Which AI model should I use?
Start from what you are making — a still, a clip with sound, a talking head, a voice, a track or a mesh — then pick the family whose strengths match; each family's page lists what it is best for and what it costs.
Images
- Photoreal stills and products — Seedream 5.0 Pro, GPT Image 2.5, Nano Banana Pro.
- Posters, packaging and text in the picture — Grok Imagine Image 2.0 and Qwen-Image render typography reliably.
- Editing an existing photo — the edit rows of Seedream, GPT Image, Grok Imagine, Nano Banana, Qwen-Image and Wan; describe the change, not the whole picture.
Video
- Clip with dialogue and sound in one pass — Seedance 2.5, HappyHorse, FLUX 3 Video, Kling 3, Grok Imagine Video, MiniMax H3, Wan 3.0, Gemini Omni 1.1, Veo 3.1 (sound is a paid option there).
- Animating a photo — the image-to-video row of any of the above, or of PixVerse; the picture fixes the look, the prompt describes the motion.
- Keeping a character across shots — reference-to-video rows (Kling 3, Seedance 2.5, HappyHorse, PixVerse, Grok Imagine Video, Wan 3.0, MiniMax H3, Vidu Q3, Gemini Omni).
- Talking head from a photo and a voice — OmniHuman 1.5, VEED Fabric.
- Re-syncing lips in an existing video — sync lipsync v3, VEED lipsync.
Audio and 3D
- Text-to-speech — ElevenLabs v3, Gemini TTS, MiniMax Speech, Seed Audio.
- Music — MiniMax Music.
- 3D meshes — Hunyuan3D from an image or a prompt.
How to decide in practice
When one entry names several families, they are listed in the order we recommend: families with a prompting guide on their page come first. Start with the first one that fits your job.
Open the family page, read the "best for" line, and look at the starting price for the resolution you actually need. Run a cheap draft first; move to the flagship tier only for the final take.
Frequently asked
Is the most expensive model the best one?
No. A higher price does not mean a better fit for your task. A 480p draft on a cheap tier is the right first run; the flagship is for the final render.
Which model should a beginner start with?
Seedream 5.0 Pro for images, and Seedance 2.5 or Kling 3 for video: all three take plain prompts and have a prompting guide on their page.
Can I compare models side by side?
Yes. Generate the same prompt on two models in the Workspace, or build a workflow that fans one prompt out to several models.