Sora, not Sora

We used the opening sequence of a popular anime series called Dandadan to test the services

Open AI has finally launched; however, not all users can access it. Besides that, Open AI wants you to pay $20 a month to generate a few seconds of video or $200 if you're going to create more. There is no free tier to even try the service. If you are bitter about having to fork over money in USD to Open AI to generate videos, here are some free alternatives, including one that you can run on your local machine if you have the requisite hardware.

Also Read: OpenAI launches text-to-video generation tool Sora: Check features, pricing and more

Runway ML

Runway ML performed the best among the services we tested. The online web application not only gave us plenty of credits to play around with but also had some of the best options to generate, including adding keyframes to generate a video. We used the keyframe option and set two keyframes from the opening sequence of a popular anime series called Dandadan. The service generated the most realistic frames with minimum inaccuracies. The option to add keyframes and prompts to guide them is a powerful combination in video generation. Not to mention the service is blazing fast compared to some of the other options.
Rating: 4/5

Kling AI

Kling is probably closest to Runway ML in terms of quality. As with any AI getting the quality you want takes a few tries. That said, Kling's UI is the best among the websites, and there is also an option to use a motion brush to tell the AI how objects in the video need to move. It has all the bells and Whistles Runway has, and we tested it with our Dandadan frames with some interesting outcomes. Like Runway, it gives you a nice amount of credits to play around before deciding if you want to actually pay for the service. The resulting output was very fast but not as fast or even as accurate as Runway.
Rating: 3.5/5

Haiper

Harper, at first glance, has a very clear and user-friendly interface. They give you around 100 credits to play around with; however, making even one video will deplete your account of 60 credits. So, you can essentially only make one video before you run out of credits. Haiper also has fewer options than the other options on this list. While it is almost the same price as others on the list, it does offer image generation and lots of video-enhancing options. The output with our Dandadan test images was not the best as you cannot enter an end frame. However, the model being used or this web page doesn't do as good a job as Kling or Runway.
Rating: 2.5/5

Hunyuan Open Source Video generator

Made by Tencent, this open-source video editor produces video in controlled tests almost the same way as Sora. However, the official implementation of this model is based in China and requires a Chinese phone number to access. We tested the model on Fal AI, and while the results were good, we didn't get many options to tweak our output. Fal also didn't have an input image option, and we had to make do with a prompt. Despite that, the output is not bad. If you have a good graphics card, you can run this model locally and get much better and controlled outcomes. The video shows you how to install Hunyuan using ComfyUI. The best part is this is completely free.
ComfyUI installation guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eFCbAq67mU
Rating: 3.5/5