The Best AI Video Generator: A Detailed Comparison of 10 Tools

These days you practically can’t move without running into a new AI generative video tool. But which is the best AI video generator?

That’s actually a tricky question to answer:

• The technology is advancing so quickly that major new improvements seem to launch every month, if not every week.
• While many of the main players use their own proprietary models under the hood, many others are simply wrappers for the same model with different subscription options or user interface layers.

What’s crystal clear, however, is just how quickly AI video generators have improved. The can create videos with realistic physics, consistent subjects, and precise creative control for those who want to create videos—areas that presented major challenges just a year or so ago.

For those of us working in video, these tools represent a substantial evolution in what’s technically possible, though each comes with distinct strengths and limitations. They can be super handy for businesses creating promotional videos, explainer videos, and marketing videos.

In this article, I’ll compare 10 of the main AI video generator tools and share the video each one generated from the same prompt. That way, you can see the results for yourself and pick what you feel is the best AI video generator app.

• Why use an AI Video Generator
• How We Tested These Tools
• AI Video Generators Compared
  • Kling AI (2.0)
  • Runway (Gen 4)
  • Google Veo 2
  • OpenAI Sora
  • Pika 2.0
  • Adobe Firefly
  • Hailou Minimax
  • Luma Dream Machine
  • Lista de arte
  • Vidu
• The Verdict: What’s the Best AI Video Generator?

Why Use an AI Video Generator?

For fun and profit! Well, probably mostly for fun right now, although there are numerous creative studios raising millions to challenge Hollywood with AI-generated video content workflows, designed to deliver similar-ish results at a fraction of the cost and without requiring professional video editing skills.

Personally, I can see how, with some careful prompting, using generative AI video tools for establishing shots, short insert cutaways and other editorial fixes could help augment your existing project. AI tools are definitely a huge time saver when performing audio cleanup to remove background noise and other sounds.

Either way, if you’re a video editor or other creative who wants to create high quality videos, you should learn about these AI tools, and determine which is the best AI video generator for you—because they’re not going away.

How We Tested These Tools

To determine the best AI video generator, we ran the same prompt through each tool in order to create videos and easily compare the results based on the same input. This facilitated an apples-to-apples comparison of video quality and how each AI video maker handles the same video creation prompt.

But it negates the fact that some tools likely respond better to different prompt styles, content and structure.
I’ve also given my own thoughts on each of the tools’ outputs, across the following categories, although these are of course more subjective.

• Accuracy: How many errors are in the video?
• Realism: Does it look real?
• Consistency: How closely does it follow the prompt?
• Creativity: Does it look interesting?

I have also compared each tool along the following elements:

• Free trial
• Cheapest price
• Text-to-video
• Image-to-video
• Update outputs
• Highest resolution
• Maximum shot length
• Camera controls
• Lip sync
• Sound generation

The AI video test prompt

I used Perplexity.ai to design a prompt to compare tools and determine the best AI video generator. With a little bit of work, here’s where we ended up:

Create a cinematic shot of a futuristic coastal city at golden hour. The camera tracks a sleek flying vehicle gliding over a wide river filled with glowing boat traffic, revealing neon-lit skyscrapers with prismatic glass facades reflecting the sunset, a river surface with perfect mirror-like ripples doubling the city’s neon lights, bioluminescent algae glowing cyan along the waterfront, pedestrian bridges with depth-of-field blur on crowds of humans and android hybrids, sunlight filtering through lenticular clouds creating volumetric rays, bokeh effects from floating holographic advertisements, and a slow push-in reveal of a central tower with caustic light patterns from the water. Maintain hyper-realistic textures (wet concrete, glass condensation) and cinematic color grading (teal shadows vs. orange highlights). Include subtle motion blur during panning shots and lens flare from the setting sun. Style: Blade Runner meets realistic architectural visualization.

To be fair to all of the AI video models, it might be an overly complex prompt. But it’s interesting to see how each one handled it.

