Seedance vs Wan 3: Closed Weights, Real Prices

Seedance vs Wan turns on two facts that summaries get wrong in opposite directions. Wan 3.0 is real, shipped and billable, not a rumoured version. And it is closed: there are no public weights, and the last open base release is Wan2.2. Anyone choosing Wan because Wan is open source is choosing a model two generations behind the one on the price list.

On the numbers, Wan 3.0 is the closest thing to Seedance 2.5 in this set and costs less per second. Both cap at 30 seconds, emit native audio, and take multimodal reference material.

Wan 3.0 exists, and it is closed source

Alibaba Cloud's Model Studio lists two Wan 3.0 video models. wan3.0-video went live on 6 August 2026 and the faster wan3.0-video-prime on 20 August 2026. Alibaba's English documentation describes the line as an all-in-one video generation model supporting up to 30 seconds per generation, 30fps output, native dialogue, background music and sound effects, up to 20 multimodal reference assets including images, videos, audio, documents and web pages, first-frame and first-and-last-frame control, plus video editing and extension.

Finding it is harder than it should be. Alibaba's own video generation overview pages, Chinese and English, still top out at wan2.7-t2v-2026-04-25, so reading only the overview suggests 2.7 is current. On the model-hosting side, public repositories named things like wanvideo/wan-3-0-video carry no weight files, no license and zero downloads; the official organisation is Wan-AI, linked from the Wan2.2 readme, and it publishes nothing above the 2.2 line.

The open-source line stops at Wan2.2

Wan2.1 and Wan2.2 both ship under a plain Apache 2.0 license, with no added commercial restrictions in either file. From Wan 2.5 onwards the line is API only. The official GitHub organisation holds six repositories, the newest model work being Wan-Animate-2 and Wan-Dancer, both 2.2 derivatives under Apache 2.0. Official listings contain no 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 or 3.0 entries.

The practical consequence is a fork. If self-hosting is the requirement, the option is Wan2.2 under Apache 2.0, accepting a base model from July 2025 and running your own infrastructure. If current capability is the requirement, Wan 3.0 is a closed commercial API, which puts it in the same category as Seedance 2.5.

Seedance offers no open-weights path at any version, so a self-hosting requirement removes it before price comes up.

Seedance vs Wan 3.0 at a glance

Wan rates above are Singapore list prices in USD. Alibaba is running a limited-time 30 percent discount on wan3.0-video, so checkout is lower than list; discounts move, list prices are what you plan against. The Prime variant is priced separately at $0.068, $0.14 and $0.28 per second for the same three resolutions.

Wan bills your input video as well as the output

Wan 3.0 puts the source clip on the invoice alongside the result, which changes every estimate for an edit or extension job. Alibaba states it directly: both input and output videos are billed by duration, and billable duration equals input plus output. A four second source producing a ten second result bills fourteen seconds.

Seedance 2.5 does something similar and states it differently. Reference images and audio add no billable seconds. Reference video does, and requests containing video carry a floor of five thirds of the output duration, so a short source with a longer output can bill above the sum of the two. Seedance also moves to a separate rate card when a reference clip is attached: $0.071153 at 480p, $0.160094 at 720p and $0.275904 at 1080p.

Run the same job through both. Four seconds of source producing ten seconds of 1080p bills fourteen seconds on Wan 3.0 at $0.20, which is $2.80. On Seedance 2.5 it bills seventeen seconds at $0.275904, about $4.69. Generation from scratch runs the same direction: ten seconds of 1080p is $2.00 on Wan against roughly $4.62 on Seedance, and the 30 second maximum $6.00 against about $13.86.

Alibaba grants a 30 second free quota combined across input and output in Singapore, and does not bill failed requests.

Clip length, references and audio

Neither model wins on duration. Both generate up to 30 seconds in a single request, ahead of most of the field and level with each other. Seedance 2.5 starts at 4 seconds, defaults to 5, and passing -1 lets the model choose the length while reserving credits at the 30 second cap.

Reference handling diverges in shape rather than size. Wan accepts up to 20 assets in total across images, video, audio, documents and web pages, the only entry here that parses a document or a URL as creative input. Seedance 2.5 accepts up to 30 images by itself, plus 10 video clips of 2 to 30 seconds each capped at 30 seconds combined, plus 10 audio tracks, with prompts up to 20,000 characters. A job driven by a brief or a product page suits Wan; one driven by a large image set suits Seedance.

Audio is native on both. Wan outputs dialogue, background music and sound effects. Seedance defaults generate_audio to true and returns synced speech, effects and music as one mono track. It also offers seven aspect ratios including 21:9 and an adaptive mode, and typically returns in two to five minutes.

Frequently asked questions

Is Wan 3 open source? No. Wan 3.0 is a closed commercial API on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio with no published weights. The last open base version is Wan2.2 under Apache 2.0; everything from Wan 2.5 onward is API only.

Is Wan 3.0 cheaper than Seedance 2.5? Yes, at every resolution. Wan lists 1080P at $0.20 per second against $0.461856 on Seedance, and 480P at $0.05 against $0.118589. Wan also bills input video duration, so long source clips narrow the gap somewhat.

Which one produces longer clips? They tie at 30 seconds in a single request. Both also take existing footage as input: Seedance 2.5 accepts up to 10 reference clips of 2 to 30 seconds each, capped at 30 seconds combined.

Does Seedance 2.5 support 4K like Wan? Neither does. Seedance 2.5 tops out at 1080p, and the Wan 3.0 price list also stops at 1080P.

Which one fits your work

Seedance vs Wan comes down to what you are optimising. On price, Wan 3.0 wins at every resolution on list rates, and by more once its promotional discount applies. On self-hosting, Wan wins by default, though only at version 2.2 under Apache 2.0, which is not the model on the price list. On reference material the split is finer: Wan reads documents and web pages, Seedance takes half again as many images plus 10 audio tracks and seven aspect ratios. Clip length is a tie at 30 seconds. Price the specific job, input seconds included, and be clear about which Wan you mean before anyone says the word open.