Krux
April 2, 2026
Google Cuts AI Video Costs by Half with Veo 3.1 Lite
Published: April 2, 2026 at 12:29 AM
Updated: April 2, 2026 at 12:29 AM
100-word summary
Google just launched Veo 3.1 Lite, a video generation model that costs less than half of its faster sibling while maintaining the same speed. Developers can now generate 4 to 8-second clips in 720p or 1080p, choosing between landscape or portrait formats depending on where the video lives. Think product demos for e-commerce sites or auto-generated social content at scale. The model handles both text-to-video and image-to-video, with pricing tied to clip length. It's available now through Google's paid API tier, with full pricing details dropping April 7. The bet: cheap enough that apps can finally afford to generate videos on the fly instead of storing thousands of pre-rendered files.
What happened
Google just launched Veo 3.1 Lite, a video generation model that costs less than half of its faster sibling while maintaining the same speed. Developers can now generate 4 to 8-second clips in 720p or 1080p, choosing between landscape or portrait formats depending on where the video lives. Think product demos for e-commerce sites or auto-generated social content at scale. The model handles both text-to-video and image-to-video, with pricing tied to clip length. It's available now through Google's paid API tier, with full pricing details dropping April 7.
Why it matters
The bet: cheap enough that apps can finally afford to generate videos on the fly instead of storing thousands of pre-rendered files.