Seedance 2.5 Goes First — 30s Clips + Retention Tags

August 9, 2026

Video Lab now tries ByteDance Seedance 2.5 first on auto, then xAI Imagine, MiniMax Hailuo 3, and Runway. Every result carries a data_policy tag so you can see whether prompts and stills are retained.

What you can do

• Generate 4–30 second native-audio clips on Seedance 2.5 (480p/720p) as the default auto-chain pick.
• Pin provider: "seedance" for OpenRouter Seedance 2.5 — distinct from Runway’s seedance2 model.
• Animate a still with first+last frame on Seedance, MiniMax, or Runway.
• See data_policy on every Video Lab result: Seedance does not retain prompts; xAI retains 30 days; MiniMax and Runway retain for an unspecified duration; none of them train on your data. All video jobs briefly keep the rendered MP4 for download.
• Fall back automatically through xAI → MiniMax → Runway if Seedance fails.

Where this shows up

You ask for a 20-second product hero. Auto now sends Seedance first instead of stopping at Hailuo 3’s 15s cap.

You upload a face still and care about retention. Seedance’s data_policy.retains_prompts is false; xAI’s is 30 days. The agent can say which one actually rendered.

You still want 2K Hailuo 3 reference-to-video. Pin minimax — it is third in auto, not gone.

Try it

• "Generate a 12-second café scene with native audio — barista calling out an order. Use Video Lab auto."
• "Animate this product still with a slow orbit, Seedance 2.5, 20 seconds, keep audio on."
• "Make an 8-second Hailuo 3 2K clip using these three reference stills — pin MiniMax."

Heads up

• Pricing: Seedance 4–8s ≈ 9M tokens, 9–15s ≈ 17.5M, 16–30s ≈ 35M (720p worst-case OpenRouter rate). MiniMax and xAI duration tiers are unchanged. Runway stays flat 2.5M.
• OpenRouter Seedance 2.5 is not Runway seedance2. Pin provider: "seedance" vs provider: "runway" + model: "seedance2".
• Video generation is never Zero Data Retention: the MP4 is kept briefly so it can be downloaded, even on Seedance.