How PiAPI's Kling AI API is better than the Official Kling AI API (cost, speed, and features)!

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PiAPI

Introduction

As you’ve probably heard by now, Kuaishou has launched their official Kling AI API to a number of limited developers on September 30th, 2024.

However, the official Kling AI API has some major drawbacks, such as requiring developers to pay an upfront fee of $4,200 for three months, with no lesser usage options, and the correspondingly monthly units expiring at the end of each billing month.

Screenshot of the Official announcement of the release of the Kling AI API on their website
Official announcement of the release of the Kling AI API on their website

At PiAPI, we're providing a superior version by developing on top of the official API, offering the same functionality plus extra features, all at a lower price for developers.

Now, let's get into the detailed comparison, so you can decide for yourself which one is better.

Comparison

Here's a table we put together showing the different plans PiAPI offers and the cheapest upfront plan from the Official Kling AI API.

PNG image of a table comparing PiAPI's different plans and the lowest-priced plan from the Official Kling API
Overview Comparison Table for PiAPI's Kling API vs. the Official Kling API

Now, we'll take a closer look at the comparison table and explain it in more detail.

Unit Pricing

PiAPI's Kling AI API price per video is as low as $0.13. (note that PiAPI's pricing will be as per this blog starting October 20th, 2024)
The Official Kling AI API price per unit is $0.14. For them, a unit is what video generation tasks will consume, for example:

  • • In standard mode, a 5-second video requires 1 unit, while a 10-second video requires 2 units. Thus, a standard mode 5-second video costs $0.14, and a standard mode 10-second video costs $0.28.
  • • In professional mode, a 5-second video uses 3.5 units ($0.49), and a 10-second video uses 7 units ($0.98).

For PiAPI, however, we just directly use USD per video to calculate the cost.

To simplify things, we've created a detailed table outlining the cost comparison.

PNG Image of Pricing Table Comparison
The detailed Pricing Table Comparison between PiAPI and the Official Kling API

Upfront Fee

Next up, let's look at the upfront fee. But first, what does that term mean for the services we are comparing?The upfront fee is the initial cost required to access the API platform. While some service providers require significant upfront payments, PiAPI offers a more flexible and cost-efficient approach. Here’s a comparison between PiAPI's Kling AI API and the Official Kling AI API:

  • • PiAPI's Kling AIAPI: PiAPI requires $0 minimum upfront fee for credit purchasing since it is a pay-as-you-go model (you use what you top up). For features, users can start on the basic free plan and if you are interested in the advanced features, you can subscribe to the corresponding Creator Plan ($8/month) or Pro Plan ($50/month). Overall, there are no large commitments required with PiAPI's offering.
  • • Official Kling AIAPI: The Official Kling API requires a $4,200 upfront payment for a three-month period, which includes 10,000 units per month (expiring at the end of each billing month). Kling does not offer any lower credit plans, and the $4200 is a significant investment for development teams who are experimenting with the Kling API and are uncertain about future usage growth.


Another key difference is how long unused units/credits remain valid:

  • • For the official Kling API, the upfront $4200 payment per 3 months corresponds to 10,000 units per month, and unused units expire after each respective 30 days, forcing developers to use them quickly or lose them.
  • • Whereas in PiAPI's pay-as-you-go model, unused credits remain valid for 180 days from the date of the purchase, giving developers more time to use them as needed.

Features

Next, we’ll break down the features of both APIs and explain why PiAPI’s Kling AI API is the best option.

Full Feature Support: PiAPI's Kling AI API offers all the features that Official Kling AI API offers, including:

  • • AI Text-to-Video generation
  • • AI Image-to-Video generation
  • • Support for the V1.0 Model
  • • Ability to handle multiple concurrent jobs
  • • Negative Prompts
  • • Watermark Removal
  • • Add End Frame
  • • Camera Movement (text-to-video)

Max Concurrent Jobs

Both APIs support multiple concurrent video generation tasks, but PiAPI provides significantly more concurrency than the Official API.

The Official Kling AI API supports only to a maximum of 5 concurrent jobs, even after developers are forced to pay $4200 for a 3-month commitment. If the developers are expected to use up all the 10,000 credits, which is about 333 jobs per day, sometimes 5 concurrent jobs might result in long queue time.

