March 12, 2026 · 4 min read
AI video generation has exploded in 2026, but API pricing remains confusing. We compared every major provider to find the actual cheapest option for developers building video features.
| Provider | Model | Cost/Second | 3s Clip Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| PixelAPI | WAN 2.1 14B (480p) | $0.017 | $0.051 |
| Vidu | Q3 (480p) | $0.035 | $0.105 |
| fal.ai | Hailuo Standard (768p) | $0.045 | $0.135 |
| fal.ai | WAN 2.5 | $0.050 | $0.150 |
| Runway | Gen-4 Turbo | $0.050 | $0.150 |
| Kling | 2.5 Turbo Pro | $0.070 | $0.210 |
| fal.ai | Hailuo Pro (1080p) | $0.080 | $0.240 |
| Runway | Gen-4 Standard | $0.120 | $0.360 |
| fal.ai | Veo 3 Fast | $0.250 | $0.750 |
| fal.ai | Sora 2 Pro (720p) | $0.300 | $0.900 |
| fal.ai | Veo 3 Standard | $0.500 | $1.500 |
PixelAPI is 2x cheaper than the next cheapest option (Vidu Q3) and 3-30x cheaper than premium providers like Runway, Sora, and Veo.
Simple: we self-host on our own GPUs. No AWS/GCP markup. No per-second cloud billing. Our RTX 6000 Ada 48GB renders WAN 2.1 clips in ~2 minutes, and the hardware cost is amortized across thousands of jobs.
Cloud providers charge you for their infrastructure + profit margin + compute overhead. We just charge for the GPU time at hardware cost.
curl -X POST https://api.pixelapi.dev/v1/video/generate \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"prompt": "A golden sunset over calm ocean waves, cinematic",
"duration": 3,
"resolution": "480p"
}'Returns a generation_id — poll GET /v1/video/{id} until status is completed. Output URL contains your MP4.
| Resolution | Credits/Second | Cost/Second | 3s Clip | 10s Clip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 480p (832×480) | 17 | $0.017 | $0.051 | $0.170 |
| 720p (1280×720) | 25 | $0.025 | $0.075 | $0.250 |
Minimum billable duration: 3 seconds. Maximum: 10 seconds per clip.
Sign up with Google → get 100 free credits. That's enough for two 3-second 480p videos to test quality before committing.
PixelAPI also offers 12 other AI models — all at the cheapest prices in the market: