Which AI Video Generator is the Best? | A Breakdown of the Top AI Video Tools
We tested 7 different AI video generation tools to find out which one is best for making AI films.
When it comes to making high quality AI videos, creative control is everything. After all, a successful film needs high resolution visuals and consistent, dynamic movement to be effective. There are so many AI tools out there, with new features and updates dropping almost every day, and it can be overwhelming to keep track of them all. But which one is the GOAT?
Check out our breakdown of each tool below to find out which one is the best fit for your AI filmmaking needs. Spoiler alert: We have a clear favorite!
AI VIDEO GENERATOR BREAKDOWN VIDEO
Below is a video explaining the pros and cons of the top AI Video Generators in the industry.
AI Video Generator Showdown | Which One is the Best?
Here we break down which AI Video generator is the best on the market. We hope you enjoy! :)
To get started, here’s our judging criteria:
1. Stability & Realism: Does it have visual consistency and realistic movements?
2. Video Length & Frame Rate: How long are the video clips and what is the frame rate?
3. Ease of Use: Is the UI simple to navigate?
4. Text to Video Quality: How well can the tool turn a text prompt into a video?
5. Image to Video Abilities: How well does it add motion to a reference image?
6. Ability to Take Direction: Does the tool correctly interpret the whole prompt?
7. Speed: How long does it take for the generations to finish?
8. Resolution & Overall Pixel Quality: How high is the resolution?
9. Cost and Availability: Is it affordable and available to the public?
Haiper
Haiper is convenient because you can create 10 free generations per day, which is pretty generous compared to other tools. It also has some advanced features for better control with directing, including the ability to add multiple frames, repaint, and extend the length of your generations.
Text To Video: Using the text to video feature, we found that the final clips are not super realistic. The resolution is soft, and not ideal if you want a professional look.
Image To Video: It’s great that Haiper offers an image to video feature, but the movement feels stiff and restricted. We caught plenty of hallucinations and warping, and the resolution and details just aren’t up to par for cinematic viewing.
Speed: Haiper is a bit slow, coming in at about 3 mins per generation, at 24 frames per second up to 8 seconds long.
Cost: Haiper charges $30 month for unlimited generations
RATING: C
Overall, Haiper gets the job done, but it’s probably not the best tool if you’re aiming for cinematic videos or professional quality.
2. Hotshot
Hotshot is a relatively new AI video generator built by a team of only 4 people who boldly claim that Hotshot is comparable to SORA. (We’ll see!)
Text to Video: After trying out some text to video prompts, we were impressed by the parallaxing and consistency. The resolution is pretty sharp at 1344 x 768, but this is not the format we prefer for filmmaking. You would need an upscaler to make these generations usable.
But there’s no image to video option! This makes Hotshot pretty challenging to use if you want to create a cohesive narrative story. Being limited to only text to video means you’ll have to reprompt frequently, and use longer prompts to achieve the same lighting or visual consistency across several shots.
Cost: Hotshot gives you 2 free per day, each with 24 fps at 5 seconds long. You can pay $99 for 200 generations per month, which is only enough to make one 30 second commercial or super, super short film.
RATING: D
Hotshot doesn’t have all the elements to build a successful AI video and it’s a bit expensive, so we’re giving it a D. Hopefully Hotshot comes out with their version of image to video, soon.
3. Kling
Kling is China’s competitor to SORA, and it recently gathered a cult following of users who swear by it. What should we call them? “Klingons”? (Thank you, we’ll be here all night!)
Kling has a surprising amount of advanced controls. It allows you to choose the aspect ratio, specify camera movements and include negative prompts (for anything you don’t want to see in the generation).
Text to Video: We think Kling’s generations are dynamic and impressive. They really feel like live action!
Image to Video: Kling’s image to video feature is really simple to use and delivers very realistic results with natural movements, which could make it a top contender for the best AI video generation tool.
Speed: Generations can be a bit slow, coming in at a little over 3 mins to make a 5 second video clip.
So far, so good! But the catch is that Kling currently produces generations at 30 frames per second with a resolution of 720P. That’s not great news for filmmakers right now, but once Kling can make videos at 24 frames per second, we think it’ll be a game changer.
Cost: Kling gives you 2 free clips per day and offers a subscription at $92/month for the premium tier.
RATING: B+
Overall, Kling works very well! A wide range of advanced options make it a great choice for creating AI films.
4. Luma Dream Machine
Luma Labs took the AI filmmaking community by storm when it dropped Dream Machine a few months ago. The recent updates have been pretty impressive, delivering on Luma’s promise of better accuracy with rendering text and natural movements.
