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By the toolist.ai editors. Researched from Hailuo AI's own pages and hands-on tests published by others, not hands-on tested by toolist.ai. Updated October 14, 2026.

Hailuo AI review: pricing, features and what testers found

Hailuo AI is MiniMax's own app for its video models: the current MiniMax H3 makes clips of up to 15 seconds with native stereo sound at 768p or 2K from text, frames or up to 12 image, video and audio references, and edits existing video. Paid plans start at $10.50 a month ($8.40 a month billed yearly), and MiniMax's API sells H3 from $0.08 a second.

Our take

Hailuo AI suits creators who want short clips with native sound and heavy reference control at a low price per second. Its MiniMax H3 model makes clips of up to 15 seconds at 768p or 2K from text, frames or up to 12 reference files, and on October 14, 2026 its 768p version ranked 4th on Artificial Analysis's text-to-video board with audio (Elo 1158), just behind Seedance 2.5 and ahead of Kling 3.0 1080p Pro (17th) and Veo 3.1 (20th). Standard costs $10.50 a month for 1,000 credits, which the pricing page counts as about 143 seconds of H3 at 768p, and MiniMax's API charges $0.08 a second at 768p. Testing H3 in August 2026, Curious Refuge's Mable Huang found Seedance 2.5 more convincing on physics and multi-shot scenes and saw artifacts throughout, though H3 cost about 60% less; testing the older Hailuo 2.0 and 2.3 models, Cybernews' Konstantinas Kofanovas found a reference character kept consistent but results uneven. Plan credits lapse each month, subscriptions are not refunded, the terms give Hailuo's operator a perpetual licence to your uploads and outputs, and Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. are suing the companies behind Hailuo over its outputs.

Based on Hailuo AI's published plans and the hands-on tests linked below, not on a test of our own.

Good for

  • Short ads, social clips and storyboards with sound, built from text or from several image, video and audio references
  • Changing objects, lighting or dialogue in a clip by instruction instead of generating it again
  • Developers who want per-second API pricing, or open weights to run H3 locally at 768p

Watch out for

  • The plan cards show discounts from list prices with no end date (Standard $10.50 a month against $14.99, Pro $38 against $54.99, Master $89 against $119.99), while the page's own FAQ and Hailuo's subscription terms, last updated July 14, 2025, still list older prices and credits, such as Max at $199.99 with 20,000 credits. The site header said "From $9.99/mo", which matched no plan card on October 14.
  • Unlimited image generation (Nano Banana Pro, Nano Banana 2, Seedream and GPT Image 1.5) comes only with yearly Pro, Master and Max; the monthly plan cards list no image allowance.
  • Plan credits last one month and do not roll over, and upgrading turns what is left into purchased credits. Subscriptions are not refunded: cancelling only stops the next renewal. Credits come back for failed generations and for content that fails review. Cybernews noted many user complaints about billing, credits and support, including charges before a free trial had ended.
  • Free downloads carry a watermark; Hailuo's terms give you commercial rights to content made on a paid plan.
  • The terms of service give the operator, Nanonoble Pte. Ltd. of Singapore, and its affiliates a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable licence to use, license, modify, distribute and earn money from your uploads and generated content.
  • Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. are suing the two companies behind Hailuo, saying it reproduces their characters and was trained on their works; on May 22, 2026 a federal court in California refused to dismiss the case.
  • MiniMax sells H3 in several places: Hailuo's plans (the pricing page counts $0.047 to $0.074 a second at 768p), its API ($0.08 a second at 768p) and a separate MiniMax Design app, which Hailuo's own banner promotes with 3,000 free credits for new users. Hailuo's H3 page still cites the July 31 rankings (2nd on text-to-video with audio); on October 14 the board, now version 2.1, had H3 at 768p 4th.

What Hailuo AI does

Price

Free plan: A one-time pack of free trial credits for Hailuo's own models (the sign-up pop-up showed 150 credits on October 14), which Hailuo's terms say expires three days after it is granted; downloads carry a watermark, and up to 4 tasks can queue with 1 running at a time.

