Same brief, same prompt, word for word — in every tool. Credits, retries, queue time and watermarks logged. What we haven't run is labeled vendor claim, never scored.
Brief T1 — the scare scene: a convenience store at night; the CCTV grid shows one figure too many; she turns around — the store is empty.
Best story fidelity at the lowest cost — if the watermark is acceptable on your channel.
The clean export for commercial work — just budget for the queue.
Fast and competent — but text-to-video can't do vertical. Enter via image-to-video instead.
Provisional ranking: scored on 3 of 6 protocol dimensions (output quality, cost, speed). Languages, rights/terms and editing control are not scored yet — we publish no score without a log behind it.
| Kling 4.0 | Veo 3.1 Quality | Runway Gen-4.5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watermark | “KlingAI 4.0”, bottom-right (frame-verified) | None | None |
| Vertical format | True 9:16 · 1080×1920 | True 9:16 · up to 1080×1920 | Text-to-video locked to 1280×720; 9:16 only via image-to-video (Gen-4 Turbo) |
| Queue / speed | ~8 min average across briefs | ~15 min average; queue ran ~9–30 min | ~10 min average; fastest run of the test (~3.5 min) |
| Cost / finished min | $9.54 intro price · $12.00 at renewal | $15.00 | $17.28 — and it's a landscape minute |
| Best for | Vertical drama & serialized shorts on a budget | Client-facing clips, faces, text-heavy scenes | Speed on simple scenes; image-to-video workflows |