Wan is Alibaba's family of video models. The current Wan 3.0, released in August 2026, generates up to 30 seconds of 1080p video with sound in one pass and costs $0.05 to $0.20 a second on Alibaba Cloud's API, or comes with plans on create.wan.video from $5 a month billed yearly for 300 credits. Despite the open-source label, Wan 3.0's weights have not been released: the free Apache 2.0 models you can run yourself stop at Wan 2.2 from July 2025.
Reviewed by EdGrows·Updated Sep 25, 2026This analysis is based on documentation, public user reports, and vendor materials — not yet on our own hands-on testing. How we rate
Wan became famous for being free: in February 2025 Alibaba released Wan 2.1 under the Apache 2.0 license, weights and all, and followed it in July 2025 with Wan 2.2, which added a Mixture-of-Experts design and a small 5B model that runs on a gaming GPU. Both became staples of ComfyUI workflows, and their GitHub repositories have more than 17,000 stars each.
Everything since has been different, as Wan 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 shipped through Alibaba's own apps and API, and so did Wan 3.0, which went into public beta in August 2026. Alibaba's official Wan3.0 repository describes it as open-source video synthesis and carries an Apache 2.0 license, but in September 2026 it contained only a README and the license file. No weights, no inference code, nothing on Hugging Face. The open releases that did arrive in 2026 were specialized models such as Wan-Dancer and Wan2.2-Animate-2, built on the older architecture.
So there are two Wans now: an open family you can run yourself, frozen at 2.2, and a commercial flagship you rent by the second or the month.
Alibaba's launch materials and API documentation list these capabilities:
The 30-second single take is the headline. Veo generates 8 seconds per clip and Kling and Hailuo 15, so Wan 3.0 can hold a scene twice as long as its closest rivals before you have to extend or cut.
Plans on create.wan.video, captured September 25, 2026. Monthly billing doubles the price.
| Plan | Yearly (per month) | Monthly | Credits per month | What Wan says they cover | Concurrent videos |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Daily check-in credits | Test generations | 1 |
| Pro | $5 | $10 | 300 | Up to 60 accelerated videos or 1,200 images | 3 |
| Premium | $20 | $40 | 1,200 | Up to 240 accelerated videos or 4,800 images | 8 |
Both paid plans add watermark-free downloads, 1080p output and clips of 10 to 30 seconds, which is where Wan 3.0 earns its keep; the free plan stays at shorter, watermarked, lower-resolution clips. Credits pay for accelerated, priority generations.
At Wan's own estimate, Pro costs about 8 cents per accelerated video on yearly billing. That is cheap by any standard in AI video, with two caveats: the estimate is a ceiling that depends on resolution and length, and the first month or year is non-refundable. Plans cover the web app only; the API is billed separately.
Developers buy Wan 3.0 per second on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, in two versions:
| Model (international region) | 480p | 720p | 1080p | 30-second clip at 1080p |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| wan3.0-video | $0.05/s | $0.10/s | $0.20/s | $6.00 |
| wan3.0-video-prime | $0.068/s | $0.14/s | $0.28/s | $8.40 |
List prices on Alibaba Cloud's model pages, captured September 25, 2026. Beijing and Tokyo regions list lower rates for wan3.0-video: about $0.041, $0.083 and $0.165 a second.
The draft-then-finish habit works well here: a 30-second draft at 480p costs $1.50, a quarter of the 1080p price, so you can check pacing and composition before paying for the final render.
Wan 3.0 also runs inside other platforms. Pika lists a 5-second 720p Wan 3.0 clip at 33 credits, about $0.37 on its Creator plan, or roughly 7 cents a second: less than Alibaba's own 720p list price. Runway includes WAN among the third-party models on its paid plans.
The open models are still the reason many developers choose Wan. Both families are Apache 2.0, which allows commercial use without royalties, and the hardware needs are published in the official repositories:
Wan 2.2 is integrated into ComfyUI and Hugging Face Diffusers, and community projects add quantization and acceleration that bring the smaller models down to 8 GB cards. What you give up is the 3.0 feature set: no 30-second takes, no document input and no instruction-based editing.
