Seedance vs Grok Imagine: Price, Length, Watermarks
Seedance vs Grok Imagine compared on per-second API price, clip length, resolution and watermarks, plus the 15 and 30 second conflict inside xAI's own docs.
Seedance vs Grok Imagine is the widest price gap in this category, and it runs against Seedance. xAI lists video generation from $0.050 per second; Seedance 2.5 charges $0.461856 per second at 1080p. What Seedance buys with that difference is clip length, reference capacity and control over watermarking, and whether that is worth roughly six to nine times the rate depends on the job.
One point to establish before the numbers: Grok Imagine generates video, and xAI ships a documented video API for it.
Grok Imagine generates video and has a full API
xAI's Imagine API page advertises "Text-to-video and image-to-video in one API", and the OpenAPI specification contains three video write endpoints, POST /v1/videos/generations, POST /v1/videos/edits and POST /v1/videos/extensions, plus GET /v1/videos/{request_id} for polling. The flow is asynchronous: post, receive a request_id, poll until it resolves. Five video workflows are documented: text-to-video, image-to-video, reference-to-video, editing and extension.
Versioning is per modality rather than per product, so there is no single "Grok Imagine v1": the image line is Imagine Image 2.0 and the video line is Imagine Video 1.5. Video from a prompt alone, plus image and voice references and native 1080p, arrived on 31 July 2026.
Seedance vs Grok Imagine at a glance
| Seedance 2.5 | Grok Imagine | |
|---|---|---|
| Listed API rate | $0.118589 to $0.461856 per second by resolution | $0.050 per second on grok-imagine-video, $0.080 on grok-imagine-video-1.5 |
| Clip length | 4 to 30 s, default 5 | 1 to 15 s, default 8 |
| Editing length | Same duration rules as generation | Not configurable, capped at 8.7 s |
| Resolutions | 480p, 720p, 1080p, no 4K | 480p default, 720p, 1080p |
| 1080p availability | All generation paths | grok-imagine-video-1.5 text-to-video and image-to-video only |
| Reference images | Up to 30 per request | Image and voice references, reference-to-video capped at 720p |
| Watermark | A watermark field in the request | Always applied, no setting removes it |
| Consumer pricing | Not applicable | No standalone tier; bundled into SuperGrok and X plans |
Per-second price, and the access model behind it
xAI's pricing page lists two video rates: grok-imagine-video at $0.050 per second and grok-imagine-video-1.5 at $0.080 per second.
Seedance 2.5 bills $0.118589 per second at 480p, $0.266824 at 720p and $0.461856 at 1080p for generation-only work. Attaching a reference video lowers the rate to $0.071153, $0.160094 and $0.275904, since those jobs bill input duration as well as output. Ten seconds of Imagine Video 1.5 lists at $0.80; ten seconds of Seedance is about $4.62 at 1080p and about $1.19 at 480p. On listed rates Grok Imagine is cheaper across the board, by roughly six times at the top tier and more than twice at the bottom.
One caveat belongs with that. xAI says video generation "uses per-second pricing where both duration and resolution affect the total cost", yet the pricing page publishes one rate per model with no per-resolution breakdown. The cost of a 1080p second is therefore unpublished, and $0.080 is a headline rate rather than a confirmed 1080p rate.
On the consumer side Grok Imagine has no standalone price. xAI sells Grok as a whole, and Imagine is two rows in the plan comparison rather than its own SKU. The tiers are SuperGrok Lite at $10 per month, SuperGrok at $30, SuperGrok Plus at $100 and SuperGrok Heavy at $300, and the free tier generates images but not video. X Premium+ includes SuperGrok at a list price of $40 per month or $395 per year.
Clip length, and a conflict inside xAI's own pages
The API side is unambiguous. xAI's OpenAPI schema defines duration with a range of 1 to 15 seconds and a default of 8, and the generation guide repeats that range. Video editing is stricter: it takes no custom duration, and the result keeps the original length, capped at 8.7 seconds.
The consumer side contradicts itself. The x.ai product page says "Up to 2K resolution and 15-second videos". The grok.com subscription page describes the SuperGrok tier as "With HD 720p, 30-second video". Both are first-party xAI pages, they disagree by a factor of two, and no third official source settles it.
Seedance 2.5 generates 4 to 30 seconds in a single pass, default 5, with multiple shots possible inside one generation. Against the API-documented 15-second ceiling that is a genuine doubling, and it is the main thing the higher rate buys. Under 15 seconds it buys nothing.
Resolution, watermarks and quota behaviour
Both products stop at 1080p. Seedance 2.5 offers 480p, 720p and 1080p with 720p as the default, and has no 4K tier. Grok Imagine defaults to 480p and offers 720p and 1080p above it, with 1080p limited to grok-imagine-video-1.5 on text-to-video and image-to-video; reference-to-video is capped at 720p.
Watermarking is the difference most likely to matter commercially. xAI's FAQ states that generated images and videos include a Grok watermark and that there is no setting to remove it. Seedance 2.5 exposes a watermark field in the request body, making it a per-request parameter rather than a fixed property of every output.
Quota behaviour matters for the app rather than the API. Paid Grok tiers share one weekly usage pool across Chat, Imagine, Voice and Build, reported as a percentage rather than a count, and xAI does not publish how many videos a tier yields. When the 720p allowance runs out, requests fall back to 480p. Extra credits start at $5 at standard rates, which xAI notes costs more per action than the included allowance.
Reference material and failure handling
Seedance 2.5 accepts up to 30 reference images, up to 10 reference video clips of 2 to 30 seconds each capped at 30 seconds combined, and up to 10 reference audio tracks. Reference images and audio add no billable seconds; reference video does, and any request carrying video bills a floor of five thirds of the output duration. Audio generation defaults to on, producing synced speech, effects and music in mono. Failed jobs are refunded in full.
Grok Imagine supports text, image and voice references, with reference-to-video capped at 720p, plus editing and extension endpoints. Per-request reference limits are not stated in the xAI pages covered here.
Frequently asked questions
Can Grok Imagine actually generate video?
Yes. xAI documents text-to-video, image-to-video, reference-to-video, editing and extension, and the API exposes POST /v1/videos/generations, /v1/videos/edits and /v1/videos/extensions.
Which is cheaper, Seedance 2.5 or Grok Imagine? Grok Imagine, on listed rates, at every tier. It lists $0.050 and $0.080 per second against Seedance's $0.118589 to $0.461856.
How long can Grok Imagine videos be? The API allows 1 to 15 seconds with a default of 8. The consumer pages conflict: one xAI page says up to 15 seconds, another says 30 seconds on the SuperGrok tier, and that disagreement is unresolved.
Can I remove the Grok watermark? No. xAI states that generated images and videos carry a Grok watermark and that no setting removes it. Seedance 2.5 handles watermarking as a request field instead.
The short version
Seedance vs Grok Imagine is decided by whether the clip fits in 15 seconds. If it does, Grok Imagine costs a fraction as much per second and the comparison ends on price, provided the Grok watermark is acceptable on the finished output. If the clip needs a continuous 20 or 30 seconds, needs twenty or more reference images, or needs output without a mandatory watermark, Seedance 2.5 is the one that does the job. Size it at the resolution you actually deliver rather than the top tier.
