Veo 3.1 Price: What It Actually Costs, Per Second and Per Video
Search “Veo 3.1 price” and you get two kinds of wrong answers. Some pages quote a monthly subscription — $19.99, $99.99 — as if that’s what Veo costs. Others quote a per-second number as if it’s the price of a whole video. Both mislead, and for a model priced by the second, the gap between them is the difference between a $3 clip and a $100 plan.
Here is the honest version, taken straight from Google’s own pricing pages on July 22, 2026. Veo 3.1 is billed per second of output, and the “price” is really a small matrix: which tier (Lite, Fast, or Standard), which resolution, and whether the video includes audio. Get those three right and the number is completely predictable. This breakdown gives you the full table, the real cost of an actual clip, and the two levers — one of them worth ~50% — that most write-ups never mention. (Veo 3.1’s tiers are in preview, so treat every figure as a July 22, 2026 snapshot Google can revise.) This is a cost breakdown, not a quality review — if you’re weighing Veo against rivals on output, see our roundup of the best AI video generators.
The short answer
Veo 3.1 has no single price — and no API free tier. On the paid Gemini API it costs, per second of video with audio: Standard $0.40 (720p/1080p) or $0.60 (4K); Fast $0.10 / $0.12 / $0.30; Lite $0.05 / $0.08. So a standard 8-second 1080p clip runs about $3.20. There’s no free allowance on the API, but you can cut cost sharply by dropping to a faster tier or turning audio off.
| Tier (per second, with audio) | 720p | 1080p | 4K |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veo 3.1 Standard | $0.40 | $0.40 | $0.60 |
| Veo 3.1 Fast | $0.10 | $0.12 | $0.30 |
| Veo 3.1 Lite | $0.05 | $0.08 | — (not supported) |
Google’s Gemini API pricing, captured July 22, 2026 — Veo 3.1 per-second rates, with “Free Tier: Not available” across all three tiers.
Everything below is why those numbers read the way they do — and how to pay less than the table suggests.
Is Veo 3.1 free?
Short answer: not on the API. Google’s pricing page lists the Free Tier for all three Veo 3.1 tiers as “Not available” — Standard, Fast, and Lite alike. If you’re calling Veo 3.1 programmatically, every second is billed; there is no free quota to fall back on. That directly answers the common veo 3.1 api free query: there isn’t one.
Google AI Studio is free to use, but Veo generation inside it still runs on the paid tier — the free part is the studio, not the model. The consumer side is murkier, and worth stating precisely rather than guessing. Google’s AI plans run Plus $4.99, Pro $19.99, and Ultra $99.99–$199.99 per month, and each tier — including the entry plan — comes with a pool of Google Flow credits (200 up to 25,000/month). But Google’s plans page lists its bundled video model as “Omni Flash” across every tier and does not name Veo or document a Veo 3.1 allowance at all. So there’s no first-party basis for claiming any plan “includes Veo 3.1,” free or paid. The honest read: on the API there is no free tier, and on the consumer plans Google doesn’t advertise a free route to Veo specifically. Assume you pay per second.
The full Veo 3.1 price list, tier by tier
The three tiers trade quality and speed for cost, and the spread is large — Lite at 720p is one-eighth the price of Standard.
- Standard is the flagship: best quality, and — with Fast — one of the two tiers that reach 4K. At $0.40/second for 720p and 1080p, and $0.60/second for 4K, it’s what you’d reach for when the output is the deliverable.
- Fast trades some fidelity for a large discount — $0.10/second at 720p, $0.12 at 1080p, $0.30 at 4K. For iteration, drafts, and most product use, Fast at 1080p ($0.12/s) is the sweet spot: under a third of Standard’s price at a resolution most viewers can’t distinguish on a phone.
- Lite is the cheapest way to generate Veo 3.1 video at all — $0.05/second (720p) and $0.08 (1080p), with no 4K option. It’s built for volume and previews where cost matters more than polish.
Veo 3.1 vs Veo 3 vs Veo 2: has the price moved?
If you’re weighing versions, the short version is that the headline price barely changed from Veo 3 to Veo 3.1 — the newer model is a quality upgrade at the same rate — while the older Veo 2 was cheaper but had no native audio and is now deprecated.
| Model (per second, Standard tier) | Rate | Audio | Status on Google’s API |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veo 3.1 | $0.40 ($0.60 at 4K) | Yes | Current (preview) |
| Veo 3 | $0.40 | Yes | Retired — shut down June 30, 2026 |
| Veo 2 | $0.35 | No | Older, deprecated |
The practical takeaway: there’s no money to save by targeting Veo 3 (it’s gone from Google’s API, though aggregators may keep it as a legacy option), and Veo 2’s small discount comes without audio. On a new build, compare within the Veo 3.1 family — Lite and Fast already cover the low-cost cases — rather than reaching for an older version by name.
