AI video price-to-quality math tilts toward multi-model pipelines in May 2026

Veo 3, Sora 2, Seedance 2.0, and Kling 2.5 each lead a different shot category in May 2026. No single model wins across the board. Veo 3 leads cinematic lighting and native audio; Sora 2 leads multi-shot character lock-in; Seedance 2.0 has the cheapest credit-per-shot ratio; Kling 2.5 has the most reliable face animation on close-ups. The market converged toward feature parity faster than expected, then split out by shot type. Solo creators now generate the same storyboard panel across three models in parallel, cherry-pick per shot, and stitch. Krea, the workspace that runs prompts against multiple models simultaneously, has become the cleanest way to do this without juggling four subscriptions.