/sec |
15-second ceiling, 1080p, audio off by default |
minimax/hailuo-2.3-t2v |
$0.0504~$0.0738/sec |
10-second ceiling, 768P above 6 seconds |
bytedance/seedance-2.0-fast-t2v |
$0.0600~$0.1200/sec |
15-second ceiling, 720p cap, audio on by default |
kling/kling-v3-t2v |
$0.0672~$0.3360/sec |
15-second ceiling, 4K, audio: native/off |
bytedance/seedance-2.0-t2v |
$0.0700~$0.7800/sec |
15-second ceiling, 4K, audio on by default |
minimax/minimax-h3-t2v |
$0.0800~$0.1300/sec |
15-second ceiling, 2K |
xai/grok-imagine-video |
$0.0840~$0.1080/sec |
15-second ceiling, 720p cap |
kling/kling-v3-turbo-t2v |
$0.0896~$0.1120/sec |
15-second ceiling, 1080p |
skywork/skyreels-t2v |
$0.0960~$0.4200/sec |
15-second ceiling, sound off by default |
bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v |
$0.1030~$0.5690/sec |
30-second ceiling, 1080p, audio on by default |
alibaba/happyhorse-1.1-t2v |
$0.1400~$0.1800/sec |
15-second ceiling, 1080p, native audio |
google/veo-3.1-fast-t2v |
$0.0900~$0.2700/sec |
8-second ceiling, 4K only at 8 seconds |
google/veo-3.1-t2v |
$0.3600~$0.5400/sec |
8-second ceiling, 4K only at 8 seconds |
Read the table as a shape, not a ranking. The ranges are wide because the price is a function of the same two parameters you filtered on: bytedance/seedance-2.0-t2v spans $0.0700 to $0.7800 per second — 11.1× on one route — and a page that quotes you a single number for it is quoting either its floor or its ceiling without saying which. The narrow-range routes (veo-3.1-lite-t2v at 1.6×, hailuo-2.3-t2v at 1.46×) are the ones whose floors you can forecast against, which is a different virtue from being inexpensive. And the two ends of the same family sit far apart: veo-3.1-lite-t2v and veo-3.1-t2v are both Veo 3.1, and one starts eight times higher per second than the other.
Two pages in this cluster go deeper on individual families rather than the whole catalog: Veo 3.1’s per-second price page breaks out that family’s tiers, and Kling 3.0’s cost breakdown does the same for Kling. Both assume the per-second billing unit used in the table above.
Step 6 — Verify any of this yourself, with two commands
Everything above rests on values published in request schemas, so you should not have to take our word for any of them — and the command that reads those schemas is public, with no credential required.
First, list the catalog as the platform sees it. GET /api/v1/models returns each route’s slug, type and documentation URL, so you can diff its roster against this page instead of trusting a blog post’s model count. It authenticates the same way your generation calls do:
1 | curl --request GET \ |
Second, pull the request schema for any slug you are considering. modellix-cli model get-schema returns the request and response contract for a single route — the duration enum, the resolution options, the audio switch and its default, the reference-image limits — and is documented as public, so it does not need an API key:
1 | modellix-cli model get-schema bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v |
JSON is the default output; --output human summarises the contract and --quiet prints only the inference URL. The catalog endpoint in the first command is authenticated like any generation call; the schema command is the one documented as public. Pull it for two routes you are choosing between and diff them — that comparison is more reliable than any table in this article, including the ones above, because it is generated from the same public schema the API validates against (Get schema and Ways to use the CLI, both read September 15, 2026).
The bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v request reference on docs.modellix.ai, captured September 15, 2026. duration, resolution and generate_audio are the three fields that decide both which shortlist you are on and what the call costs — which is why the same three appear in Steps 1, 2 and 3.
Video Model Request Schemas
Read the duration, resolution and audio fields for any video route before you commit to one.
View DocsThree practical notes that belong to this step rather than to any single filter:
- Video generation is asynchronous. You submit a task and retrieve the result, so a per-second price is the price of an accepted job, not of a request — and the same submit-and-retrieve shape applies across providers (running several models through one unified API).
- Model paths no longer carry an
/asyncsuffix, and the older form still resolves, so nothing in an existing integration needs renaming for its own sake. - The input side of Steps 3 and 4 has a retention limit worth designing around.
POST /api/v1/media/filesaccepts an image, video or audio file and returns afile_idplus aurlyou pass into a prediction input, and uploaded files are, quoted from the changelog, “retained for about 7 days by default.” Generate from stored assets on a schedule rather than treating an upload as durable storage (upload media file · list models).
