Kling 4: What’s New, and How it Did Against Seedance in Our 15-Clip Test

Everypixel offers Kling 3.0 and Seedance through the Everypixel Labs API and is adding Kling 4 as soon it’s available. All prices in the test are Wavespeed list prices, the same platform for every model.

A woman in a gray hoodie walks down a sunlit street with a kraft-paper coffee cup. She stops, points the cup at a bakery behind her, leans into the lens, takes a sip and laughs. Ten seconds, one take. Over her shoulder the sign reads “BAKERY”, spelled correctly.

Nobody filmed that. Kling 4 made it from a text prompt on October 27, on its first try.

Kling 4: UGC selfie from a text prompt, one take
A woman in a gray hoodie walks down a sunlit street with a coffee cup, stops, points at a bakery behind her, leans into the lens, sips and laughs. Ten seconds, one continuous take, made by Kling 4 from a text prompt alone.
Model: Kling 4 · Mode: text-to-video · 10 s, 720p, 9:16, native audio · One generation, no cherry-picking · Generated October 27, 2026

We had been waiting for this model. Kling 3.0 has been our go-to for realism and camera work all year, and since Kling announced 4.0, every brief came with the same question: wait or ship? Before adding Kling 4 to Everypixel, we gave it the 15 briefs Seedance 2.0 got in August and put Seedance 2.5 next to it. It was worth the wait.

Why Kling 4 matters

Until now, a 30-second AI spot was a puzzle. You generated three or four short clips, hoped the hero’s jacket kept its color between them and hid the seams in the edit.

Kling 4 moves the seam inside the model. One generation can run up to 30 seconds and take up to 10 keyframe images, so a storyboard goes in as a storyboard instead of being retold in a prompt. The picture was already good in Kling 3.0. What’s new is how much of a scene you can direct in one go.

It also comes from a family many pipelines already use, ours included. In our test, prompts written for other models carried over without rewriting.

What’s the difference between Kling 4 and Kling 3?

Read the table as two models built for different shots: Kling 3.0 is a 15-second model with a start frame, Kling 4.0 a 30-second model with a timeline.

Feature	Kling 3.0	Kling 4.0
Clip length	Up to 15 seconds	3 to 30 seconds
Control inputs	Start frame, reference video (Omni)	Up to 10 keyframe images, up to 15 references in one generation
Resolution and format	720p, 1080p, 4K	720p, 1080p, 4K, new 21:9 aspect ratio
Sound	Native audio, on or off	Stereo; Kling promises “more accurate Lip Sync”
API price, 1080p	$0.112 per second without audio	$0.21 per second (preview price)

The first two rows are the upgrade: length doubles, and control grows from one image at the start to a set of anchors that can mix images, short videos and a voice. The resolution row barely moves, since Kling 3.0 already had 4K; only the 21:9 trailer frame is new. Sound is Kling’s promise, and we did not score it.

The last row is the price of that control: at 1080p, the preview rate is almost twice Kling 3.0 without sound. 10-bit HDR and extending a video up to 2 minutes are still marked “coming soon”.

Kling 3.0 keeps one strength worth remembering. In our September test of six video editing models, it held the original camera motion more faithfully than anything else in the group (six AI video editing models). If your shots fit in 15 seconds and need no keyframes, Kling 3.0 still does the job you know.

How did we test Kling 4 against Seedance?

Five briefs, written the way an agency writes them, with a shot list down to the second: a selfie ad on a city street, a night car chase in six shots, a cartoon robot after a cookie jar, an anime hero facing a stone titan, and a news opener in chrome letters reading “WORLD REPORT” and “EVENING EDITION”.

Each brief ran from text alone, from a start frame and from a storyboard sheet. Every clip was 10 seconds, 720p, with native audio, one generation each. We reviewed them side by side and frame by frame; nobody scored them blind, so this is a first look, not a ranking.

Which model delivered every clip?

The first result came before anyone pressed play. Seedance 2.5, the newest and most expensive model in the test, refused three briefs.

Model	Clips delivered	Price per clip	What stood out
Kling 4	15 of 15	$1.57	Held multi-shot sequences in every mode; one dropped space in on-screen text
Seedance 2.5	12 of 15	$3.60	Cleanest on-screen text; content filter blocked the anime brief twice and the car chase start frame
Seedance 2.0	15 of 15	$2.40	Ignored the start frame once; garbled shop signs

Read the second column first, because it changes the third. The anime brief was blocked in text and storyboard mode as “may be related to copyright restrictions”, and the car chase from a start frame as “potentially sensitive”. The same anime brief passed from a start frame, and Seedance 2.0 made all three in August.

Then the price column. Kling 4 costs less than half of Seedance 2.5 per clip and delivered every clip we asked for. Seedance 2.5 is not a weak model: in our September editing test it handled “any task, with the right prompt”, at the highest price in the group. Here it was its filter, not its picture, that cost us clips.

For a production team, a refusal is an empty slot in the edit on deadline day and a prompt to rewrite without knowing which word tripped the filter. If your work leans on anime or action, test Seedance 2.5 on real briefs before you promise a client the look.

