Kling AI API Pricing: Units, Packs, Rates and MCP Access

Kling's developer API is billed in prepaid units, not the credits that app plans hand out, and the pack you buy decides which models you can call. Kling 4.0 and 4.0 Flash run only on Flagship packs: a 30-day trial at $9 for 64 units or $90 for 637 units, then 180-day packs at $500, $2,000 or $8,000. Every other model, from Kling 3.0 to Avatar, runs on General packs at $0.14 a unit.^[1] By our arithmetic, a 10-second Kling 4.0 clip at 1080p uses about $2.31 of units at the $500 pack's unit price. Units and credits never mix.

Decide that first. The API suits a product team that wants video generation inside its own app, or an agency that queues hundreds of clips from a script. If you only want an AI assistant to drive Kling for you, the MCP server and the CLI are a different route: they spend the paid credits of your personal Kling account, not API units. Below we read the rate card, the pack rules and the agent tools in the order a buyer meets them.

Flagship or General: the pack picks the model

Kling sells two families of video packs on its developer pricing page, and they do not overlap. Flagship packs work only with Kling 4.0 and Kling 4.0 Flash, the models Kling released to all users on October 15, 2026. General packs cover the rest of the catalog: Kling 3.0, 3.0 Omni, 3.0 Turbo, Motion Control, Avatar and the older models. Kling states plainly that General packs are not compatible with Kling 4.0 or 4.0 Flash, so buying the cheaper family first and switching models later is not an option.

Each trial is discounted on the first purchase only and can be bought at most five times, so it works as a test budget rather than a cheap way to run production. The 180-day packs carry the higher concurrency limit of 20 parallel tasks, against 5 on trials. None of the packs roll over or extend: units left at the end of the validity window are gone. On the General side the three largest packs carry a 10% discount per unit. Custom or bulk purchases go through a business inquiry form on the same page.

What can you call with these units? Kling lists text to video, image to video, multi-image to video, multi-element video editing, video extension, Avatar, Lip Sync, video effects, text to audio and video to audio. Kling's own blog adds that the Lip-Sync API produces 1080p sync for clips up to 60 seconds, with a face ID for scenes with several people. Before you plan a pipeline around a model, check its row in our Kling models comparison.

Reading the unit rate card

Video is billed per second of total duration, and the rate depends on model, resolution, audio and input. Kling 4.0 costs 1.0 unit a second at 720p and 1.5 units at 1080p. Kling lists 4K output for Kling 4.0 in its user guide, but the API has no 4.0 4K price yet. With an input video, Kling 4.0 drops to 0.6 units (720p) or 0.9 units (1080p) a second, but the billed duration changes. If the input is no longer than the output, Kling bills the output length twice; if the input is longer, it bills input plus output. Edits are not cheap.

Kling 4.0 Flash is 720p only, at 0.6 units a second, or 0.4 with an input video. Kling 3.0 Turbo, which includes native audio, costs 0.8 units at 720p and 1.0 at 1080p. Plain Kling 3.0 costs 0.6, 0.8 and 3.0 units a second at 720p, 1080p and 4K without native audio, and 0.9, 1.2 and 3.0 with it. Kling 3.0 Omni ranges from 0.6 to 0.9 units at 720p and 0.8 to 1.2 at 1080p, depending on audio and reference video, with 4K at 3.0. Motion Control on 3.0 is 0.9 or 1.2 units a second, with no 4K tier. Avatar is among the cheapest lines, at 0.4 units (720p) or 0.8 (1080p).

Converted to dollars on the same arithmetic, Kling 4.0 costs about $0.23 a second at 1080p and about $0.15 at 720p on the $500 pack's unit price. Kling 4.0 Flash comes to about $0.09 a second on that pack. On a General pack of $700 or $2,100, Kling 3.0 at 1080p with native audio works out to $0.168 a second. Larger packs lower each figure a little. These are output costs only. A rejected take costs the same as a kept one, so budget for several attempts per usable clip.

Images, effects and the e-commerce endpoints

Images run on their own packs, separate from video. Image API units are priced at $0.0035 a unit, with 180-day validity, no rollover and 9 concurrent tasks. Image 3.0, Image 3.0 Omni and Image O1 cost 8 units per image at 1K or 2K, and Image 3.0 Omni at 4K costs 16. The older Image 2.1 text-to-image call costs 4 units. Outpainting is 8 units per image, AI Multi-Shot is 20 units per call, and Virtual Try-On is 32 units per image at 1K. Image packs do not cover Kling Image 4.0 or 4.0 Flash.

