Wan 3.0 Release Date, Specs and Open-Source Status (2026)

Wan 3.0 was released as a public beta on 6 August 2026, and the wider launch followed on 24 August 2026. Of the five claims in the rumour that went around in early August, two turned out right, two turned out wrong, and one is still unconfirmed.

Wan 3.0 release date: 6 August 2026 (public beta), 24 August 2026 (wide launch). It makes 2 to 30 seconds of video in one generation at 480P, 720P or 1080P, with audio in the same pass. It is not 4K and it is not open source: no weights exist on Hugging Face as of 14 September 2026. On Alibaba Cloud Model Studio it lists at $0.05, $0.10 and $0.20 per second by resolution, with a faster Prime tier at $0.068, $0.14 and $0.28.

Last updated: 14 September 2026

When was Wan 3.0 released?

The Wan 3.0 release date depends on which release you mean, because Alibaba shipped it in two stages:

• 6 August 2026, public beta. @Alibaba_Wan announced the public beta, led by "Native 30-Second Video Generation". Access started on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio.
• 24 August 2026, wide launch. India Today reported Alibaba's launch on 24 August, and OpenRouter lists the same date as the release. Third-party APIs such as fal and OpenRouter now carry the model as well.

Every Wan release up to Wan 3.0

A correction to this page

This article first went up on 6 August 2026 at 13:12 UTC opening with the sentence "Wan 3.0 has not been released." That was wrong within the hour it was written. Alibaba's official @Alibaba_Wan account had posted "Introducing Wan3.0 — now in Public Beta" at 12:18 UTC the same day, and we missed it. Everything below replaces the original version. The one part of the old page that held up, the check on open weights, is kept and brought up to date.

The August Wan 3.0 rumour, checked against what shipped

In early August a spec sheet circulated with five claims: it ships on 6 August, it makes 30-second clips, it outputs native 4K, it comes with Apache 2.0 weights, and it is a 60B mixture-of-experts model. We recorded that sheet on 6 August. Each claim, set against the price list, the API schema and Hugging Face:

Why the 4K and open-weight claims failed

The date and the 30-second length both appear in Alibaba's own announcement. The 4K claim fails on Alibaba's price list, which has exactly three resolution tiers, the top one 1080P. The open-weight claim fails on Hugging Face, below. The 60B figure has no Alibaba source at all, so it stays unconfirmed rather than wrong.

Is Wan 3.0 open source?

No. It is an API model, and as of 14 September 2026 there are no weights to download.

We checked the Wan-AI organisation on Hugging Face on 14 September, sorted by newest. It lists 27 models. The most recent are the Wan2.2-Animate-2-14B checkpoints, updated in August 2026, and Wan-Dancer-14B from July. Nothing newer than those is listed.

Four closed flagships in a row

That makes it the fourth closed flagship in a row after Wan 2.5, Wan 2.6 and Wan 2.7. The last open-weight Wan flagship is still Wan 2.2 from July 2025. Alibaba has not stopped releasing open models, though: the Animate and Dancer branches keep landing on Hugging Face under the Wan 2.2 name. Any page offering a "Wan 3.0 download" is offering something other than Wan 3.0.

What Wan 3.0 can do

From the API schema and Alibaba's launch materials:

• Length: 2 to 30 seconds in one generation, or a length the model picks itself. Wan 2.7 stopped at 15.
• Resolution: 480P, 720P or 1080P.
• Aspect ratio: 16:9, 9:16, 4:3, 3:4, 1:1, or adaptive.
• Audio: generated in the same pass as the picture and on by default. India Today's launch report lists multilingual voice output.
• Inputs: text, up to 10 reference images, up to 5 reference video clips and 5 audio tracks (each set up to 15 seconds in total), plus one document or one public web page, and first-frame or last-frame pinning.

Vertical output comes straight from the model. This 20-second clip was posted on X by @KaminiKamini222, made at 9:16:

Butter chicken and naan in 20 seconds of close-ups with sound, generated vertically (posted on X by @KaminiKamini222).

And the full 30 seconds in a single generation, again vertical, posted by @luche_whitewing:

A winged centaur galloping across a sky of floating islands, one 30-second generation (posted on X by @luche_whitewing).

Standard vs Prime

The model comes in two tiers. Standard, model ID wan3.0-video, is the cheaper one and takes the full set of reference inputs. Prime, wan3.0-video-prime, is the faster one: OpenRouter describes it as a fast-mode variant and lists it for text-to-video and first-frame image-to-video. Both carry the same 30-second free quota on Alibaba's list, and Prime costs about 1.4 times Standard at every resolution.

