Best image-to-video models in 2026

Kling 3.0 Pro is the best all-around image-to-video model right now: it takes up to 5 reference images for consistency, claims "Top 1" camera control on Infer's own model page, and outputs native 4K-captured 1080p for $0.10 per second. Seedance 2.0 Pro is the runner-up and the pick if your animatic needs audio baked into the same generation call. Hailuo 02 Pro is the budget option at $0.08/second when you're animating high volumes of social clips and can tolerate softer motion at the edges.

Image-to-video, feeding a still (a product shot, a keyframe, a storyboard panel) into the model instead of just a text prompt, is quietly the more common production workflow than pure text-to-video. You already have the hero image from the photoshoot. You need it moving. That changes what matters: face and product consistency across the shot, how well the model respects the input frame instead of drifting into its own interpretation, and whether it can hold a "start frame" through to a usable end frame.

Ranked comparison table

Prices and specs verbatim from Infer's model catalog, observed 2026-07-22. Elo figures from Infer's leaderboard, Artificial Analysis Video Arena snapshot dated 2026-04-30. Hailuo 02 Pro's full spec page returned a server error during our data pull, so resolution and duration are unconfirmed for Infer's page specifically; the price and I2V support are confirmed via MiniMax's own image-to-video API docs.

Which one should you use

• Animating pack shots and product photography → Kling 3.0 Pro. The reference-image support (up to 5, added to Infer 2026-07-20 per the changelog) is built for holding a product's shape and label text across a camera move, which is the exact failure mode of cheaper I2V models.
• Storyboard panel to animatic, with sound → Seedance 2.0 Pro. Native Foley in the same generation call means you're not opening a second tool to add ambient audio to a silent clip.
• High-volume social content on a tight budget → Hailuo 02 Pro. At $0.08/second it's the cheapest confirmed I2V rate here, and MiniMax's own docs confirm image-conditioned generation is a first-class input, not a bolt-on.
• Open-weights, self-hosted, or fine-tuning pipeline → Wan 2.2 T2V-A14B, with a caveat. It's the only Apache-2.0-licensed model on this list, but read the honesty note below before you build an I2V pipeline around it.
• A face has to survive 3+ cuts → Kling or Seedance, both of which take reference images as of the 2026-07-20 changelog; Hailuo and Wan don't publish an equivalent multi-reference spec.

Kling 3.0 1080p Pro

Kling is the one to reach for when the input image is doing the heavy lifting: a hero product shot, a brand mascot, a portrait that has to stay recognizable through a pan. Kuaishou's own release material and third-party API docs confirm image-to-video with an optional end-frame input, letting you specify both where the shot starts and where it should land (wavespeed.ai's Kling 3.0 I2V page), and Infer added support for up to 5 reference images across Kling and Seedance on 2026-07-20. That matters in practice: a pack-shot job with a logo, a hero product, and a hand model can go in as three separate references instead of hoping one composite image holds together.

On Infer, Kling costs $0.10/second, ranks #3 on Infer's cached Artificial Analysis snapshot at 1248 Elo, and captures at native 4K before delivering 1080p output. Infer's copy calls it "Top 1" for camera control and "best in class" for stylized motion, and the use cases Infer lists (stylized music videos, dance and choreographed motion, anime and cinematic shorts) are all clips where the input frame needs to survive a big camera move without warping. Requests go through Infer's standard async job pattern (submit, poll or webhook, retrieve), rate-limited to 60 requests/minute by default, the same pattern as Veo and Seedance on the platform.

The honest flaw: Kling ships no native audio in this Pro tier. An animated product shot with a voiceover still means a second pass through a TTS or audio model, and Infer's own model page for Kling notes official docs reference audio only as a credit add-on rather than a built-in generation step. If the deliverable needs sound baked in, that's Seedance's job, not Kling's. Run Kling 3.0 Pro on Infer →

Seedance 2.0 Pro

Seedance is the only model on this list that generates audio and video jointly rather than stitching a soundtrack on afterward, useful the moment your animatic needs ambient noise or Foley timed to the motion you just described. ByteDance's own copy on the model calls out director-level control (orbit, dolly, crane, static camera, plus lighting direction and shadow density), and it takes an image via the init_image parameter for the I2V path rather than a separate endpoint. That single-parameter design is worth flagging for anyone scripting a batch job: the same request shape handles text-to-video and image-to-video, so switching a pipeline from one to the other is a one-line change, not a new integration.