Putting the constraints together
The filters only pay off when you run them in order on a real spec. Take the two most common shapes in production work right now:
| If this is your constraint | Start with |
|---|---|
| Clips longer than 15 seconds in one generation | alibaba/wan3.0-t2v (to 30 s) or bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v (to 30 s, audio on by default) |
| 1080p or 4K on a 5-second cut | A 1080p-capped route — the Veo family’s 4K tiers require an 8-second duration |
| 4K and an 8-second cut | bytedance/seedance-2.0-t2v, kling/kling-v3-t2v, or google/veo-3.1-t2v and plan for its ceiling price |
| Speech or effects generated with the picture | bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v, alibaba/wan3.0-t2v (both default audio on), or google/veo-3.1-t2v |
| Your own audio track | Any silent route plus a lip-sync route — skywork/sky-lipsync starts at $0.0120/sec |
| Several reference images conditioning the shot | bytedance/seedance-2.0-v2v (up to 9), then alibaba/wan2.7-videoedit (up to 4) |
| First and last frame pinned | A dedicated -fl2v route, or google/veo-3.1-i2v with duration set to 8 |
| Forecastable spend rather than a low floor | A narrow-range route: google/veo-3.1-lite-t2v (1.6×) or minimax/hailuo-2.3-t2v (1.46×) |
| One key and one bill across several providers | Any route in the table — running several video models on one API |
| Programmatically discovering what exists | GET /api/v1/models, authenticated like any call — see the model discovery endpoint |
Two habits survive contact with a real pipeline. Hold the parameters fixed when you compare routes — per-second rates are published, but the number of usable clips per hundred attempts is not, and that ratio is usually what decides the question. Re-read the schema, not the blog post, when a vendor ships a new version, because the coupling rules in Step 2 are exactly the kind of detail that changes between generations of the same family name.
This page is not a claim that Modellix models are the best or the cheapest anywhere in the table; we resell all 112 routes, so the highest per-second price quoted above is one of ours, and so is the lowest.
Run the Shortlist on One Key
Log in to test your surviving routes on one Modellix key and read the per-request cost afterwards.
LoginFrequently Asked Questions About the Best Video Generation Model
Which model is best for video?
There is no defensible single answer, which is why four of the pages ranking for this query named four different winners in the same week. The useful version is a constraint: for a 30-second single generation, alibaba/wan3.0-t2v or bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v; for 4K at 8 seconds, google/veo-3.1-t2v or kling/kling-v3-t2v; for native speech and effects, the Seedance 2.5 and Wan 3.0 routes default audio on.
What is the longest AI video a single model can generate?
30 seconds, and exactly two routes in this catalog publish that ceiling as of September 15, 2026: alibaba/wan3.0-t2v (integers 2–30) and bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v (integers 4–30). Below them, 16 seconds on the Vidu Q3 routes, 15 seconds on thirteen others — which is the modal ceiling here, so “are AI videos always about 15 seconds?” has a factual version of the answer: for most of the catalog, yes, but two routes reach 30 and the Veo 3.1 family deliberately stops at 8.
Can AI make a five-minute video?
Not in one generation anywhere in this catalog — 30 seconds is the published ceiling. A five-minute piece is roughly ten to twenty generated segments plus stitching, which moves the problem from “which model” to “how do I keep the subject consistent across takes”. The routes that help are the video extension endpoints (pixverse/v6-video-extend, skywork/video-extension-single-shot) and multi-shot generation where a vendor documents it.
Do any video models generate audio on their own?
Yes, and 16 of the 34 routes we checked publish it — including Veo 3.1, Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, Seedance 2.0 and 2.5, Kling v3, Wan 2.7 and 3.0, Vidu Q3 Pro and PixVerse v6. Watch the defaults: Seedance and Wan 3.0 generate audio unless you turn it off, while PixVerse v6/c1 and SkyReels generate none unless you turn it on. For nine routes the vendor documentation does not state the capability either way, so treat those as unverified rather than negative.
What is the best model for image-to-video?
Image-to-video is the largest group in the catalog — 58 of 112 routes — so the shortlist arrives from the same filters: bytedance/seedance-2.5-t2v for the 30-second ceiling, google/veo-3.1-i2v when you need 4K, three reference images, or the only published last-frame input, and bytedance/seedance-2.0-v2v when conditioning on up to nine reference images matters more than length. The API-side walkthrough for that family is in our image-to-video API guide.
Is a video generation model the same thing as an image generation model?
No, and the confusion is common enough that this query’s People-Also-Ask includes image-model questions. An image model produces one still from one prompt and is billed per image — Modellix’s image routes start at $0.0040 per image — while a video model produces a timed sequence, is billed per second, runs as an asynchronous task, and takes parameters like duration and resolution that an image route does not have. A pipeline usually needs both, at very different cost profiles.
Which model follows the prompt best?
None of the 34 routes we checked publishes a prompt-adherence metric, so there is no first-party number to rank on — and that absence is worth knowing before you trust a table that has one, because those numbers come from whoever ran the test, on prompts you cannot see. The parameters this page filters on are the part of model selection that is machine-checkable; adherence is the part you have to test with your own script, which is why the practical advice above is to run two shortlisted routes on real input for a week instead of picking from a leaderboard.
Can I use the output commercially?
The licence and watermarking behaviour of each route belongs to the vendor behind it, and none of the 34 request schemas publishes a licence or watermark field — so, again, there is nothing first-party to quote. Treat it as a per-vendor question to settle before you ship, and settle it per route rather than per API: the same key reaches models whose upstream terms differ.
How much does a video generation model cost per second?
Across all 112 video routes on sale on September 15, 2026, per-second list prices ran from $0.0050 to $1.4400. That span is narrower for a filtered shortlist: the routes in Step 5 start between $0.0338 and $0.3600 per second. Because 88 of the 112 publish a range rather than a number, the only honest way to quote one is with its settings attached — which is also why the Seedance rows in Seedance’s per-second price page appear as spans rather than single rates.
Capability parameters, ceilings and couplings on this page were read from each model’s request schema on docs.modellix.ai and from live model pages on September 15, 2026, and change as vendors ship new versions — pull the schema for the exact route before you commit to a build. Per-second prices are list prices on that date and move with resolution, duration and task type. Access image and video models, including the leading Chinese models, through a single API key at modellix.ai.
