# Hailuo AI Video in 2026: H3 Models, Plans and Free Credits

> Hailuo AI is MiniMax's video app. See its H3 models, plan prices, free trial credits and API rates as of September 2026, plus other ways to use H3.

By Benet, founder of FrameSurfer. Published 2026-09-24.
Canonical: https://framesurfer.com/blogs/hailuo-ai-video

FrameSurfer publishes this guide and is one of the tools covered.

Hailuo AI is MiniMax's app for making AI videos from a text prompt or a photo. Its newest video model is MiniMax H3, released on July 31, 2026. H3 makes clips of up to 15 seconds with native stereo sound, at up to 2K ([MiniMax](https://www.minimax.io/blog/minimax-h3)). As of September 2026, the free plan gives one-time trial credits. The cheapest paid plan costs $10.50 a month billed monthly, or $8.40 a month billed yearly, for 1,000 credits ([Hailuo plans](https://hailuoai.video/subscribe)).

This guide explains the confusing names, what each plan buys, what the API costs, and when another route makes more sense.

## Hailuo, MiniMax and H3: what the names mean

The short version: MiniMax is the company. Hailuo AI is its video app. H3 is the model inside the app.

The longer version matters, because the same model shows up under several names.

| Name | What it is |
|---|---|
| MiniMax | The AI company. It also makes the M-series language models and its Speech and Music models. |
| Hailuo AI | MiniMax's consumer app for video and images, on the web at hailuoai.video and on mobile. |
| Hailuo 01, Hailuo 02, Hailuo 2.3 | Earlier MiniMax video models. The MiniMax API now lists Hailuo 2.3, 2.3 Fast and 02 as legacy models. |
| MiniMax H3 | The current model, released July 31, 2026. Hailuo's own site also calls it Hailuo 3.0. |
| H3 Max | A version of H3 that fal, an AI inference company, trained further from the open H3 weights. fal announced it on August 27, 2026, with a supporting statement from the MiniMax H3 team. Hailuo and the MiniMax API both offer it. |
| H3 Max Turbo | fal's faster variant, also post-trained from MiniMax H3 ([fal](https://fal.ai/models/minimax/h3-max-turbo/text-to-video)). This is the version FrameSurfer runs. |

So "Hailuo AI video" can mean the app or the model. When people say "Hailuo 3", they mean H3.

![Diagram-style illustration of one company linked to an app and a family of video models](https://media.framesurfer.com/media/generated/blog/hailuo-ai-video/image_1.webp)

## What MiniMax H3 can do

These specs come from MiniMax's [H3 model card on Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3), as of September 2026.

| Spec | MiniMax H3 |
|---|---|
| Clip length | 4 to 15 seconds |
| Resolution | 768p on the short side by default. 2K comes from a second "regenerate" step. |
| Frame rate | 24 fps |
| Sound | Native stereo audio at 32 kHz, made together with the picture |
| Dialogue languages | 11 with stable support, including English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese |
| Starting points | Text alone, a first frame, a last frame, or both |
| Reference mode | Up to 9 images, 3 video clips and 3 audio clips, 12 files in total |
| Aspect ratios | Includes 21:9, 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4 and 9:16 |

Reference mode is the big new idea. You give H3 a face, a place, a camera move or a voice, then describe how to use them in words. MiniMax's launch post shows a prompt that borrows the camera move from one video and makes the character from an image sing.

Inside the Hailuo app, the plan page listed three video model groups as of September 2026:

- **MiniMax H3:** 4 to 15 seconds, at 768p or 2K.
- **MiniMax H3 Max:** 5 to 15 seconds, at 480p or 768p. It works from text or start and end frames. Only H3 accepts reference videos.
- **Hailuo 2.3:** 6-second clips at 768p on every plan, 1080p on paid plans, and 10-second clips from the Pro plan up.

