Last verified 30 July 2026. Every number below is normalised to one yardstick: Seedance 2.0, 16:9, actual credit consumption at the stated resolution . Platform promotions move constantly, so re-check before you commit budget. Five platforms serve the same underlying model — ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 — and the cost of one second of video varies between them by more than four times . Almost none of that gap is image quality. It is a function of how much you are willing to prepay, and of how much a platform is willing to subsidise. This comparison strips out the marketing language and measures one thing: what a second of finished video actually costs. The short answer Paying as you go? Perseworks is the lowest walk-up rate of the five at ¥2.71/sec for 1080p — below Jimeng (¥3.30), Hailuo (¥3.50), LibTV (¥4.53) and Pixmax (¥4.67). Chasing the floor price? Perseworks' first-use promotional rate of ¥1.54/sec at 1080p matches Jimeng's floor and undercuts Hailuo (¥2.18) and Pixmax (¥2.75). Only LibTV goes lower, at ¥1.07. The threshold matters more than the floor. LibTV's ¥1.07 requires a ¥9,499 annual plan; Jimeng's ¥1.54 requires ¥30,576 a year. Perseworks' promotional rate breaks even from a ¥6,330 pack with no annual fee and credits that never expire. Advertised "video counts" are not comparable across platforms. Most are calculated against one second of the cheapest available model. For teams, spend control is the overlooked cost line. Perseworks is the only platform of the five with an admin monitoring dashboard. Cost per second: 1080p Two columns, because a single "price" is misleading. Walk-up is what you pay with nothing prepaid. Floor is the lowest achievable rate, with what it takes to unlock it in the third column. Platform Walk-up Floor What the floor requires Perseworks ¥2.71 ¥1.54 First-use promo, breaks even from a ¥6,330 pack · no annual fee LibTV ¥4.53 ¥1.07 ¥9,499/year Jimeng ¥3.30 ¥1.54 ¥30,576/year Hailuo ¥3.50 ¥2.18 ¥2,352/year Pixmax ¥4.67 ¥2.75 ¥4,999 top-up Cost per second: 4K Platform Walk-up Floor What the floor requires Perseworks ¥5.94 ¥3.73 First-use promo, from a ¥6,330 pack · no annual fee LibTV ¥9.33 ¥2.19 ¥9,499/year Jimeng ¥8.00 ¥3.73 ¥30,576/year Hailuo ¥7.00 ¥4.36 ¥2,352/year Pixmax ¥9.53 ¥5.61 ¥4,999 top-up Cost per second: 720p The working tier — storyboards, animatics, vertical social, A/B tests. Platform Walk-up Floor What the floor requires Perseworks ¥1.19 ¥0.68 First-use promo, breaks even from a ¥1,266 pack · no annual fee Hailuo ¥1.47 ¥0.91 ¥2,352/year LibTV ¥1.80 ¥0.42 ¥9,499/year Pixmax ¥1.87 ¥1.10 ¥4,999 top-up Jimeng No 720p tier in the current UI — — How to read these tables. LibTV is the outright price leader if you can commit to an annual plan and genuinely consume it. Perseworks is the cheapest walk-up rate at every resolution, and its promotional rate lands at or below every rival except LibTV — reachable from a four-figure pack rather than a five-figure annual contract. Note that the Perseworks floor is a first-use promotional rate : it is granted once, on a user's first paid pack, does not stack or refresh, and reverts to the standard rate once consumed. Treat it as an onboarding rate, not a steady-state one. A note on advertised "video counts" Several platforms advertise capacity as a number of videos — "1,000 credits generates 187 videos". That figure is generally derived from one second of the cheapest model on the platform, not from Seedance 2.0. Normalised to Seedance 2.0 at 1080p and a realistic 15-second clip, the same credit balance produces substantially less: on LibTV's published tiers the implied reference is roughly 8 credits per "video", which corresponds to about one second of 720p on their cheapest model. This is not necessarily misleading by intent — there is no industry standard for the unit. But it does mean video counts cannot be compared across platforms. Compare credits per second, or seconds of output, at a stated resolution. The cost line nobody prices: unmanaged team spend For an individual creator, price per second is the whole story. For a team, it is not. Credits get burned on idle experimentation, duplicated renders, and personal use on a company account — and on most platforms there is no way to see it happening. Perseworks is the only platform of the five with an admin monitoring dashboard : per-user consumption, project-level attribution, and visibility into what is actually being generated on the account. There is no published research on wasted AI generation credits specifically, so the size of the problem has to be reasoned by analogy. Flexera's 2024 State of the Cloud puts wasted cloud spend at roughly 30%; Gartner and Zylo put unused or wasted SaaS spend at 25–30%. If AI credits behave similarly, a team spending ¥10,000/month might reasonably expect to recover on the order of ¥2,000/month — about ¥24,000 a year — simply from being able to see consumption. That figure is an analogy drawn from adjacent categories, not a measured result for AI credits. Worth weighing against the headline rate: a 20% efficiency gain on a mid-size team is larger than the gap between most of the walk-up prices in the tables above. Ratings Dimension Perseworks LibTV Jimeng Hailuo Pixmax Walk-up price ★★★★★ ★★☆☆☆ ★★★☆☆ ★★★☆☆ ★★☆☆☆ Floor price ★★★★☆ ★★★★★ ★★★★☆ ★★★☆☆ ★★★☆☆ Low barrier to best rate ★★★★★ ★★☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ ★★★★☆ ★★★☆☆ Credits do not expire ★★★★★ ★★☆☆☆ ★★★☆☆ ★★☆☆☆ ★★★★★ Capacity