AI Video Generators Compared

Here’s a summary table of the various tools to give you a quick overview of how they stack up.

To keep things concise I’ve had to generalize in some parts of the table.

• For example, OpenAI’s Sora offers storyboard and prompt-based controls, but not the traditional camera controls like pan, tilt, and zoom found in Kling AI, Runway Gen 4, Google Veo 2, and Adobe Firefly.
• Some tools also offer interesting video editor features, like motion brush tools that allow you to select a portion of the image and make it move in a specific way.
• Most of the tools don’t yet feature lip-sync for dialogue or sync-sound generation. But most will allow you to run video generated in one app through another to add sync dialogue.

Every service has a free trial except for OpenAI’s Sora, and almost all of them allow for image-to-video creation, which is usually the best way to iterate on your vision for your video clip. That’s because it’s much cheaper to re-generate single images than entire video clips. So the best workflow is to perfect the source still frame for each shot before getting the AI to add movement to it.

Here’s a deeper look at how each AI video generator and AI video editor fared in creating engaging videos.

Kling AI

With a paid account, I generated the video below using the Kling 2.0 model in Professional mode:

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 10 seconds
• Monthly Price: $10

Observations: Kling.ai really do seem to be leading the charge in terms of filmmaker-friendly AI video generation tools like lip-sync and the ability to keep extending a shot based on the end frame of the previous generation.

They’re also wisely creating meme-worthy preset effects like MochiMochi, which turns an image into a video of it being squished into Japanese rice cake.

• Accuracy: There’s a weird object that shoots upwards from the hero vehicle just before the sun’s rays blast through, but other than that it holds up.
• Realism: The water, reflections, holograms, and bioluminescent algae all look great and feel consistent with the style.
• Consistency: Kling nails all of the details in the prompt pretty well.
• Creativity: Given the look, details and how the overall aesthetic holds together I would give Kling top marks for creativity.

While individual shots can be up to 10 seconds in length by default, the extend feature allows you to create clips of up to three minutes.

Nota: Kling.ai is one of the most popular video generation tools for creating professional looking videos. It also has useful features such as the ability to upload elements such as individual still images of objects, people, clothes, and other items that can then be incorporated into the video creation process.

Kling 1.6 free plan

This video was generated with Kling 1.6 in Standard mode on the free plan. It took about three hours to generate, which must have been during a busy period.

Runway Gen 4

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 16 seconds
• Monthly Price: $12

Observations: Runway’s generation process requires creating an image using text-to-image and then bringing that image to life using image-to-video.

This generation took longer than some of the other models, at around 10-20 minutes, but not as long as Kling’s free option.

• Accuracy: The first few frames look superb. The light, the water, the building materials—but then the cyan algae attacks, and it all goes weird!
• Realism: At first, very much. Then no.
• Consistency: It has most of the main points but there’s not much of a crowd on the waterfront and the holograms have a cheap motion graphic template feel to them.
• Creativity: I really like the layout of the shot and the bridge over the river draws your gaze to the centre. It’s a shame about the St. Patrick’s Day cyan color of the water.

Nota: I ran a second version that generated better-looking algae, but it had the same overall look. It also made two boats appear out of thin air—both of which looked like bath toys, without the details or realism of the other flying cars. 

Google Veo 2

• Resolución: 4K
• Shot length: 120 seconds
• Price per minute: $30

Observations: When you sign up for Google Veo 2, you have to join a waitlist with no indication of how long you have to wait until you can generate anything.

For this reason, I sadly can’t include a comparative video from Veo 2. However, the test shots on the site look promising.

OpenAI Sora

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 5 seconds (20 on Pro plan)
• Monthly Price: $20

Observations: It’s impossible to write about the best AI video generator without mentioning OpenAI’s Sora. But I was surprised how bad this turned out, given how good Sora’s still image generation can be. This is also the thing with AI video generation: You never know what you’re gonna get.

Accuracy: The water, sky, buildings, reflections and strange warping of the image all tarnish the shot.