Video effects are priced per template rather than per second. Kling's effect price list runs from 1.5 units for the simplest templates up to 15 units for the heaviest, billed at $0.14 a unit. That suits apps that offer one-tap novelty clips, where the template fixes the cost in advance and your users never see a duration setting.

Three solution endpoints target online stores. AI Apparel Replicator costs 1.7 units a second at 720p and 2.0 at 1080p with an off-screen voiceover, or 1.3 and 1.7 with on-camera speech. Goods Studio costs 1.7 units a second at 1080p and 2.0 at 4K. Video Commerce runs 1.0 to 1.6 units a second, depending on resolution and whether a creator or the product carries the voiceover. How these fit a store's workflow is covered in Kling AI for e-commerce.

MCP and CLI spend app credits, not units

The Kling MCP server lives at kling.ai/mcp and signs in with OAuth through your Kling account. Assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor can then call tools for text to video, image to video, text to image, image to image, Omni Reference video, Motion Control, element management and task queries. Since the October 15, 2026 release, MCP and the CLI support Kling 4.0, including Omni Reference and keyframes. The CLI installs through npx or npm, logs in through the browser and runs bulk generation from a terminal, a script or a CI pipeline.

Billing is the app's, not the API's. MCP and CLI use the same credit pricing as Kling's own platforms, and they accept only paid credits from your personal workspace. Team workspace credits and bonus credits do not work there, and off-peak free generation is not offered through assistants.^[2] App plan credits expire after 31 days and plan fees are non-refundable once activated, as our Kling pricing breakdown explains. The guide lists the operating limits worth knowing before a batch:

• Rate limit of 5 requests a second.
• One concurrent video task for non-subscribers; no task limit for subscribers.
• Generated file URLs stay valid for 24 hours, so download promptly.
• A submitted task cannot be canceled.
• Install only one of plugin, MCP or CLI per assistant.

Kling's MCP blog posts add three cautions. A batch is a set of coordinated tasks, not one request that returns every video. The tools, models and parameters exposed through MCP can change, so build around what the current connection offers. Not every web-app option is there. Kling also suggests approving the storyboard and a small test set before submitting, so credits are not spent on unapproved shots.

Plug-ins for Adobe and 3D tools

The Kling Creative Tools plug-in runs inside Photoshop 27.4.0 or later, Premiere Pro 25.0 or later and After Effects 25.6.6 or later, on Windows and macOS; a Figma plug-in is listed as coming soon in November 2026. Billing matches the app. The plug-in estimates the credit cost before a generation and blocks the request if your balance is short.^[3] Results withheld by content moderation are refunded. China and international installers and accounts are separate and cannot be swapped.

The 3D plug-ins work differently. Blender 3.6 or later, Maya 2022 or later and 3ds Max 2022 to 2026 (Windows only) export a white-model video or frame at 24 fps with no audio, then open the Kling website, where the generation happens. Local MP4 or MOV uploads from these plug-ins are capped at 300 MB, 3 to 30 seconds and a shorter edge of at least 700 pixels. For a layout artist this is a blocking tool. Final shots still come from Kling's own models.

Buying a pack without wasting units

Start with the trial that matches your model. A Kling 4.0 build needs the Flagship trial; anything on 3.0 or older needs the General trial. Buying the wrong family wastes the whole pack. Within the 30-day trial, run your real prompts at the resolution you plan to ship, and count how many takes each usable clip needs. That retake ratio drives your real cost more than the rate card does.

Then size the 180-day pack to what you can spend in six months, not to the lowest unit price. Unused units expire with no extension, so a pack you only half use costs more per second than a smaller one you finish. If you need Kling 4.0 at 4K, wait: the API lists no price for it yet. And if your team works through assistants rather than code, skip API packs entirely and keep a paid app plan topped up for MCP.

The bottom line

Kling's API is a clear deal once you separate its two currencies. Flagship units buy Kling 4.0 and 4.0 Flash, General units buy everything else, and app credits pay for MCP, the CLI and the plug-ins. Pick the pack family by model, test on a trial, measure your retakes, and buy the 180-day pack you will actually use up. Teams that only want an assistant to generate clips should stay on an app plan and never touch units.