Wan 3.0 vs Wan 2.5: the 1080P second got a third more expensive

On a capability list Wan 3.0 wins every row, which is true and will not help you decide anything. The two things that actually change how you work are a duration model and a price, and neither of them appears on a feature grid.

Here they are in one line each. Wan 2.5 does not have a duration setting — it has two buttons, five seconds and ten. And Wan 3.0 is the first Wan generation to charge more for 1080P: $12.00 a minute against $9.00, a third more, while 480P and 720P did not move at all.

Every figure below is from Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, International scope, read 2026-09-02: the text-to-video API reference for what Wan 2.5 accepts, the Wan 3.0 API reference for what replaced it, and the Wan 3.0 release page for the promotion and its expiry.

The duration difference is not a bigger number

The comparison tables all render this row as "5–10s" against "2–30s", which reads like a range getting wider. It is not a range on the 2.5 side.

That frame-rate row used to read "30 fps" on both sides. It should not have. Alibaba publishes 30 fps for Wan 3.0 and publishes no frame rate at all for wan2.5-t2v-preview — a full-text read of the text-to-video reference on 2026-09-02 returns none — while at least one reseller documents 24. Two answers and no primary source is not a number this site prints.

A seven-second cut is not a thing Wan 2.5 can be asked for. Neither is three seconds, which matters more than it sounds: three seconds is the cheapest length at which a single action still reads, so it is the length you want when you are finding out whether a prompt works at all. On 2.5 the cheapest test you can run is five seconds, and on 480P that is $0.25 against $0.12 for the three-second version on 3.0. The floor of the experiment moved.

Ten seconds is also a real ceiling rather than a soft one. Anything longer on 2.5 is assembled from separate generations, with the joins to match on grade, motion and sound — which is the specific problem the thirty-second pass exists to remove.

The price nobody has written down

This is the row that changes a monthly bill, and it goes the wrong way.

Three generations held 1080P at nine dollars a minute. Wan 3.0 is the first to move it, and it moved only that tier — so the upgrade is free at the two resolutions most people draft at and a third more expensive at the one they deliver at.

On a thirty-second 1080P piece that is $6.00 against the $4.50 the same length would have cost at the old rate, except that the same length was not available, which is the honest complication in this row: you cannot buy thirty seconds of 1080P on Wan 2.5 at any price. Where the two are directly comparable — a ten-second 1080P clip, the longest 2.5 makes — it is $2.00 on Wan 3.0 against $1.50 on Wan 2.5.

The discount is hiding this until 24 September

Wan 3.0 currently carries a limited-time 30% discount that Wan 2.5 does not, which puts 1080P at $8.40 a minute — temporarily below Wan 2.5's $9.00. The list price is $12.00 and that is what it returns to when the promotion ends at 00:00 on 2026-09-24, UTC+8.

So a rate you measured in early September is not the rate you will be paying in October. Anyone sizing a monthly budget right now should size it on $12.00 a minute, not on the number the console is currently charging — the difference on that thirty-second 1080P clip is $4.20 today and $6.00 in a month, a 43% increase arriving on a date nobody announced to you.

And the free quota shrank

Valid 90 days from Model Studio activation or model release, whichever is later, and in Singapore only — the other regions have no free quota at all. Forty percent less free trial on the newer model is a small thing in money and a large thing in how much you get to learn before you decide.

What Wan 3.0 buys that is not on the price list

The inputs are where the generation gap is real, and this part is not close.

Native audio is the one people credit to Wan 3.0 that actually arrived in 2.5 — sound generated with the picture rather than dubbed afterwards is the defining feature of the 2.5 generation, not the new one. What is new is everything in bold: an ending frame to steer toward, reference material to hold a character across shots, and a file or a link as the source of the story.

Wan 2.5 also keeps a small thing worth naming. Its image-to-video endpoint accepts an audio_url and will synchronise the video to a track you supply. That is a different mechanic from generating audio, and if driving a clip from an existing voice track is your workflow, check it survives your migration before you plan around it.

One more thing the version numbers hide

Wan 2.5 is still published as preview, a year after release. Wan 2.6 and 2.7 came out in between, dropped the 480P tier entirely, and Alibaba's own model list still marks wan2.7-t2v as Recommended rather than wan3.0-video.

Read that as it is meant: the family is not a straight line where the highest number is always the answer. 480P disappeared for two generations and came back, preview never came off the older endpoint, and the vendor's own recommendation has not moved to the newest release yet.

Should you move

Move if you need a length that is not five or ten seconds, an ending frame, reference material, or a document as input — none of these has a workaround on 2.5, and four of the six input types are simply absent.

Do the arithmetic first if your work is ten-second 1080P deliverables at volume. That is the one shape where 2.5 is cheaper per finished second and the capability gap does not reach you, and after 24 September the gap is 33%.

Draft at 480P either way. It is $3.00 a minute on both generations, it is the same model with fewer pixels, and framing, motion and sound all read correctly there. The most expensive habit in this category is deciding what the shot is at delivery resolution.

Questions

What is the difference between Wan 3.0 and Wan 2.5?

Three that matter. Duration: Wan 2.5 offers exactly two lengths, 5 seconds and 10, while Wan 3.0 takes any whole number from 2 to 30. Inputs: Wan 3.0 adds a last frame, reference images, video and audio, documents and web pages, none of which Wan 2.5 accepts. Price: 1080P is $12.00 a minute on Wan 3.0 against $9.00 on Wan 2.5. Both run 480P, 720P and 1080P with audio generated in the same pass.

Is Wan 3.0 more expensive than Wan 2.5?

At 1080P, yes, by a third — $12.00 a minute against $9.00, on Alibaba's International list prices. At 480P and 720P the two are identical at $3.00 and $6.00. Wan 3.0 also carries a limited-time 30% discount until 00:00 on 2026-09-24, UTC+8, which puts 1080P at $8.40 for now, so a bill measured today understates what the same work costs afterwards.

Can Wan 2.5 make a 30-second video?

No. Ten seconds is the ceiling and there is no setting between 5 and 10, so anything longer is stitched from separate generations. Wan 3.0 generates up to 30 seconds in a single pass at any whole-second length.

Does Wan 2.5 have audio?

Yes, and this is the feature most often credited to the wrong generation. Both wan2.5-t2v-preview and wan2.5-i2v-preview generate synchronised audio with the picture, and the image-to-video endpoint additionally accepts an audio file to drive the video against. Native sound is what the 2.5 generation introduced.

How much free Wan 2.5 or Wan 3.0 usage does Alibaba give?

50 seconds on wan2.5-t2v-preview and wan2.5-i2v-preview, and 30 seconds on wan3.0-video and wan3.0-video-prime. Both are valid for 90 days from Model Studio activation or model release, whichever is later, and both are offered in the Singapore region only — no other region carries a free quota.

Is Wan 2.5 still supported?

It is still published and still priced, but still carries the preview label a year on, and Alibaba shipped 2.6 and 2.7 after it. Those two dropped the 480P tier that 2.5 and 3.0 both have, which is worth knowing before you treat the version numbers as a straight upgrade path.

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Wan 2.7 sits between these two, and is where the 480P tier disappeared. Outside the Wan line, Seedance 2.5 is the other model that reaches thirty seconds in one pass. The comparison hub has the whole table.

The comparison that settles fastest is the one you run. A three-second clip at 480P is the length Wan 2.5 cannot make and the cheapest thing Wan 3.0 does — run one free and the model ID is printed beside the result, so you can see which generation actually answered.