For people who work across media and want the current leader in each. Read the rates carefully: video is priced per second, images per picture and text per thousand words. That means the raw numbers do not compare across rows.
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1
Seedance 2.5
Leads video with native synced audio.
- 27 credits per second
- ByteDance
- 480p, 720p
- No 1080p or 4K on this route; 480p and 720p only
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2
Nano Banana Pro
Leads photorealistic image output.
- 38 credits per image
- Higher rate than everyday image models
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3
Veo 3.1
Leads dialogue-grade video masters at 1080p.
- 95 credits per second
- 720p, 1080p
- One of the highest per-second rates in the catalog
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4
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5
GPT Image 2 (medium)
Leads text rendered inside an image.
- 14 credits per image
- OpenAI
- Not the most photoreal option
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6
DeepSeek V4
Leads reasoning per dollar in text.
- 2 credits per 1k words
- DeepSeek
- The style can read as technical
One list, three mediums, one rule
Each entry is placed by what it leads at today, not by a shared benchmark. Seedance 2.5 tops the list for video with native synced audio. Nano Banana Pro leads photoreal stills. Veo 3.1 leads dialogue-grade masters at 1080p. Claude Sonnet 5 leads long-form writing, and GPT Image 2 leads lettering inside pictures. DeepSeek V4 leads reasoning per dollar.
Both text picks, DeepSeek V4 and Claude Sonnet 5, run on Ugesi today.
Seedance 2.5 or Veo 3.1 for your video
Seedance 2.5 costs 27 credits per second and can render a 30-second take in one pass. Lip movement is matched to quoted dialogue. Its ceiling is 720p. Veo 3.1 costs 95 credits per second and stops at 8 seconds. Choose it when the delivery spec says 1080p.
A 4-second shot costs 108 credits on Seedance 2.5 and 380 on Veo 3.1. Run the line once on Seedance. Pay for Veo only if the spoken line or the resolution decides whether the clip ships.
What a small launch costs across the list
Take one 8-second video, one hero still and one blog post. On Seedance 2.5 the clip is 216 credits, about $2.30. A Nano Banana Pro still is 38 credits, about $0.40. An 800-word post on Claude Sonnet 5 rounds up to a thousand words and costs 16 credits, about $0.17. Swap the clip to Veo 3.1 and that line alone becomes 760 credits, about $8.09.
If the still needs a headline baked in, GPT Image 2 does it for 14 credits. A longer piece of roughly two thousand words on Claude Sonnet 5 costs 32 credits.
How to test the top two video picks
Open AI Video Generator and pick the Talking to camera preset. Keep the prompt identical on both. Use "a barista leans over the counter and says, 'Your usual?', steam behind her, slow push in". Set 16:9 and the shortest common length, 4 seconds. Watch the mouth on the word usual, the hands, and whether the steam keeps moving.
Compare the bills too: 108 credits against 380 for the same four seconds. If you cannot tell the clips apart at the size your audience will watch, the cheaper one wins.
What this cross-medium list skips
Budget drafting models, upscalers, voice and music engines are not here, because none of them leads its medium outright. Each medium has a deeper list. Video generators, image generators and writing models get more picks and more budget detail there.
More rankings
Questions about Top AI models right now
Why is a video model ranked above an image model with a higher rate?
The order reflects what each one leads at, not price. Seedance 2.5 is priced per second and Nano Banana Pro per image. The two numbers measure different units and cannot be ranked against each other.
Can I use DeepSeek V4 from this list now?
Yes. It is listed for reasoning per dollar, at 2 credits per thousand words. It runs in the AI Article Generator, AI Content Generator and AI Ebook Generator.
Which pick gives 1080p video?
Veo 3.1, at 720p or 1080p in 4-, 6- or 8-second clips. Seedance 2.5 offers 480p and 720p only. However, it runs much longer takes and costs 27 credits per second instead of 95.