How much does Wan 3.0 cost?

It is billed per second of output. Within one tier on one platform, resolution sets the rate. Here is the price on the places that publish one, all read on 14 September 2026:

On Alibaba's own page, the Standard tier is marked "Limited-time 30% off" against those list prices. The International deployment includes a free quota of 30 seconds per model, valid for 90 days from Model Studio activation or model release. The Global-region rows (US Virginia, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong) list lower dollar prices than the International row for the same model.

A full 30-second take at 1080P therefore lists at $6.00 on Standard and $8.40 on Prime at Alibaba's international rates, before the discount.

How long a generation takes

Only one number here is ours. Kavel has run Wan 3.0 on the Standard tier since 2 September 2026, and our task log so far holds one completed generation: image to video, 720p, the full 30 seconds. The provider reported 913 seconds of processing, a little over 15 minutes, and the finished clip reached our side 926 seconds after submission.

That is a single run, so treat it as one data point, not an average. For comparison, OpenRouter's public stats show a median end-to-end latency of 168.5 seconds across its traffic, without saying which lengths and resolutions that covers. On either number, a 30-second generation is something you submit and come back to, not something you watch render.

Where to use Wan 3.0

• Alibaba Cloud Model Studio: the first-party API, with a 30-second free quota per model on the International deployment.
• API resellers: fal and OpenRouter both list it at or below Alibaba's list price.
• Kavel: run Wan 3.0 in the browser with no API key, from text or up to two reference images, 5 to 30 seconds at 480p, 720p or 1080p. A five-second clip is 150 credits at 480p, 300 at 720p and 600 at 1080p, with audio included; plans are on the pricing page.

For picking between Alibaba's open models and the rest of the free options, Chinese AI video generators free covers the routes in from outside China.

Wan 3.0 FAQ

When was Wan 3.0 released?

Alibaba released it as a public beta on 6 August 2026, announced by its official @Alibaba_Wan account. The wide launch followed on 24 August 2026, the date OpenRouter lists and India Today reported.

Is Wan 3.0 open source?

No. It is available only through APIs. As of 14 September 2026 the Wan-AI organisation on Hugging Face has no weights for it; its newest open models are the Wan2.2-Animate-2-14B checkpoints. The last open-weight Wan flagship is Wan 2.2 from July 2025.

Can I download Wan 3.0 and run it locally?

No. There is no published checkpoint, so it cannot run on your own GPU. It runs through Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and API providers such as fal and OpenRouter.

Does Wan 3.0 support 4K?

No. It outputs 480P, 720P or 1080P, and Alibaba's price list has no 4K tier. The 4K figure came from the August rumour, not from Alibaba.

How long can a Wan 3.0 video be?

Up to 30 seconds in a single generation, with any whole number of seconds from 2 to 30 allowed. That is double Wan 2.7's 15-second maximum.

What is Wan 3.0 Prime?

Prime is the faster tier of the model, which OpenRouter lists for text-to-video and first-frame image-to-video. On Alibaba's international list it costs $0.068, $0.14 and $0.28 per second at 480P, 720P and 1080P, against $0.05, $0.10 and $0.20 for Standard.

How much does Wan 3.0 cost?

On Alibaba Cloud Model Studio's international list, Standard costs $0.05 per second at 480P, $0.10 at 720P and $0.20 at 1080P, currently marked 30% off, with a 30-second free quota on the International deployment. fal matches those rates and OpenRouter lists $0.0425 to $0.17.

Sources

Every factual claim above comes from one of these, read on 14 September 2026 unless dated otherwise:

• Public beta announcement — @Alibaba_Wan, 6 August 2026
• Alibaba launches AI video model Wan 3.0 — India Today, 24 August 2026
• Alibaba Cloud Model Studio model pricing — Standard and Prime rates and free quota
• Wan 3.0 on OpenRouter — release date, price, median latency
• fal model page — per-second pricing and open-weight status
• Wan 3.0 Video API schema, KIE — duration, resolution, aspect ratio and reference inputs
• Wan-AI on Hugging Face — published model weights
• Wan 2.1 on GitHub — 25 February 2025 release
• Wan 2.2 on GitHub — 28 July 2025 release
• Commercial launch of Wan2.5-Preview — 11 November 2025
• Alibaba unveils Wan 2.6 — 16 December 2025
• Alibaba unveils Wan 2.7 Video — 7 April 2026