Realism: It just doesn’t look or behave in a realistic fashion at all.

Consistency: There’s no hero vehicle, no algae, no real crowds, and it’s quite a dark time of day.

Creativity: There are too many things wrong with the video, and it has a early 2000s CGI quality to it.

Notes: There is no free trial for Sora (via ChatGPT) from OpenAI that allows you to generate videos. The free membership lets you generate three images per day, but no video.

Also, note that video generation is also on hold for any new accounts—even the paid Pro plan, at $20/month. But thankfully my brother-in-law is an old-school ChatGPT user, so he generated the video for me from the same prompt. I mention all this in case you’re hoping to sign up and immediately start generating videos with Sora.

Pika 2.2

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 16 seconds
• Monthly price: $35

Observations: Demand was high when I generated the video above, so it took 10-15 minutes to generate using the Pika 2.2 video model.

Pika gives you some helpful preset actions to run with, such as PikaFrames where you supply two frames and it morphs between them, or PikaAdditions where you specify what you want it to add to the existing shot.

You can also set your generated aspect ratio to common social media platforms, as well, for YouTube videos or other sites.

• Accuracy: There are a lot of errors in this video. The movement of the boat, the front-facing ripples, the weird green light rays, and objects that simply appear mid-shot.
• Realism: Some aspects look great: The lighting, haze in the distance, underwater algae and lights, and reflections on the windows.
• Consistency: There’s no hero vehicle as the focus of the shot, but it has tried to include most of the main aspects of the prompt.
• Creativity: From a creativity standpoint, it doesn’t look particularly futuristic but it feels like it has tried to deliver a realistic-looking shot. 

Notes: Interestingly, when I went to cancel my paid subscription, I was offered 50% off. So if you plan to keep using Pika, maybe try cancelling anyway and see if you get the same deal!

Here’s the video I generated with Pika 1.5 on the free plan.

Adobe Firefly

• Resolución: 1080p (4K soon)
• Shot length: 5 seconds
• Monthly price: $9.99

Observations: Adobe’s Firefly video model delivered a very quick generation, with the file being ready in only a couple of minutes compared to other tools that make you wait for hours.

You get two free generations as part of the free trial, even as an Adobe Creative Cloud member. Just be sure to keep your tab browser open while you wait for the generation to complete —otherwise, you’ll lose it! This doesn’t happen with the other tools, as far as I know.

• Accuracy: The crowds on the riverbank are a bit too dense for my liking. The water looks more accurate when the shot gets moving and the motion blur kicks in.
• Realism: The lighting, reflections, water texture and general appearance look pretty realistic.
• Consistency: It’s missing the hero vehicle as well as much discernible boat traffic, nor algae or holograms. It does look more Blade Runner-esque than the other shots.
• Creativity: What I really like about this generation is the visual aesthetic of the buildings and the general layout of the shot. It feels like a concept artist’s design, and the glass buildings catch the sun’s rays beautifully.

Notes: A major part of Adobe’s marketing push for their AI models is that they are both creator and enterprise-friendly. By this they mean that they have been trained on legally acquired datasets, and that their outputs are legally safe to use from a copyright perspective. They also not stealing from artists.

Hailou AI

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 5 seconds
• Monthly price: $14.99

Observations: Hailou’s Minimax video generation model is often hailed online as a serious competitor to some of the big AI solutions. And I have to say, I can see why the internet thinks this!

Of all the shots generated for this article, Hailou’s had the best ‘storytelling framing in terms of having the hero ship start large in the frame and then reveal the skyscrapers. The site also delivered a pretty quick generation time of just a few minutes.

The free trial gives you 70 credits, which allows you to create a couple of generations (although when I signed up there was an additional 1,000 free credit special offer).