Per-second to per-video: what a clip really costs
Per-second pricing is precise but abstract. Since Veo bills purely on output length ($/second × seconds, with no minimum-charge unit stated in Google’s docs), the mental math is easy once you fix a clip length. Here’s what a single 8-second video costs, with audio:
| 8-second clip | Cost |
|---|---|
| Standard, 1080p | $3.20 |
| Standard, 4K | $4.80 |
| Fast, 1080p | $0.96 |
| Lite, 720p | $0.40 |
So the real spread on “an 8-second Veo 3.1 clip” is roughly $0.40 to $4.80 depending entirely on the three knobs. If you’re budgeting a product feature, multiply by your expected clips per month, not by a subscription price — that’s the number that scales with you. (Comparing image costs instead? The same per-unit logic applies — see our Nano Banana price breakdown.)
How to pay less
Two levers cut Veo 3.1 cost meaningfully, and neither shows up in most price roundups.
Turn audio off. On Vertex AI, Veo lists a separate, cheaper rate for video-only generation. Standard 720p/1080p drops from $0.40 to $0.20 per second — a flat 50% saving — with smaller cuts elsewhere (Standard 4K falls about a third to $0.40; Fast trims roughly 15–20%; Lite about 40%), per the Vertex AI generative pricing page. If your use case doesn’t need Veo’s native audio — you’re adding your own soundtrack, or the clip is silent — this is the single biggest saving available.
Vertex AI pricing, captured July 22, 2026 — video-with-audio $0.40/s vs video-only $0.20/s on Veo 3.1 Standard.
You don’t pay for failures. Both Google surfaces bill only successful generations. The Gemini API states you’re “only charged if your video is successfully generated”; Vertex is more explicit — “charged only for requests that return a 200 response code,” with 4xx and 5xx responses not billed. That matters for high-volume pipelines, where retries and occasional failures would otherwise inflate the bill.
Beyond those two: pick the lowest tier that meets the bar (Fast 1080p instead of Standard is a 70% cut), and generate shorter clips — since you pay by the second, trimming a clip from 8s to 5s is a direct 37% saving.
Veo 3.1 price on Google vs an aggregator
You can call Veo 3.1 two ways, and the cost structure differs.
Direct from Google — via the Gemini API or Vertex AI — you get the rates above, billed to a Google Cloud account, with Vertex’s video-only discount and the failed-request exemption. This is the reference price, and if you’re already on Google Cloud it’s the natural path.
Through an aggregation layer, you reach the same Google models behind one pay-as-you-go key, which is useful if you’re calling several video providers and want one bill and one integration for text-to-video. Modellix, for example, carries the Veo 3.1 family — Standard, Fast, and Lite, in text-to-video and image-to-video variants — metered per second, with per-call logging that records the input, output, cost, and latency of each generation. Its published rates sit in a comparable band (Standard around $0.32–$0.48/second, Fast around $0.08–$0.24, Lite around $0.04–$0.06), and a single key also reaches other Google models and providers for side-by-side testing.
Two honest caveats. First, Google’s own Vertex video-only rate ($0.20/s Standard) can be lower than an aggregator’s audio-inclusive rate, so if you never need audio and live on Google Cloud, direct may be cheaper — we’re not claiming the aggregator is the cheapest path, only the most convenient when you’re juggling providers. Second, Veo is a Google model; an aggregator is a distribution layer for it, and Modellix carries Veo 3.1 and the legacy Veo 3, but not Veo 2 — if a page implies you can call Veo 2 through it, that’s wrong.
FAQ
How much does Veo 3.1 cost?
Per second of video with audio, on Google’s API: Standard $0.40 (720p/1080p) or $0.60 (4K); Fast $0.10/$0.12/$0.30; Lite $0.05/$0.08. An 8-second 1080p Standard clip is about $3.20.
Is Veo 3.1 free?
No — all three Veo 3.1 tiers show “Free Tier: Not available” on Google’s API pricing. AI Studio is free to use but Veo generation is billed, and Google’s consumer plans page doesn’t document a Veo allowance, free or otherwise.
What’s the cheapest way to use Veo 3.1?
Veo 3.1 Lite at 720p ($0.05/second), plus turning audio off where Vertex offers video-only rates (up to ~50% less on Standard). You also aren’t charged for failed generations.
Is Veo 3.1 cheaper than Veo 3?
No — they share the same Standard rate ($0.40/second), and Veo 3 has been retired from Google’s API. Choose by the tier and resolution you need within Veo 3.1, not by version number.
Does the price change for 4K or image-to-video?
Yes for 4K — Standard 4K is $0.60/second vs $0.40 at 1080p, and Lite doesn’t offer 4K. Image-to-video: on Modellix it’s metered at the same per-second rate as text-to-video on the equivalent tier; on Google, check the model card for the tier you’re calling.
