Best Chinese AI Video Generation Models 2026: Seedance vs Kling vs Hailuo vs Vidu

Video is where Chinese AI labs have moved fastest in 2026. ByteDance's Seedance line shipped native synchronized audio generation; Kuaishou's Kling pushed cinematic motion quality; MiniMax's Hailuo became the price-performance workhorse; and Tencent's Hunyuan Video opened a budget tier that made short-form generation nearly free. This guide compares them on the numbers that matter for API buyers: cost per second of finished video, resolution tiers, audio support, and image-to-video capability.

The video lineup at a glance (Sep 2026)

What a video actually costs: worked examples

Per-second pricing makes video budgeting arithmetic, not guesswork. Two common scenarios:

For scale: a month of daily 5-second 720p sound-on clips on Seedance 2.5 costs about $48 — less than a single stock-footage license. Failed generations on NovAI are auto-refunded, so aborted jobs never eat your balance.

Seedance 2.5: the native-audio frontier

ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 is the first widely available Chinese model to generate synchronized audio inside the video call itself — dialogue, ambient sound and effects come out of one generation, no second TTS/SFX pipeline needed. Clips run up to 15 seconds at 480p ($0.14/s) or 720p ($0.32/s). If your product needs sound-on video (ads, shorts, explainers), this is the model to build around — the walkthrough below shows the exact call shape.

The rest of the Seedance 2.0 family covers the silent-video ladder: 2.0 spans 480p ($0.067/s) through 720p ($0.163/s) and 1080p ($0.329/s) to 4K ($1.00/s), while 2.0-fast cuts those tiers roughly 20% cheaper ($0.054 / $0.131 / $0.264 / $0.802).

Hailuo: the price-performance workhorse

MiniMax's Hailuo line is the volume choice. minimax-video-h3 and h3-max (~$0.077/s) carry the flagship motion quality; v2.3 (~$0.062/s) balances text-to-video and image-to-video; and v2.3-fast (~$0.042/s) is the cheapest image-to-video route in the whole lineup — ideal for animating product shots, avatars or illustrations in bulk. Our full pricing breakdown lives in the Hailuo H3 pricing guide.

Hunyuan Video & CogVideoX: budget and free tiers

Tencent's hy-video-v1.5 at ~$0.046/s is the cheapest paid video on NovAI, and Zhipu's cogvideox-flash is genuinely free — fine for prompt iteration and UI prototyping before you promote a workflow to a paid model. For per-second economics across the whole industry, see our AI video API cost-per-second comparison.

Kling and Vidu: the ecosystem picture

Kling 3.0 (Kuaishou) remains one of the strongest cinematic generators in the world — excellent motion coherence and prompt adherence; for a head-to-head with Western flagships see our Sora 2 vs Veo 3.1 vs Kling vs Seedance comparison. Vidu (Shengshu) is known for stylized/anime motion and reference-to-video generation. Neither video endpoint is currently listed on NovAI; when they become available upstream we will add them — the platform ships new Chinese models day-one as a rule.

Calling Chinese video models from anywhere

All NovAI video endpoints are OpenAI-compatible-style async jobs: submit a generation task, poll for status, receive an MP4 URL. No Chinese phone number, no Alipay, no CNY billing.

# Submit a text-to-video job (Seedance 2.5, native audio)
curl https://aiapi-pro.com/v1/video/generations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-novai-YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "seedance-2.5",
    "prompt": "A street-food vendor in Chengdu at night, neon signs, sizzling wok, ambient city sound",
    "duration": 5,
    "resolution": "720p"
  }'

# -> returns a task id; poll the status endpoint until the MP4 URL is ready.
# Failed generations are auto-refunded - you only pay for successful video.

Endpoint shapes differ slightly per model family; the exact request/response schema for each is documented in the API docs and demonstrated end-to-end in AI Studio, where you can generate your first clip in the browser before writing any code.

FAQ

Which Chinese video model has native audio?

Seedance 2.5 generates synchronized audio (speech, ambience, effects) inside the video call itself — currently unique in the Chinese lineup at these price points.

What is the cheapest AI video API per second?

cogvideox-flash is free. Among paid models, hailuo-v2.3-fast (~$0.042/s, image-to-video) and hy-video-v1.5 (~$0.046/s) are the floor.

Can I use Kling via NovAI?

Not yet — Kling video endpoints are not currently listed. Seedance 2.5 and the Hailuo line are the closest live alternatives for cinematic and volume workloads respectively.

Do failed video generations cost money?

No. NovAI auto-refunds failed generations, so you pay only for delivered video.