How Long Does AI Video Generation Take? Measured Wait Times per Model (2026)

This article covers speed only: how long each model takes, how length and resolution change the wait, what the wait is made of, and what to do when a video is slow. To choose a model by price and features, see AI video models compared. For what each clip costs, see how much it costs to make an AI video.

Wait times by model: our production data

The table comes from our real-world AI video generation data. It covers 1,527 text-to-video, image-to-video and reference-to-video jobs by 1,023 people between January 29 and October 31, 2026, with test, admin and internal accounts excluded. 60% of those jobs ran in October. Median is the typical wait. p90 means 9 out of 10 finished videos were ready within that time. "Finished" is the share of submitted jobs that produced a video.

Read these numbers with their limits:

• This is observational data. People chose their own prompts, durations, resolutions and inputs. The models were not tested on the same job, so a gap of a few tenths of a minute is not a meaningful ranking.
• Small samples are uncertain. VEO 3.1 Lite (914 jobs), VEO 3.1 Fast (136) and MiniMax H3 Max Turbo (105) are well measured. Most other models have 16 to 34 jobs, so a couple of slow runs can move their p90 a lot. Grok Imagine 1.5 finished only 7 of its 16 jobs, so its wait times rest on at most 7 videos. About half of the Kling 3.0 Pro and Seedance 2.0 jobs came from a single user on each model. Models with fewer than 15 jobs are left out.
• Timings count finished videos only. Refused or failed jobs are in the "Finished" column, not in the wait times.
• A low "Finished" rate is mostly about inputs. Most unfinished jobs were refused by the provider's content policy, usually because of a photo. That reflects what people sent to each model, not a measure of how strict the model is. The research page shows the confidence interval for each rate.
• Waits got shorter over the year. The median across all finished videos was 2.6 minutes in September and 2.0 minutes in October. Provider capacity and model versions change, so treat these as late-2026 figures, not a guarantee.

The pattern is still useful. Most models on our site typically deliver in 1.5 to 3 minutes. Hailuo 2.3, Kling 3.0 Pro and Seedance 2.0 typically take 3.5 to 5 minutes, and their slow tail is longer. Plan for up to 8 to 10 minutes on those models before you worry.

How length and resolution change the wait

For the first time we have enough jobs to split waits by setting. The table below shows every model, length and resolution combination with at least 10 finished videos. A dash means the model has no resolution setting on Viralance.

Three things stand out:

1. Resolution matters more than length on VEO 3.1 Lite. At 720p, going from 4 to 8 seconds added about 14 seconds to the median wait (122 to 136 seconds; 6-second clips were the fastest at 116). Going from 720p to 1080p added about 50 seconds at every length (122 to 172 seconds at 4 seconds, 116 to 170 at 6, 136 to 189 at 8).
2. Longer clips cost time on Grok Imagine. A 10-second Grok Imagine clip took about a minute longer than a 5-second one (203 against 132 seconds).
3. A photo barely changes the wait. For 6-second, 720p VEO 3.1 Lite clips, text-to-video took a median of 114 seconds (238 videos) and image-to-video 120 seconds (98 videos).

So if you are waiting on a draft, drop to 720p first. Shortening the clip saves less time than you might expect.

What the wait is made of

Every text-to-video or image-to-video job on Viralance goes through the same steps. We checked them in our generation code:

1. Submit (seconds). Your credits are deducted, any uploaded image is stored, and the job is sent to the model provider.
2. Provider queue and generation (most of the wait). The job waits for capacity, then the model generates the clip. We cannot see or shorten this part. It is the main reason the same model can take 2 minutes one time and 6 the next.
3. Result check. If the provider rejects the output, the job fails and is refunded. There is one exception: if only the soundtrack was rejected, Viralance resubmits the same request once without audio. The video then arrives silent, and the wait roughly doubles because the clip is generated a second time.
4. Delivery hold (about 45 seconds). When the provider reports the file as done, we wait about 45 seconds before marking the video ready, so the file can play when you open it. This hold is included in all the timings above. The model's own generation time is therefore shorter than the wait you see.
5. Status update. With your Videos page open, the app checks the job every 3 seconds at first, slowing to every 15 seconds. If you close the page, a server job checks every processing video once a minute and finishes it for you.

One controlled measurement puts this in context. In our September 2026 delivery pilot, six VEO 3.1 Lite jobs at 4 seconds, 720p and without audio were ready in 79 to 117 seconds each, including the hold and polling. That matches the production median for 4-second 720p VEO 3.1 Lite clips above (2.0 minutes).

Why is my AI video taking so long?

Work through this list before you do anything else:

• Is it still under the p90 for its model? A Hailuo 2.3, Kling 3.0 Pro or Seedance 2.0 job at 7 minutes is slow but normal. The same wait for PixVerse V6 (p90 2.6 minutes) is unusual, but still not a failure.
• Did you pick 1080p? On VEO 3.1 Lite it added close to a minute in our data.
• Did you pick a slower model? Seedance 2.0, Kling 3.0 Pro and Hailuo 2.3 had the longest waits.
• Was the audio rejected? If the video arrives silent after a long wait, the provider refused the soundtrack and the clip was generated again without audio.
• Is the provider busy? Queue time is outside our control and changes by hour and by model. A slow run does not mean the next one will be slow.