## Hailuo AI plans and credits (as of September 2026)

Hailuo sells monthly credits. The prices below are what the [Hailuo plan page](https://hailuoai.video/subscribe) showed on September 24, 2026. They were marked as discounts from list prices, so expect them to change.

| Plan | Credits per month | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | List price shown |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | None (one-time trial credits) | $0 | $0 | Not shown |
| Standard | 1,000 | $10.50 | $8.40 a month ($100.80 a year) | $14.99 |
| Pro | 4,500 | $38.00 | $30.40 a month ($364.80 a year) | $54.99 |
| Master | 10,500 | $89.00 | $71.20 a month ($854.40 a year) | $119.99 |
| Max | 27,000 | $216.00 | $184.00 a month ($2,208 a year) | Not shown |

Credits are easier to judge as seconds of video. The same page says each plan covers roughly this much H3 footage:

| Plan | H3 at 2K | H3 at 768p | H3 Max at 480p |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | about 84 seconds | about 143 seconds | about 250 seconds |
| Pro | about 375 seconds | about 643 seconds | about 1,125 seconds |
| Master | about 875 seconds | about 1,500 seconds | about 2,625 seconds |
| Max | about 2,250 seconds | about 3,857 seconds | about 6,750 seconds |

In plain terms, Standard's 1,000 credits cover about fourteen 10-second H3 clips at 768p, or about eight at 2K. Retries come out of the same pool.

Older models are priced per clip. Hailuo's plan FAQ lists these costs:

| Model | 6 s at 768p | 6 s at 1080p | 10 s at 768p |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hailuo 2.3 and 2.0 | 25 credits | 80 credits | 50 credits |
| Hailuo 2.3 Fast | 15 credits | 50 credits | 30 credits |

Other plan details from the same page:

- Paid plans remove watermarks. Hailuo's FAQ says any video you can download without a watermark is yours to use commercially.
- Failed generations do not cost credits.
- Free and Standard run one task at a time. Pro and higher run two.
- The Max plan adds unlimited Hailuo 2.0 and 2.3 generations.
- Paid plans also list Google's Veo 3.1 and OpenAI's Sora 2 inside Hailuo. OpenAI set September 24, 2026 as the shutdown date for the Sora 2 API ([OpenAI](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/deprecations)), so the Sora option may not last.

![A creator at a desk weighing a small stack of tokens against a row of short video clips](https://media.framesurfer.com/media/generated/blog/hailuo-ai-video/image_2.webp)

### Is Hailuo AI free?

Partly. As of September 2026, the free plan has no monthly credits. It gives one-time trial credits for Hailuo's own models. A banner on [hailuoai.video](https://hailuoai.video/) also offered 3,000 free credits for downloading MiniMax Design, another MiniMax app. That is a promotion, so check it before you count on it.

The other free route is the open model weights, covered below. They cost nothing to download, but they need serious hardware.

## MiniMax API pricing for H3 (as of September 2026)

Developers can call H3 directly through the MiniMax API. It bills per second of finished video. These rates come from [MiniMax's pay-as-you-go page](https://platform.minimax.io/docs/guides/pricing-paygo).

| API model | Resolution | Price |
|---|---|---|
| MiniMax-H3 | 768p | $0.08 per second |
| MiniMax-H3 | 2K | $0.13 per second |
| MiniMax-H3-Max | 480p | $0.05 per second |
| MiniMax-H3-Max | 768p | $0.08 per second |
| MiniMax-H3-Regeneration | 768p to 2K | $0.05 per second |

A 10-second H3 clip at 768p costs $0.80. The same clip at 2K costs $1.30.

Inputs can add cost. For H3, audio references are free, the first 5 images are free, and each extra image costs $0.04. A reference video is billed per input second at the output rate. H3 Max includes 2 free images, then charges $0.074 per extra image.

The older models are still listed with per-clip prices. For example, Hailuo 2.3 costs $0.28 for a 6-second 768p clip and $0.49 for a 6-second 1080p clip.

## Can you run H3 yourself?

Yes, with limits. MiniMax published the H3 weights on Hugging Face. Weights are the trained model files you download and run on your own machines. Here is what that means in practice, as of September 2026:

- **License.** H3 uses the [MiniMax H3 Community License](https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3/blob/main/LICENSE). A commercial product with more than $20 million in yearly revenue needs written permission from MiniMax. Commercial products must also show "MiniMax H3" in their interface.
- **Size.** The main transformer has 33 billion parameters. H3 also uses the full Qwen3-VL-32B model to read prompts and images. The transformer files for one checkpoint are about 66 GB.
- **Hardware.** MiniMax's own serving example uses 4 GPUs.
- **What is missing.** The open release is H3-Base, which outputs 768p. The 2K regenerate step is not open-sourced yet. Sparse attention, which cuts the compute cost of long clips, is also still to come.

So self-hosting suits teams with GPU servers. For most creators, an app is simpler.

