Kling vs Veo vs Seedance for Shorts & Reels (2026)

Short version: for Shorts and Reels, use Kling v3 as the default. It renders up to 15 seconds in one pass, does vertical and square, and a silent 10-second clip costs $1.10. Pay for Veo 3.1 only when someone has to talk on camera. Reach for Seedance 2.5 when the video is one long, unbroken take.

Quick flag: Leaxor is mine, and all three models run on it. Every price below is what it charges, read straight from the same price table the checkout uses.

I've rendered all three for the clips on this site's showcase. They weren't a same-prompt shootout, so I won't pretend they were. Each model got the job I thought suited it. What I can give you is the real price of each, the real wait for each, and what each one did with the prompt it was handed.

Kling vs Veo vs Seedance at a glance

Two things in that table decide most arguments. Veo stops at 8 seconds, so a 30-second Short is four Veo clips stitched together. And Veo has no square option, which matters if you post 1:1 to a feed.

Veo 3.1

Kling v3 Pro

Seedance 2.5

Kling v3: the default for Shorts

Who it's for

Anyone posting several vertical clips a week. Kling v3 runs 15 seconds in one go, so a 30-second Short is two clips, and it does every shape a feed asks for.

What it did with my prompt

The best thing I've seen it do was on the cheap tier. I gave Kling v3 one sentence describing a morning espresso in three shots: hands locking a portafilter, crema pouring into a cup, the cup set down beside a newspaper. It came back as three separate shots inside five seconds, cut where I'd have cut them. I didn't edit anything.

Kling v3 Pro was less obedient on an anime rooftop. The city lights switched on behind the girl, as asked. The slow push-in I asked for is there but gentle, and the neon sign above her carries lettering that isn't any word. If a sign is in your shot, expect to cover it.

What it really costs

$0.60 for 5 seconds silent, $0.80 with sound. Pro costs $0.70 for the same 5 seconds.

Veo 3.1: pay for it when someone talks

Who it's for

Talking-head clips. My presenter test ran on Veo 3.1 Fast with sound on: a woman in a knit sweater, a bookshelf behind her, one line of dialogue. She says it, she smiles, and the audio track comes back with the video. That's the job Veo is built for.

What it did with my prompt

The full Veo 3.1 product shot is gorgeous and a little too keen. I asked for "fine dust" drifting through a light beam over a coffee grinder. Veo turned that into coffee grounds spraying off the burr. It looks great. It isn't what I wrote.

What it really costs

This is where Veo hurts. An 8-second silent clip is $2.00. Turn on sound, which is the whole reason to pick Veo, and it's $3.90: about 1.9× more. Veo 3.1 Fast does the same 8 seconds with sound for $1.50, and it's the version I'd use for talking heads.

Seedance 2.5: one long take

Who it's for

Videos that are one continuous shot: a walk through a place, a slow reveal. Seedance renders up to 30 seconds in a single pass, longer than anything else in this comparison by a distance.

What it did with my prompt

The alley clip is one unbroken forward move past lanterns and steam, which is exactly what I asked for. The cyclist I asked to pass camera left never turned up.

What it really costs

$1.40 for 5 seconds at 480p, and here's the odd bit: sound costs nothing extra. $1.40 with it, $1.40 without. It's still the dearest per second of the three, and it was the slowest in my runs.

Starting from a photo

All three animate a still, which is how I make most clips: get the frame right as an image first, then add motion. They differ in what they let you do with it.

"The photo's own" framing means the clip comes out the shape of the picture you upload, so crop the still to 9:16 before you send it. Veo lets you pick the shape regardless. If you want a clip that lands on a specific final frame, a product ending on its logo, say, that's Kling or Veo, not Seedance. The image to video models page lists the rest.

How long each one took

Real waits, from submitting the job to getting the file back. One run per model per day, so treat these as a feel for the speed, not a benchmark.

Kling v3 Pro taking 98 seconds one day and 287 the next is the honest picture of these queues. Seedance was slow both times. If you're iterating on a shot, that difference adds up over an afternoon.

What a 30-second Short costs on each

As few clips as each model needs, each at its longest length, rendered once with no rerolls.

Nobody renders a Short once. Budget two or three tries on the shots that matter, which is where Kling's price gap turns into real money. The full per-model list lives in what AI video costs per clip.

The best AI model for Reels and Shorts

• Everyday vertical clips: Kling v3. Cheapest of the three, longest but one, every shape.
• A presenter who speaks: Veo 3.1 Fast with sound on.
• One long take: Seedance 2.5, at 480p unless the extra detail is worth the jump.
• Square posts: not Veo.

If you'd rather not stitch clips together at all, Leaxor's other video mode writes the script, animates it and adds narration and captions, from a topic. That's on the AI video maker page. For single clips from a sentence or a photo, start at the AI video generator or image to video. Kuaishou's own Kling site and Google's Veo page describe what each lab says its model does; the prices above are the ones you'd pay here.

For the wider field beyond these three, I ranked the rest in the best AI video models of 2026.