Don't resubmit while the first job is still processing. Credits are charged when each job is submitted, so a duplicate costs twice. The first job usually still finishes.

If a job never finishes: any video still processing 30 minutes after submission is marked failed and its credits are returned automatically. This is rare: 14 of 1,527 jobs (0.9%) timed out, and only 3 of the 994 finished videos with a recorded completion time took longer than 10 minutes. You can also delete a video that is still pending or processing from the Videos page, and its credits are refunded. Deleting removes the job, so only do this if you no longer want the result.

Failures, timeouts and refunds

Of the 1,527 generations, 1,360 finished. Of the 167 that did not:

We checked every one of the 167: each was a paid job and each was refunded. Half of the refunds landed within 52 seconds of pressing Generate, and 9 in 10 within about 5.4 minutes. A refused job shows as failed in your library. Changing the photo or the prompt, or switching model, is more useful than retrying the same request. Why image-to-video fails covers what gets refused.

The research data leaves out 11 further failures caused by bugs in our own integration, because those measure us rather than the models.

How to spend less time waiting

1. Draft on a fast, low-cost model. MiniMax H3 Max Turbo had the shortest waits in our data (1.3-minute median, 1.7-minute p90, 105 jobs). A 5-second clip costs 2 credits at 480p or 3 at 768p. VEO 3.1 Lite at 4 seconds and 720p costs 3 credits and took about 2 minutes. Use one of these to test the idea, framing and motion.
2. Draft at 720p. Switch to 1080p only for the version you will post.
3. Switch to the final model once the prompt works. If you need Kling 3.0 Pro or Seedance 2.0, run that model after the prompt is settled. Expect about 4 to 5 minutes.
4. Allow browser notifications. When you first press Generate, the app asks for notification permission. Allow it and keep the Videos page open in a background tab. You'll get a "Your Viralance video is ready" notification and an in-app message when the job completes. The notification only works while that page is open in some tab. If you close it, the video still finishes; you'll see it the next time you open your library.
5. Write the next prompt while you wait. Queue only the variants you actually want to keep, because each job is charged when you submit it.
6. Keep a buffer before deadlines. If you plan three attempts on a slower model, allow 15 to 25 minutes, not 5.

Try a fast draft on MiniMax H3 Max Turbo. The link opens the editor with the model selected. Nothing is generated until you press Generate, and the cost is shown first.

What about the speeds vendors advertise?

Model makers and hosting platforms sometimes quote generation speeds. A figure measured on the provider's own infrastructure leaves out the steps above, such as the delivery hold and status checks, so it is not directly comparable with the tables. We only report what our users actually waited for on Viralance. If a vendor's quoted time matters to you, test it directly against their API with your own settings.

When not to use Viralance for this

• You need a result in seconds. A generative video model is the wrong tool for live or interactive use. A typical 1.5 to 4 minute wait, plus retries, won't work there. Use stock footage, templates or a real recording.
• You need hundreds of clips at a guaranteed speed. Viralance is built for creators who work in a browser. For a high-volume pipeline with a delivery-time commitment, work directly with a provider or API platform that offers that contract.
• You need one exact shot for today. Plan for several attempts. If the brief is exact, such as a real product label or a specific person, filming it may take less time than generating it.

Method

• Source: Viralance's generation records, read-only and aggregated. No prompts, media or account data are published.
• Window: January 29 to October 31, 2026. 1,527 generations by 1,023 people.
• Excluded: test, QA and admin accounts; our own internal accounts; accounts flagged for abuse or banned; video-to-video tools; and 11 failures caused by bugs in our own integration.
• Wait time: from submission to the moment the video was marked ready. The completion time is written by a server check that runs once a minute, so a single timing can be up to a minute late. A completion time was recorded for 994 of the 1,360 finished videos; the per-model and per-setting tables use those.
• Thresholds: per-model figures need at least 15 jobs; per-setting rows need at least 10 finished videos.

FAQ

How long does a 5-second AI video take to generate? On Viralance, a 5-second clip typically took 1.3 minutes on MiniMax H3 Max Turbo, about 2.2 minutes on PixVerse V6 and Grok Imagine, 2.7 minutes on Kling 3.0 Standard and 3.9 minutes on Kling 3.0 Pro.

Which AI video model is fastest? In our data, MiniMax H3 Max Turbo had the shortest median wait (1.3 minutes over 105 jobs), followed by VEO 3.1 Lite and PixVerse V6 (2.1 minutes). Differences under half a minute are within normal variation.

Does 1080p take longer than 720p? Yes. On VEO 3.1 Lite, 1080p added about 50 seconds to the median wait at 4, 6 and 8 seconds. Going from 4 to 8 seconds at 720p added only about 14 seconds.

Can I close the page while the video generates? Yes. A server job checks processing videos every minute and completes them. The browser notification only fires while the Videos page is open in a tab.

Do I lose credits if generation times out? No. A job still processing after 30 minutes is marked failed and refunded automatically. Policy refusals and technical failures are refunded as well: all 167 failed jobs in our data were.

Data: Viralance production records, January 29 – October 31, 2026, test and internal accounts excluded (method and limits). Prices from the current credit catalog, checked October 31, 2026; see pricing.