Luma 1.6 was released last week, launching a groundbreaking “camera control” feature that includes 12 distinct camera motions for you to choose from. Combined with the start and end frame feature, this will really elevate the AI filmmaking process and give directors a chance to put their own original style into individual generations.
Text to Video: Dream Machine is often realistic looking, but it tends to produce “slow motion” movements. The quality is high, but sometimes the motion feels like it’s lagging.
Image to Video: The image to video feature works great, typically adhering to the original image quite closely. But Dream Machine generations with close ups on human faces have a smooth, soft look, which isn’t great for cinematic storytelling. The “enhance prompt” feature will add more dynamic motion to the prompt you provide, but the results can be a little unexpected.
Resolution: Dream Machine generations are 1360 x 752 (higher than 720p), 24 frames per sec, up to 5 seconds long, with an option to extend it.
Cost: Luma offers 30 generations per month with their free tier, and $29/month for 150 generations.
RATING: B
Overall, Dream Machine is a solid tool for AI filmmakers. We’re excited to see what future updates they drop!
5. Pika
Pika has been on the market as a text and image to video editor for awhile, and the UI is very user friendly. Similar to Runway, a Pika subscription will get you access to lip sync, inpainting and other features you might find useful in your filmmaking process.
Text to Video: The image quality was quite low, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of movement. The overall composition of the generation matched the basic idea of our prompt, but more advanced details were missed.
Image to Video: Pika’s results were very simple, and occasionally looked soft and out of focus. There was a “smoothed-over” blurring look to the generations we ran, which made them feel more like watercolors than real life images.
Speed: Pika works quickly, and generations are typically done in about a minute.
Resolution: Generations are up to 4 seconds long (with an extend feature), coming in at 24 frames per second, at 720P. You can also upres directly in Pika, replacing the need for Topaz Labs or another external upres tool.
Cost: 3 generations for free per day, $35/month for up to 200 video generations or $70 for unlimited.
RATING: C
We gave Pika a C because while the model is useful and affordable, we think there are some better image to video generators available.
6. Pixverse
Pixverse has been popular with AI creators in the past because it used to be free! But now, like most other video generation tools, it offers several different paid tier options for subscribers.
Text to Video: We were impressed by Pixverse’s ability to produce letters and text without too much warping, but the prompts we gave still had a lot of distortion in the background.
Image to Video: The visual details generated with image to video are not great, and the overall look is very soft, which would make it difficult to use for professional purposes.
Resolution: Pixverse provides generations at 30 frames per sec, and the resolution natively is 576P (very low!).
Cost: Pixverse gives you 6 free generations, and a subscription of $30 could give you 333 videos per month.
RATING: F
Pixverse’s quality just isn’t high enough for filmmaking purposes.
7. Runway
Runway is one of the most popular and widely used tools among AI filmmakers. There are a ton of useful, advanced features in Runway, including rotoscoping, green screen removal, voice-over, and lip sync.
Text to Video: Runway’s recent update with Gen-3 Alpha delivers some great video results from text prompts. It generally adheres to the prompt closely and produces detailed human expressions and facial consistency. For a deeper dive, check out our video tutorial for prompting Runway.
Image to Video: Runway will let you choose if the image you upload is the first or last frame in the generation, which is convenient. The generations were very accurate to the prompt, but we notice that sometimes Runway defaults to “zooming in” to a random spot on the image.
Interested in improving your Runway prompting skills? We made a video to help you! Check out our Runway prompting guide here.
Resolution: Runway produces clips at 24 frames per seconds, up to 10 seconds long if you use the extend feature. Videos generated with Runway are 768 x 1280 (a bit better than 720P) and you can upscale video in Runway itself.
Cost: Runway gives you 3 video generations for free, and has several paid tiers depending on your needs. For unlimited video generations and access to all its features, Runway is $95. That’s a pretty good price, if you use it often!
RATING: A-
We think Runway is a really valuable platform with many different tools that support the AI filmmaking process and give your work a professional look.
8. SORA
Let’s get this out of the way: SORA is not available to the public yet! But the videos we’ve seen have blown us away. We can’t test the model ourselves, but we promise we’ll rank its capabilities once SORA is available for everyone.
RATING: S
Since we can’t compare SORA to the other tools, we’re giving it its own “S” ranking!
Our experiments with each of these AI video generator tools point to an obvious top 3. In our opinion, Luma Labs Dream Machine, Runway and Kling are definitely the strongest competitors and most useful platforms for AI filmmakers. And we’ll see how this list is affected, once SORA is out!
But overall, we think Runway takes the title of the best AI video generator. Runway’s features make it a valuable investment for AI creators. Up against other models, Runway consistency delivers!
If you feel inspired to run your own experiments with different AI video generators, let us know how it goes! Stay up to date by subscribing to our AI film news.
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