Veo 3.1 (Quality) vs Veo 3.1 Fast

Specs side by side

Price per unit and per clip

Prices exclude taxes and are charged from your prepaid USD balance. Failed generations cost nothing.

Veo 3.1 (Quality) and Veo 3.1 Fast are two tiers of the same Google model. On Jantaris both return an 8-second clip in 16:9 or 9:16 at 720p, 1080p or 4K. Quality aims for the best image, Fast for speed and price: at 720p and 1080p one Quality clip costs roughly as much as seven Fast clips. I test ideas in Fast and send only the finished prompt to Quality.

Key differences

• Price. Veo 3.1 (Quality) costs from $2.53 per video per clip, Veo 3.1 Fast from $0.354 per video. Both charge a flat amount per generation, not per second.
• Image input. Both take up to 3 images. Quality uses them as frames (for example the first frame of the shot). Fast can use them as frames or as appearance references for a character or product.
• 4K. In both tiers 4K costs more than 1080p, but the step is much bigger in Fast, so the gap between tiers shrinks at 4K.
• Shared. 8 s length, 16:9 and 9:16, prompts up to 4,000 characters, same price for 720p and 1080p. There is no audio toggle and no audio surcharge in the form.

When to pick Veo 3.1 (Quality)

• The final shot of an ad that goes out to the public.
• Shots where light and texture carry the scene, such as a music video.
• Animating a photo from a shoot as the first frame when the clip is the showpiece.
• One-off shots where the price gap does not matter.

When to pick Veo 3.1 Fast

• Exploring: several prompt variants before you commit to one.
• Reels and Shorts in 9:16 that are watched on a phone anyway.
• Product shots built from a packshot used as an appearance reference.
• 4K on a budget: Fast at 4K still costs less than Quality at 1080p.

Cost in practice

At 720p and 1080p Quality costs about 7.1 times as much as Fast. At 4K the gap drops to about 2.3x, because Quality 4K is about 1.5x its 1080p price while Fast 4K is about 4.6x its 1080p price. So I always pick 1080p over 720p (same price) and use Fast 4K only for footage that will be reframed or shown on a big screen. Length is fixed at 8 s, so the price per generation is the price of the shot. Exact amounts for every tier are in the table above and on /pricing.

My own tests (published in Polish on promptowy.com) ran on another provider with shorter 4-second clips, so timing on Jantaris may differ. Veo 3.1 Fast scored 8.0/10 in my first video ranking (coffee 8.5, tram 7.5) and returned a clip in 52-54 s. Full Veo 3.1 scored 8.0/10 in the ranking with a Polish speech test: coffee 8.0, spoken Polish sentence 8.0, 59-68 s. That is one take per prompt, so I do not conclude that Fast makes better images. It only shows that on simple shots Fast does not fall behind as much as the price gap suggests. More on all three Veo tiers: Veo 3.1 API pricing.

FAQ

Veo 3.1 or Veo 3.1 Fast: which should I start with?

Fast. It is several times cheaper, makes the same 8-second shot up to 4K and lets you test the prompt. I switch to Quality when the shot is going to be published.

Does Veo 3.1 Fast do 4K?

Yes, both tiers offer 720p, 1080p and 4K. In Fast, 4K costs several times more than 1080p but still less than Quality at 1080p.

Can I make a clip longer than 8 seconds?

Not in one generation; every Veo clip on Jantaris is 8 s. Build a longer scene from several shots in the edit, or use a model with longer clips such as Seedance 2.5 (up to 30 s).

How do reference images differ between the tiers?

Quality uses images as frames of the shot. Fast can also treat them as an appearance reference, such as a character or a product that should appear in the scene.

Vendor examples

Official examples from the model vendors, not our generations.