Seedance 2.5: Text & Image to Video Online

Everything in this table comes from VdoBloom's live model configuration and credit table, not from a press release. The one spec people most often get wrong is the top resolution: Seedance 2.5 reaches 1080p, not 4K. In this family, 4K is Seedance 2.

Credits are bought outright or on a plan, and the same balance covers every model on the site. The dollar column below uses the Lite plan rate of $15 for 300 credits ($0.05 a credit); a one-time 300-credit pack is $19.50 and never expires, so there is no subscription to cancel if you only need one long take. New accounts start with 10 free credits, which does not reach the 45-credit minimum for this model, so budget for a top-up before your first Seedance 2.5 render.

Attach a reference video and the per-second rate drops to 6.8, 15.2 or 38 credits at 480p, 720p or 1080p. The catch is how KIE, the provider VdoBloom routes this model through, counts seconds: the length of your reference clip is added to the length you generate, and both are charged at that lower rate. A 5-second 720p output from a 10-second reference is 15 billable seconds: 228 credits, against 126 for the same 5 seconds generated from a photo. VdoBloom measures the uploaded clip itself, caps billable input at 30 seconds, and shows the total before you confirm.

The rule of thumb: reference-video mode pays off when the reference is short relative to the output or when you need its motion exactly (that is what Genjutsu does: its output is as long as its input, so a 15-second 480p job is 204 credits). If you only want to animate a still photo, use the photo as the first frame instead; that path costs the same as text-to-video with no input surcharge.

These four sit in the same Text to Video and Image to Video pickers, so switching is a dropdown. The honest summary: Seedance 2.5 wins on length and prompt room, loses on per-second price to Kling 3.0 at every length both can produce, and gives up 4K to Seedance 2. Veo 3.1 is a flat fee per clip with no duration control, which makes it cheaper for short clips and unusable for a specified 30 seconds.

No tab opens on this model by default, so you select it. The model, the 4–30 second range and the credit rate are identical everywhere it appears; what changes is who writes the prompt and whether a photo or a clip is involved.

A one-line prompt over 30 seconds tends to idle after the first few. Write the shot in beats (what happens in seconds 0–8, 8–18, 18–30) and name the camera move for each, which is exactly what the 30,000-character cap is for. Put the subject and its action in the first sentence; the model weights the opening most heavily. Describe the sound you want (ambience, a line of dialogue, footsteps) because the audio pass follows the text too.

Draft at 480p and a short length first: a 4-second 480p test is 45 credits, the same 4 seconds at 1080p is 253. Re-run only the winning prompt at delivery settings. With two reference photos, tag them explicitly ("@Image1 hands the box to @Image2") rather than describing them; with a reference video, trim it to the seconds of motion you need before uploading, since every second of it is billed.

There is no 4K: if the deliverable is 4K, use Seedance 2, which stops at 15 seconds. Per second, Seedance 2.5 is one of the more expensive models on the site: a 15-second 720p clip is 378 credits against 90 on Kling 3.0 standard, so it earns its price only when you need more than 15 seconds in one take, the 21:9 frame, reference-video editing or the extra prompt room. Crowded shots are the weak case for edit mode: asked to re-dress two named players, it can brush an un-named one too, so one photo per target and a specific label each. The adaptive ratio on photo-first jobs surprises people who expected to pick 9:16 after uploading a landscape photo. The free 10 signup credits will not run it. And like every Seedance release it is proprietary (accessed through VdoBloom's hosted route, not downloadable weights), so availability depends on the provider; if a job fails there, the credits come back automatically.

VdoBloom does not rank models on subjective quality. Everything above is spec and price; whether Seedance 2.5's look suits your shot is something a 45-credit draft answers faster than any review.