![A server rack with four glowing graphics cards in a quiet data center](https://media.framesurfer.com/media/generated/blog/hailuo-ai-video/image_3.webp)

## How to make a Hailuo AI video

The Hailuo web app keeps the steps short:

1. **Pick a model.** The composer on the home page opens on MiniMax H3. Switch to H3 Max for lower cost at 480p or 768p.
2. **Write the prompt or add references.** The composer takes up to 12 reference files.
3. **Set the look.** Choose resolution, length and aspect ratio.
4. **Check the cost, then create.** The credit cost shows beside the Create button before you generate.

A prompt tip for any video model: write it like a shot description. Name the subject, the action, the place, the camera move and the light. One of the sample prompts on FrameSurfer's text to video page shows the shape: "Espresso pours into a glass cup in slow motion, morning window light, shallow depth of field." That gives a model far more to work with than "coffee video".

## Other ways to use Hailuo's models

| Route | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Hailuo AI app | H3 at 2K, reference mode, and Veo 3.1 on the same plan | 2K uses credits fast. Prices are shown as time-limited discounts. |
| MiniMax API | Developers who want per-second billing | You build the editing, voiceover and captions yourself. |
| Open weights | Teams with GPU servers and custom needs | 768p only for now, plus license terms above $20M revenue. |
| FrameSurfer | Finished short videos with script, voiceover, captions and music | Runs H3 Max Turbo at 480p or 768p, not 2K H3 or reference mode. |

On FrameSurfer, MiniMax H3 Max Turbo makes 5 to 15 second clips at 480p or 768p. It starts from text or a start image and generates native audio. You can also set the aspect ratio, a seed and prompt expansion. It sits next to 14 other models on the same plan. One shot can use H3 Max Turbo, and the next can use a model with a longer clip or a higher resolution.

The bigger difference is the output. Hailuo makes clips. FrameSurfer turns an idea, a photo, a script or a product link into a full video. It writes the script, generates each shot, and adds voiceover, captions and music. You then refine timing, text and layout in a visual editor and export an MP4 at up to 1080p.

To try H3 Max Turbo on a single shot, open [FrameSurfer's text to video tool](https://framesurfer.com/tools/text-to-video), describe the scene, and pick the model.

## How H3 compares with other video models

H3 is strong on sound and references, but it is not the only choice.

- **Longer single clips:** Alibaba Wan 3 makes up to 30 seconds in one clip. See the [Wan AI video generator guide](https://framesurfer.com/blogs/wan-ai-video-generator).
- **Fast clips with sound at 720p:** see [Grok Imagine video](https://framesurfer.com/blogs/grok-imagine-video).
- **Weighing Kling instead:** see [Kling AI pricing](https://framesurfer.com/blogs/kling-ai-pricing).
- **Everything side by side:** the [AI video models comparison](https://framesurfer.com/ai-video-models) lists clip length, sound and inputs for every model FrameSurfer runs. For whole tools rather than models, see the [best AI video generators](https://framesurfer.com/blogs/best-ai-video-generators).

Have a photo instead of a prompt? [FrameSurfer's image to video tool](https://framesurfer.com/tools/image-to-video) turns your still into the first frame and animates it with H3 Max Turbo or any other model on your plan.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### Is Hailuo AI owned by MiniMax?

Yes. Hailuo AI is MiniMax's consumer app for video and images. MiniMax's H3 model card lists hailuoai.video as the official web app for H3.

### Is Hailuo AI free to use?

The free plan gives one-time trial credits for Hailuo's own models and no monthly credits, as of September 2026. The cheapest paid plan, Standard, was $10.50 a month billed monthly for 1,000 credits.

### How long can a Hailuo AI video be?

MiniMax H3 makes clips of 4 to 15 seconds, and H3 Max makes 5 to 15 seconds. Older Hailuo 2.3 clips are 6 or 10 seconds.

### Does Hailuo AI make videos with sound?

Yes. H3 generates native stereo audio together with the picture, including dialogue, with stable support for 11 languages.

### What is the difference between H3, H3 Max and H3 Max Turbo?

H3 is MiniMax's own model, with 2K output and reference mode. H3 Max is fal's further-trained version, offered in Hailuo at 480p and 768p. H3 Max Turbo is fal's faster variant, which FrameSurfer runs.

### Can I use Hailuo AI videos commercially?

Hailuo's FAQ says any video you can download without a watermark is yours to use commercially. Watermark-free downloads come with the paid plans.