Search for Wan pricing and you will find dozens of look-alike domains, with names built from wan26, wan27, wan30ai or wan3pro, selling their own credit plans under the Wan name. Some resell API access, some are simply wrappers. None is run by Alibaba, and their prices, free credits and limits say nothing about the real product. The official front doors are wan.video and create.wan.video, Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and QwenCloud, plus the Wan-Video organization on GitHub and Wan-AI on Hugging Face.
Veo 3.1 costs $0.12 a second on its Fast tier and $0.40 on Standard at 1080p with audio, and generates up to 8 seconds per clip with extension to 148 seconds. Wan 3.0's $0.20 a second sits between the two, with 30-second takes and document input that Veo lacks.
Kling costs about $0.10 a second for 1080p with audio on its yearly Pro plan and is stronger on realistic motion physics, but stops at 15 seconds per generation. Hailuo AI is the choice for realistic faces, also with 15-second clips.
Against every one of them, Wan is the only family where an older but capable version is free to download and run. For a studio that wants to fine-tune on its own footage or keep everything on its own servers, that still matters more than any benchmark. For the full field, see the best AI video generators of 2026.
Creators on a budget should try create.wan.video's Pro plan: at $5 a month billed yearly it is one of the cheapest ways to get 1080p, 30-second AI video with sound, as long as you accept Alibaba's non-refundable first term. Developers building video into a product should compare wan3.0-video at $0.10 a second for 720p with Veo 3.1 Fast and Kling, and choose on the clip length they need. Teams that need self-hosting, fine-tuning or full control over data should build on Wan 2.2 and treat Wan 3.0 as a hosted upgrade rather than something they will be able to download.
AIVario has no affiliate relationship with Alibaba or Wan, so this review earns no commission from it.
Not in any usable sense yet. Alibaba's official Wan3.0 repository on GitHub contains a README and an Apache 2.0 license file, but no model weights or inference code, and no Wan 3.0 checkpoints appear on Alibaba's Hugging Face page as of September 2026. The Wan models you can download and run are Wan 2.1 and Wan 2.2, plus specialized 2026 releases such as Wan-Dancer.
On Alibaba Cloud Model Studio's international region, wan3.0-video costs $0.05 a second at 480p, $0.10 at 720p and $0.20 at 1080p, so a 30-second 1080p clip costs $6. The higher-end wan3.0-video-prime costs $0.068, $0.14 and $0.28. Alibaba's Beijing and Tokyo regions list lower rates, and the console sometimes runs promotions.
On create.wan.video, Pro costs $5 a month billed yearly or $10 monthly for 300 credits, which Wan says covers up to 60 accelerated videos or 1,200 images, plus watermark-free downloads, 1080p and 10 to 30 second videos. Premium costs $20 yearly or $40 monthly for 1,200 credits. The first month or year is non-refundable, and plans do not cover the API.
Yes, in two ways. The free plan on create.wan.video gives daily check-in credits and one video at a time, without watermark-free downloads, 1080p or clips longer than 10 seconds. Or download Wan 2.1 or Wan 2.2 under the Apache 2.0 license and run them on your own GPU, commercial use included, paying only for hardware and electricity.
It depends on the model. Wan 2.1's 1.3B text-to-video model needs about 8.19 GB of VRAM and makes a 5-second 480p clip in around four minutes on an RTX 4090. Wan 2.2's 5B model generates 720p at 24 frames per second on a 4090-class card. The larger Wan 2.2 A14B models need a single GPU with at least 80 GB of VRAM, or several GPUs.
Up to 30 seconds in one generation, at 480p, 720p or 1080p, with sound. Wan 3.0 accepts text, images, audio, video and, for the first time, documents: one file or link of up to 100 MB and 50 pages, in formats such as PDF, PPT, DOC and XLS. On create.wan.video, clips of 10 to 30 seconds require a paid plan.
wan.video and create.wan.video, Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, QwenCloud, the Wan-Video organization on GitHub and Wan-AI on Hugging Face. Search results are full of look-alike sites with names like wan26, wan30ai or wan3pro that sell their own credit plans. They are not run by Alibaba, and their prices and limits say nothing about the official product.
At 1080p through the API, Wan 3.0 costs $0.20 a second on Alibaba's international region, against $0.12 for Veo 3.1 Fast and $0.40 for Veo 3.1 Standard, both with audio. Kling direct works out to roughly $0.10 a second for 1080p with audio on a yearly plan. Wan's advantage is length: 30 seconds per generation against Veo's 8 and Kling's 15.
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