Kling 4 vs Seedance 2.5: who followed the shot list?

The car chase was meant to be the hard one: a high wide of an empty avenue, the front wheel throwing water, the driver checking the mirror, his eyes catching a gap, the sedan diving into an alley, a crane-up as the pursuer overshoots. Six shots in ten seconds.

Kling 4 kept the order in all three modes. From our start frame it opened on exactly the wet neon avenue we gave it, steam rising from the grate, then cut inside the car, sent the black sedan into a graffiti-covered alley and rose back over the avenue as the second car sped past. Seedance 2.0 made a good-looking chase, but its first frame was not our picture, which is the one thing that mode asks for. Seedance 2.5 didn’t make this clip at all.

Prompt: Six shots in ten seconds: a high wide of a wet neon avenue, the front wheel throwing water, the driver checking the mirror, his eyes catching a gap, the sedan diving into an alley, a crane-up as the pursuer overshoots.

The cartoon was closer. In every version the robot built a wobbly tower and the cookie landed on its head. Kling 4’s robot stacked a book and an orange mug and ended munching on the counter beside the fallen mug; Seedance 2.5 hit the same beats with a softer, rounder robot. In the selfie, only Seedance 2.0 lost the thread: in the text-only run the woman turned her back to the lens.

Prompt: A small robot spots a cookie jar out of reach, stacks a book and an orange mug into a wobbly tower, climbs it, and the cookie lands on its head. It ends munching on the counter next to the fallen mug.

Write your shot list down to the second. Kling 4 followed it every time.

Which model gets on-screen text right?

Here Seedance 2.5 takes the lead. The news opener has to hide the title behind fragments of chrome letters and reveal “WORLD REPORT” over “EVENING EDITION” only at the end.

Seedance 2.5 spelled both lines cleanly in all three modes. Kling 4 did too from text and from the storyboard, but from a start frame it flashed a garbled run of letters and ended on “EVENINGEDITION”, one word. Background signs were weak everywhere: Kling 4 wrote “BAKERY” in one selfie and an unreadable street sign in another, and both Seedance models filled the bakery fascia with pseudo-French.

Prompt: A camera flies through a dark navy studio, past fragments of chrome letters, and reveals “WORLD REPORT” over “EVENING EDITION” only at the end.

For a title card, try Seedance 2.5 first. For anything a client will read, add the type in the edit.

How much does Kling 4 cost compared with Kling 3?

At 720p the step is smaller than the version number suggests. Kling 3.0 with audio costs $0.126 per second on Everypixel Labs, about $1.26 for ten seconds, against $1.57 for Kling 4 on Wavespeed; the platforms differ, so read it as a scale. At 1080p the gap widens, and Wavespeed offers Kling 4 at 720p and 1080p only, with no 4K yet.

Budget on cost per delivered clip, not on the price list: run your first ten briefs and count how many clips you actually keep.

Should you switch from Kling 3 to Kling 4?

• Switch for single shots longer than 15 seconds, keyframes along the timeline, multi-shot action and anime.
• Stay on Kling 3.0 for 4K delivery until Kling 4 is offered at 4K where you generate, and for prompts your team has already tuned.
• Use Seedance 2.5 for title cards and openers with text, with a hand check on every frame.
• Test first anything with lip sync or stereo sound. We did not score audio.

Two jobs we would give Kling 4 tomorrow

A coffee brand’s selfie ad for Reels. A creator walks past a bakery, points at it, leans in with a tip and sips from the brand’s cup: our selfie brief almost word for word. Make the start frame first with the real cup, so the packaging is right from frame one, and run Kling 4 from that frame rather than from text. Then check the shop signs, which Kling 4 got right once and wrong once, and the cup’s logo in the sip close-up. Captions go in the edit.

A 20-second anime teaser for a game launch. This is the brief Seedance 2.5 refused twice. In ten seconds, Kling 4 already held the whole arc: the titan against the sunset, the hero tiny on a rooftop, the dash down the rubble, a molten slash across the titan’s wrist, one burning eye in the final close-up. For 20 seconds we would pass the four key moments as keyframes and let Kling 4 fill the motion in one generation, instead of stitching two clips and fighting the cut. The title card goes on top in the edit.

We are adding Kling 4 to Everypixel as soon as we can, next to Kling 3.0 and Seedance, so you can run one shot list through all of them.

What Are Your Ideas Today?BRING THEM TO LIFE WITH EVERYPIXEL

What this test doesn’t tell you

• No blind scoring. One editor reviewed the clips side by side.
• One generation per brief. A second run can fix a garbled sign or break a good one.
• 720p and 10 seconds only. No 1080p, 4K, 30-second shots, keyframes or Kling 4.0 Flash.
• Audio not scored. Every clip had sound; we did not rate it.
• No new Kling 3.0 clips. The Kling 3.0 comparison uses Kling’s spec and price pages.

Planning a campaign with a long hero shot? Run the brief through Kling 3.0 and Seedance in Everypixel today, and keep the one that needs fewer retries.

Related reading

• Which AI video editing model should you use? We ran six of them through the same five edits
• Seedance 2.0, That Went Viral, Got Sued, and Came Back on Top