Veo 3.1 or Runway Gen-4.5: which one for professional work
Veo 3.1 has synchronised audio and 4K; Gen-4.5 has neither, running 720p and silent. What Gen-4.5 has instead is a lower price and a real editing environment around it. If the video is the finished product, Veo. If it is one piece of a larger edit, Runway.
Specifications where both sides have a verified number
| Runway Gen-4.5 | Veo 3.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Model ID | gen4.5 | veo-3.1-generate-preview |
| Input | text, image | text, image |
| Output | video | video, audio |
| Available on | Runway API, Runway Creative | Gemini API, Runway API |
| Longest clip in one pass | 10 seconds | 8 seconds |
| Resolution ceiling | 720p | 4K |
| Vertical resolution | 720 lines of vertical resolution | 2,160 lines of vertical resolution |
| Native audio | no | yes |
A row where one side has no verified number is left out entirely, because readers read a half-empty row in favour of the filled side.
The widest gap of any pair in our table
Veo 3.1 reaches 2160 lines and generates synchronised audio. Gen-4.5 stays at 720 lines and produces no audio at all. On paper that is a one-sided win, and the video ranking says the same: 40 points for Veo against 2.7 for Gen-4.5.
The rank is not the whole story
Runway publishes an API rate for Gen-4.5 of $0.12 per second, against $0.40 for standard Veo at the same 720p. For equal quality, Veo costs more than three times as much. If you are producing short silent clips and laying audio underneath afterwards, that difference gets serious at volume.
One column neither of them fills
Generation time. Neither Google nor Runway publishes how long a clip takes, so that column does not exist in our ranking and is not in the table above. We left it empty on purpose rather than fill it with a number we happened to observe once.
Pick this if Runway Gen-4.5
- Cost per second decides it for you and 720p is enough.
- The clip is one piece of a larger edit and you lay the audio separately.
- You work inside Runway and want generation and editing in one place.
Pick this if Veo 3.1
- You want video with audio and no separate voice stage.
- The output has to be 4K.
- You are calling it from the Gemini API and the rest of your pipeline is Google.
Questions people actually ask
Why does Gen-4.5 rank so low
It loses three of the five columns: resolution, reference inputs and controls. Our ranking counts only what has a source, and Runway does not publish a reference-input count for Gen-4.5, so that column stays unverified and scores nothing.
Can Seedance run on Runway too
Yes. Runway serves Seedance 2.5 and Veo 3.1 through its own API as well, and that is what made the price comparison possible: all three are priced beside each other in one dollar-denominated list.