stated in real seconds ★★★★★ ★☆☆☆☆ ★★★★☆ ★★☆☆☆ ★★★☆☆ Admin spend controls ★★★★★ ★☆☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ Licensed IP characters ★★★★★ ★☆☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ International payment ★★★★★ ★☆☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ ★★☆☆☆ ★☆☆☆☆ Product breadth ★★☆☆☆ ★★★★★ ★★★★☆ ★★★☆☆ ★★★★★ Platform by platform Perseworks Strengths: lowest walk-up rate at every resolution; a promotional floor that matches Jimeng and beats Hailuo and Pixmax, unlocked from a four-figure pack rather than an annual contract; credits never expire; an admin monitoring dashboard, which no rival offers; rights-cleared licensed IP characters for commercial work; free customization; Stripe payment in USD, usable from outside China; capacity quoted in seconds. Weaknesses: LibTV's annual floor is still materially lower for teams that can consume it. The promotional rate is one-time and reverts after use, so steady-state cost is the walk-up rate. Narrower product surface than LibTV or Pixmax — no model training, no infinite canvas. Best for: pay-as-you-go creators, teams that need spend visibility, commercial work requiring licensed characters, and anyone paying from outside China. LibTV Strengths: the outright price leader at annual commitment — ¥1.07/sec at 1080p and ¥0.42 at 720p. Strong LoRA training and community ecosystem, which is the real moat. Weaknesses: the highest walk-up rate of the five (¥4.53). Promotional "surprise" credits expire in 14 days. Advertised video counts are the most aggressively calculated of the group. No admin controls. Best for: high-volume teams shipping daily who can genuinely consume an annual plan, and anyone training custom models. Jimeng Strengths: ByteDance's own product, so first-party access to the model. Competitive floor pricing on the top annual tier in year one. Weaknesses: the ¥30,576 threshold is the highest barrier in the group by a wide margin, and renewal rises roughly 43% in year two. No 720p tier in the current interface, so there is no cheap draft option. Best for: well-funded studios already inside the ByteDance ecosystem. Hailuo Strengths: a low barrier — ¥2,352 a year is the cheapest annual plan of the group, and it unlocks ¥2.18/sec at 1080p. Weaknesses: that pricing depends on a "50% member repurchase" benefit which is a promotional entitlement, not a contractual rate. If it is withdrawn, effective cost roughly doubles. Credits expire at the end of the following year. Best for: mid-volume teams wanting a low floor without a five-figure commitment, who can tolerate promotional risk. Pixmax Strengths: the broadest toolchain — 20+ models, infinite canvas, agent workflows. Credits do not expire. Weaknesses: Seedance 2.0 specifically is the most expensive walk-up rate at 1080p and 4K. The pricing narrative leans on "+70% bonus credits" rather than a lower unit rate. Best for: teams wanting one subscription across many models, not optimising for Seedance cost specifically. Choosing by scenario Occasional use, no lock-in — Perseworks: lowest walk-up rate, credits never expire. Daily production at volume — LibTV annual, if you can genuinely consume the capacity. A team sharing one account — Perseworks, for the admin dashboard. On a team of any size, spend visibility outweighs a few cents per second. Commercial work needing rights clearance — Perseworks, for licensed IP characters and commercial-use terms. Paying from outside China — Perseworks. The other four are effectively domestic-payment only. Widest toolchain — Pixmax for breadth, LibTV for model training. Frequently asked questions Why does the same Seedance 2.0 model cost four times more on one platform than another? The difference is commercial model, not output quality. Platforms with large communities negotiate rates below list, or subsidise generation because they monetise elsewhere — training, memberships, ecosystem. Those floor rates generally require substantial annual prepayment. Which is cheapest overall? There is no single answer, which is why this comparison separates walk-up from floor. If you will prepay an annual plan and use it, LibTV is cheapest. If you will not commit, Perseworks has the lowest walk-up rate at every resolution. Is the Perseworks floor price a normal ongoing rate? No. It is a first-use promotional rate, granted once on a user's first paid pack. It does not stack or refresh, and reverts to the standard rate once consumed. Budget at the walk-up rate for ongoing work. Can I trust advertised "N videos per credit pack"? Not for cross-platform comparison. Most are computed against one second of the cheapest model on that platform. Compare credits per second at a stated resolution instead. Do credits expire? It varies and it matters. Subscription credits typically reset monthly across all five. Top-up credits: Jimeng 2 years, Hailuo end of the following year, LibTV promotional credits as little as 14 days, Perseworks and Pixmax do not expire. Which platform is best for a team rather than an individual? Perseworks is the only one of the five with an admin monitoring dashboard for per-user consumption and spend attribution. Sources: platform subscription pages, credit purchase dialogs and generator testing, cross-checked 30 July 2026. Perseworks figures are from its published distributor price list. Competitor figures use ¥7.15/USD where currency conversion applies. Pricing changes with promotions — verify current rates before purchasing or quoting.