• Accuracy: There aren’t many errors in this video. The sun’s rays in the background probably shouldn’t act like permanent spotlights, though. And I’m not sure about the guys on the boat roofs.
• Realism: The lighting, textures, reflections, holograms all work really well. True bioluminescent algae only illuminates when stirred up, rather than floating as blobs, but that’s a minor niggle.
• Consistency: Of all the models, this delivered one of the best and most complete interpretations of the prompt.
• Creativity: It delivers very well on the prompt with a shot that actually conveys some storytelling ability.

Notes: The user interface is simply a straight prompt-box rather than having templates or gimmicky preset transformations to play with. In some ways this is tidier, but if you’re new to all this, it might leave you guessing a bit.

Luma Dream Machine

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 10 seconds
• Monthly price: $9.99

Observations: Lumalabs’ Dream Machine AI video generator was one of the least user-friendly platforms in this list, and the final output wasn’t particularly impressive.

• Accuracy: So many issues. Four seconds into the shot it suddenly dissolves into other buildings and objects. Boats disappear and create random ripples. The shot feels unstable.
• Realism: One plus is the way the bioluminescent algae appears in the wake of the boats, which most of the other videos didn’t manage. That said, none of the textures or lighting feels real.
• Consistency: It does include a hero vehicle (although random looking) that sweeps through the frame. It also included holograms. Of all the shots, the lighting and sky in this generation are the least dynamic.
• Creativity: Sort of. The design and layout of the shot feels quite bland.

Notes:  Luma’s user interface doesn’t tell you how long you might have to wait for your generation, which is annoyingly vague compared to some of the other models. Even if the timeframe is way off, psychologically it is more comfortable to know how long you might have to wait.

It also doesn’t indicate how many credits any one generation is going to use. The cheapest monthly plan comes with 3,200 credits, which is about 20 videos or around 800 images. 

Lista de arte

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 10 seconds
• Monthly price: $29.99 (AI suite only, +$20 to existing subscriptions) 

Observations: To generate a video on Artlist you first have to use text-to-image to create a still frame and then image-to-video to animate that image.

This doesn’t seem to give you the same dynamic results, as the movement in the original prompt is somewhat lost, so you actually need two different prompts—one for the still image and another for the animation of the still frame. Both generations were very quick.

• Accuracy: The crowds, especially bottom left, are morphing and moving as if in hyper-lapse mode. There is a strange shiny object in the water (bottom center), but overall it holds up pretty well.
• Realism: The water and sky look pretty good, but the movement of the boats has a slightly ‘slidey’ feel to it. I would give it a 7/10.
• Consistency: It is missing the main hero vehicle and the skyscrapers don’t seem particularly glassy. But it does a great job with the clouds and golden hour light.
• Creativity: The wider framing and lack of real movement or subject focus in the shot means that it doesn’t look as instantly appealing as some of the other shots.

Notes: It’s worth noting that Artlist’s MAX subscription also includes unlimited stock video, music, sound effects, motion graphics templates and AI voiceovers, alongside 5,000 AI credits for still images and voiceover, but not for AI videos. You’ll pay an additional $20/month for 40,000 credits.

This makes MAX exceptionally good value for money for creators who might only want AI voiceovers and stills, but it’s kind of annoying you can’t use some of your existing credits on at least a few video generations. Or simply purchase additional credits without an additional subscription.

Vidu

• Resolución: 1080p
• Shot length: 5 seconds
• Monthly price: $8

Observations: Vidu’s free trial gives you three generations and credit bonuses for logging in each day.

• Accuracy: Background tearing motion in the crowds. Algae is not in the water.
• Realism: The water looks mostly okay but the reflections don’t all match. Strange smearing in parts of the image.
• Consistency: It has most of the main elements and details.
• Creativity: It looks pretty good, although the technical errors drag it down into an unusable shot.

Notes: I hadn’t heard of Vidu before researching this article, but it does offer some great features such as the inclusion of references, first and last frame control, and (they claim) unlimited free generations in non-peak mode with no credits required.

Vidu also offers templates that will generate specific meme-style videos, such as turning an image into a Minecraft figure, a cardboard cutout, and many other fun things. Given how much you can do for free, Vidu is definitely worth a play.