PlanBilled monthlyBilled yearly, per monthIncludesPrice per second of MiniMax H3 768p video
Free free free One-time free trial credits for Hailuo's own models (H3, H3 Max, Hailuo 2.3, 2.0 and 1.0); watermarked downloads; up to 4 queued tasks, 1 running at a time –
Standard $10.50 $8.40 1,000 credits a month: 142 whole seconds of MiniMax H3 at 768p at 7 credits a second (the pricing page rounds it to about 143) or 83 at 2K at 12 credits a second (about 84 on the page); or 40 six-second Hailuo 2.3 clips at 768p (25 credits each); no watermark, Sora 2 and Veo 3.1, 8 queued tasks; shown as 30% off a $14.99 list price; $100.80 billed yearly $0.074
Pro $38 $30.40 4,500 credits a month, 642 whole seconds of H3 at 768p (about 643 on the page) or 375 at 2K; 10-second Hailuo 2.3 clips and 2 tasks at once; yearly billing adds unlimited images (Nano Banana Pro at 1K); list price $54.99; $364.80 billed yearly $0.059
Master $89 $71.20 10,500 credits a month, about 1,500 seconds of H3 at 768p or 875 at 2K; 12 queued tasks, 2 at once; yearly billing adds unlimited images (Nano Banana Pro at 2K); list price $119.99; $854.40 billed yearly $0.059
Max $216 $184 27,000 credits a month, about 3,857 seconds of H3 at 768p or 2,250 at 2K; unlimited Hailuo 1.0, 2.0 and 2.3 generations in a slower queue, which carries on after the credits run out; yearly billing adds unlimited images (Nano Banana Pro at 4K); $2,208 billed yearly $0.056
MiniMax API not listed not listed Pay as you go per second of output: MiniMax H3 $0.08 at 768p and $0.13 at 2K, H3 Max $0.05 at 480p and $0.08 at 768p; Hailuo 2.3 $0.28 per 6-second clip at 768p and $0.49 at 1080p. For H3, audio references are free, the first 5 images are free and then $0.04 each, and reference video is billed by the second –

Price per second of MiniMax H3 768p video is our calculation: the monthly-billing price divided by what the plan includes, assuming you use all of it. It is not a measured cost.

Prices last checked: 2026-10-16 on Hailuo AI's pricing page. Full breakdown: Hailuo AI pricing.

Price history

No price change since we first recorded these prices on October 14, 2026. We re-check them every week and list each change here.

What hands-on testers found

We have not tested Hailuo AI ourselves. These are the published tests we found that used it hands-on, newest first; follow the links for the full reviews.

Curious Refuge · Mable Huang · August 5, 2026

What they tested: The hosted MiniMax H3 against Seedance 2.5 on action scenes, dialogue, emotional performances and VFX shots, and the downloadable 768p open-weight version against LTX 2.3.

  • Seedance 2.5 gave more believable physics in nearly every action test, and H3's multi-shot scenes had less expressive characters and more continuity breaks.
  • Unstable textures, distorted faces and visual noise appeared all through her tests: fine for some social content, she judged, but they make H3 harder to recommend for high-end film work.
  • Hosted 2K started at about $0.13 a second (about $1.95 for 15 seconds) and could pass $4 for 15 seconds with more references, yet even then cost roughly 60% less than Seedance; the open-weight version clearly beat LTX 2.3, though its launch licence barred creators in the US, EU, UK and South Korea from distributing the results.

Cybernews · Konstantinas Kofanovas · updated December 11, 2025

What they tested: Hailuo's web app: image-to-video from an AI portrait with prompt and camera presets, text-to-video on Hailuo 2.0 and 2.3, and subject reference with three photos of one character.

  • A prompt preset made the portrait clip cut suddenly to a forest; with his own prompt the motion worked, but a requested joyful laugh came out closer to 'ecstatic glee'.
  • On a sunflowers-in-the-breeze prompt, the older Hailuo 2.0 moved more naturally than Hailuo 2.3, whose clip looked good but static.
  • Subject reference kept the character's face, lighting and details consistent, but missed a requested camera move.

Their score: 3.5 out of 5

Curious Refuge · Brian Dalton · November 10, 2025

What they tested: Hailuo 2.3 on an 18-shot test suite, scored for prompt adherence, temporal consistency, visual fidelity, motion and cinematic realism.

  • Visual fidelity scored highest (8.1 of 10) and temporal consistency lowest (6.3); in a shadow-boxing shot the arms doubled mid-punch.
  • Prompts that opened with camera framing were followed closely, while emotional cues such as a 'sultry expression' were often missed.
  • Motion was smooth and stable but felt mechanical, and crowd and explosion shots lacked physical energy.

Their score: 7.49 out of 10

What users say

Test result

toolist.ai has not run its own test of Hailuo AI; the findings above come from the published tests linked. See how we research and test.

Best text to video tools · Hailuo AI pricing

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Sources