Kling 3.0 vs Veo 3.1

These are the two video names most people type first, and on paper they overlap more than any other pair here: both make sound in the same pass, both take a first and a last frame, and both do 16:9 and 9:16. The differences are length, shape, references, and how each treats speech.

Length is the cleanest split. Veo 3.1 makes takes of four, six or eight seconds and nothing else; anything longer is several takes joined, each starting on the last frame of the one before. Kling 3.0 makes any whole number of seconds from three to fifteen in one take. It also frames 1:1, which Veo does not offer, and renders 4K where Veo stops at 1080p.

Speech is where Veo earns its price. Its prompt has three sound channels: quoted dialogue inside the beat it belongs to, an SFX line for events, and an ambient line for the bed under the whole clip. A quoted line comes back spoken, and about twenty words fit an eight-second take. Kling makes sound too when you switch it on, and speaks a line written out word for word, but its voice is invented fresh for each take, so a character who talks across several clips will not sound like one person and has to be revoiced afterwards. Veo has its own habit to watch: left alone, it tends to score the scene under the dialogue, so write "No music" when you will lay your own track.

References split them the other way from what you might expect. Kling 3.0 has no reference slot at all, so a face or a product reaches it only as a first frame; its sibling Kling v3 Omni adds seven reference images and one reference video at the same silent prices. Veo 3.1 takes up to three reference images, but only in a 16:9, eight-second take, and it drops the last frame whenever references are present. For a vertical clip that must hold a recurring character from pictures, Veo's reference route is closed and Kling 3.0 has none, so Kling v3 Omni or Seedance 2.5 is the model to use.

On price, the answer depends on two switches. The figures are the price table's five-second rates, which put both on one footing; Veo makes only four, six or eight seconds, so a real Veo take costs 0.8, 1.2 or 1.6 times its figure. Silent at 720p, five seconds of Kling is 70 credits against Veo's 83.5. With sound, Kling is 105 credits at 720p and 140 at 1080p, against Veo's 167 credits at either resolution. The one case where Veo is cheaper is a silent 1080p take: 83.5 credits against Kling's 93.5. 4K on Kling is 175 credits for five seconds, with or without sound.

So a clip where someone says a scripted line, or a 16:9 shot that has to match a reference picture, goes to Veo 3.1. A take longer than eight seconds, a square deliverable, 4K, or sound effects and ambience at a lower price go to Kling 3.0.

Each model's prompting guide names the jobs it hands to another model. Both lists, as the guides write them:

Use something other than Kling 3.0 when…

• You need 4:3, 3:4 or 21:9 framing: Runway Gen-4.5.
• A reference video and native sound belong in the same take, or the take runs past fifteen seconds: Seedance 2.5.
• A person's exact performance from a source video should be recast onto a character: Kling Motion Control.
• A portrait should lip-sync to a voice track you already have: Kling Avatar v2.

Use something other than Veo 3.1 when…

• A single take must run longer than eight seconds: Seedance 2.5.
• A vertical clip must hold a recurring character from reference pictures: Seedance 2.5.
• A talking head should follow a voice track you already have: OmniHuman 1.5.