It sits #2 on Infer's video leaderboard at 1271 Elo, just ahead of Kling's 1248, and Infer's own copy notes it's priced "the same as ByteDance's direct API," which is a rarer claim than it sounds since most hosted platforms mark up the underlying provider rate. At $0.13/second it's tied with Wan 2.2 for the most expensive model on this list. The catch: Infer's page caps it at 720p, a real step down from Kling's 1080p output if the client is watching on anything bigger than a phone, and clips top out around 8-10 seconds, so a 15-second product animation still needs to be assembled from two generations. Run Seedance 2.0 Pro on Infer →

Hailuo 02 Pro

Hailuo is the value play. MiniMax's own image-to-video API documentation confirms it accepts a starting image (URL or base64) plus a text prompt and optional bracketed camera commands like [Pan left, Pedestal up] (up to 3 stacked commands, MiniMax recommends), so I2V is a supported, documented path, not a guess. At $0.08/second on Infer it's roughly 20% cheaper than Kling and 38% cheaper than Seedance, which matters when you're animating a batch of 50 product photos rather than one hero shot. Infer's own copy positions it plainly as MiniMax's "value-tier video model," "~50% cheaper than Kling and Veo" in Infer's own words, and that framing holds up against this list's actual per-second rates.

The gap: Infer's own Hailuo 02 Pro page returned a server error on every fetch attempt during data collection for this piece (confirmed via direct curl, not a one-off glitch), so we can't confirm its max resolution or duration from Infer's copy directly. MiniMax's own pricing docs list both a 1080p Pro tier and a 768p Standard tier elsewhere, so assume Hailuo 02 Pro on Infer means the 1080p tier until Infer's page is back up, and treat that assumption as pending re-verification even though the $0.08/second price is confirmed. Try Hailuo 02 Pro in the Infer playground →

Wan 2.2 T2V-A14B

Wan earns its spot on this list for cost and license, not I2V polish, and it's worth being blunt about that up front. Infer hosts Wan 2.2 T2V-A14B, the text-to-video checkpoint, named as such, at $0.13/second under an Apache 2.0 license, which is the only model here you can self-host and fine-tune without a usage restriction. Infer's own comparative claim puts it at "~85% quality compared to Hailuo 02 Pro," which is a candid number for a platform to publish about its own catalog, and its stated use cases (open-source-first teams, cost-sensitive prototyping, fine-tuning base, on-prem deployment) are all about ownership of the weights, not about I2V fidelity.

Alibaba does publish a distinct Wan2.2-I2V-A14B model with genuine first-frame and first-and-last-frame image conditioning (Wan-Video/Wan2.2 on GitHub), and that checkpoint supports 480p and 720p generation with smoother transitions than the 2.1 generation. But that's a different model file than the one on Infer's catalog page. If your workflow is specifically "take this image and animate it," Wan's current Infer listing isn't the tool for that job. It's a T2V model that happens to be open and cheap, and a genuinely strong choice if you're prototyping or fine-tuning off open weights, just not a strong I2V pick as hosted today. Wan 2.2 T2V-A14B is live on Infer — try it →

How we ranked

The order above weighs three things: image-conditioning support confirmed in the provider's own docs (not just marketing copy), Infer's cached Artificial Analysis Elo for overall video quality, and price per second on Infer. Infer hosts all of these models and profits equally whichever one you pick, so this ranking is just what the specs and testing say; we have no stake in Kling beating Seedance or vice versa. Where Infer's own page returned a server error (Hailuo 02 Pro), we cross-checked against the provider's own API documentation rather than guessing.

What didn't make the list

Veo 3.1 Fast isn't here because Infer's own catalog lists it as text-to-video with native audio, not image-to-video, even though Google's Gemini API docs describe an image-conditioned mode for Veo 3.1 that accepts up to 3 reference images (Google Developers Blog, Veo 3.1 announcement). That's a real capability gap between what Google ships and what Infer's page for this model currently documents, worth watching but not worth recommending yet on the strength of Infer's own spec.

HappyHorse-1.0 tops Infer's cached Artificial Analysis leaderboard at 1368 Elo, but it has no public API as of this writing, so there's nothing to test or recommend here.

Runway Gen-4.5 ships native dialogue and ambient sound and Runway's own announcement claims a first-place arena result, but it isn't in Infer's 14-model catalog, so there's no CTA or hands-on price to report against the others on this list.

Browse the rest of Infer's best-of directory for other rankings, or for the full picture beyond I2V see best AI video models overall, or if you're generating for ad creative specifically, best AI video models for ads. Curious what any of this actually costs at scale? See the AI video pricing index or the cheapest AI video API roundup. Migrating off a shutting-down model? Check Sora 2 alternatives. And for a head-to-head on the two top I2V picks here, see Kling 3.0 Pro vs Seedance 2.0 Pro.

All four models above run on one Infer API key. Try Seedance 2.0 Pro in the Infer playground →