PiAPI's Kling AI API, other the hand, supports up to 20+ concurrent jobs, which is four times the concurrent job capacity than what the official is offering, making it a more useful option for users with high-volume needs.


Additional API Features

Besides handling more concurrent jobs and supporting all the features of the Official API, PiAPI’s API offers extra features that you won’t find in the official version, including support for:

  • • v1.5 Model
  • • Motion Brush (WIP)
  • • Lip Sync API(WIP)

Kling released the v1.5 model recently, and the official team mentioned that it's a major improvement over the v1.0 model. Therefore, it easy to see why many developers would want the option to run the v1.5 Model through the API, but unfortunately, the Official Kling AI API doesn't offer that functionality.

Motion Brush is also another tool that was released by Kling, allowing you to select an object in an image and create movement paths for precise and dynamic motion control. It is yet another powerful tool that is unavailable in the Official Kling AI API.

Similarly, the Lip Sync tool is another powerful tool in Kling AI. What it allows you to do is input text, pick a voice, and generate both voiceover and video for your character. But like Motion Brush and the v1.5 Model, it is missing from the Official Kling AI API.

But luckily, PiAPI’s Kling AI API gives you access to all of these features, helping you to build more powerful applications for your users.

  1. Other AI APIs!

Not only does PiAPI offer additional Kling AI API features, but with a PiAPI account, you can use the credits purchased on any of our AI APIs besides Kling. This ensures your payments are more efficiently spent, and reducing the risk of unused credits. Our family of AI APIs offering include:


Also, if developer chose the Pro Plan ($50/month) for Kling, then other premium features of our other AI APIs could also be used, such as:

  • • Midjourney API: 30 concurrent jobs, task Logs that last 30 days, bot_id selection, intermediate image URLs, Auto-CAPTCHA solver
  • • Faceswap API: 200 calls / month for free
  • • Suno API: 30 concurrent jobs, free lyrics generation, upload audio, extend music
  • • Luma Dream Machine API: image-to-video generation, add end frame, video extend, watermark removal
  • • Flux API: 10 concurrent jobs, top priority generation, LoRA (WIP), ControlNet (WIP)


For more details, please refer to PiAPI's pricing page and related documentation for more information.

Alternative Option: Host-Your-Account

For developers who already have their Kling account(s), PiAPI also allows developers to use their own Kling accounts through our API. This is our Host-Your-Account (HYA) option.

How it works is that you'd pay for a Kling API HYA "seat" for just $10 a month, then you can connect your own Kling account to this seat and start making API calls to your own Kling account.

The number of video generations available under the HYA option will purely depend on the number of credits available in your Kling account, with no extra charges coming from PiAPI besides the $10/seat.

Users can still start on the Free Subscription Plan, and if they are interested in the advanced features, they could subscribe to the $8 Creator Plan or the $50 Pro Plan anytime. The $10 paid for the seat differs from the $8 or the $50 paid for the subscription plan, where:

  1. 1. $10/month is the monthly cost of a seat
  2. 2. $8/month or $50/month will provide the users with different features in different subscription plans (note that concurrent job limit and whether you can remove watermarks are both determined by your own Kling account)

Therefore, for the HYA option, the total upfront fee consists of the following:

  1. 1. Personal Kling account(s) cost
  2. 2. At least one PiAPI HYA seat ($10/month)
  3. 3. PiAPI Subscription Plan (can start with $0/month and upgrade as needed)

This option has the potential to be even cheaper than the Pay-as-you-go option offered by PiAPI. Since Kling offers major discounts for the first subscription month, and free Kling accounts can also process jobs.

Conclusion

PiAPI's Kling AI API clearly stands out as the smarter choice for indie developers or big development teams alike.

Not only do we provide all the features of the Official Kling AI API, but we also offer extra features that are extremely popular with developers and end users, and all of this comes at a lower cost compared to the official API.

This makes it the perfect choice for anyone looking for both a high-quality and cost-effective solution.

We hope that you have found this comparison useful!

And if you are interested, check out our full range of generative AI APIs at PiAPI!

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