Runway vs Kling vs Luma vs Sora
AI video in 2026: who should you actually build on? Scores from the RXed AI Periodic Table v1.0 — identical 20-element scale, deterministic overall. How we audit →
At a glance
Scope = elements of the AI stack in the tool’s stated scope (dashed = honestly out of scope, never a penalty). Quality = how well it scores on what it covers. No single number — both axes, always.
The verdict
Runway (Scope 14/20 · Quality 6/10) is the strongest independent AI media stack — frontier video plus a real developer platform — but it's a media specialist and credits meter everything. Kling (Scope 11/20 · Quality 5/10) is the revenue and quality leader, with native 4K, 15-second multi-shot clips and standout character consistency, sold as a walled garden: no official MCP and a thin developer harness. Luma (Scope 16/20 · Quality 5/10) wins pure cinematography — class-leading HDR and camera motion — with credit economics that bite hard at 1080p. Sora (Scope 10/20 · Quality 5/10) is a warning, not an option: OpenAI is exiting video and the API dies 24/09/2026 — don't build here. Video inside your product → Runway. Hand-crafting the best-looking clips → Kling or Luma. Anything on Sora → use the remaining window to export.
Where the quality sits
Family mean over covered elements only — a dash means the family is honestly outside that tool’s scope.
| Runway Scope 14/20 · Quality 6/10 audited 2026-07-12 | Kling AI Scope 11/20 · Quality 5/10 audited 2026-07-24 | Luma AI Scope 16/20 · Quality 5/10 audited 2026-07-14 | Sora (OpenAI) Scope 10/20 · Quality 5/10 audited 2026-07-24 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Runway AI, Inc. | Kuaishou Technology (Kling AI) | Luma AI, Inc. | OpenAI |
| Origin | US | China | US | US |
| Pricing | Free (125 one-time credits) · Standard ~€11 ($12) · Pro ~€26 ($28) · Max ~€70 ($76) per month billed annually (monthly billing $15/$35/$95), all in USD · Enterprise custom · Runway Dev API pay-per-credit | Free (66 credits/day) · Standard ~€6.50 ($6.99-10) · Pro ~€34 ($37) · Premier/Ultra ~€60-165 ($65-180) per month, annual ~34% off · API (Kling 3.0) ~$0.084/sec Standard to $0.168/sec Pro (~€0.08-0.15/sec, roughly €0.40-0.55 per 5-15s clip) · Enterprise custom | Free (limited daily credits, non-commercial) · Plus ~€28/mo · Pro ~€84/mo · Ultra ~€280/mo · API pay-per-generation (separate credits); Enterprise custom | API only, per second of video (list prices in USD). sora-2 720p $0.10/sec (~€0.09); sora-2-pro $0.30/sec at 720p, $0.50/sec at 1024p, $0.70/sec at 1080p; Batch tier is 50% off at a 24-hour SLA. No subscription route exists — consumer access ended 26/04/2026. Endpoint shuts down 24/09/2026. |
| Pr Prompts | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
| Em Embeddings | — | — | — | — |
| Cx Context | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Tr Tracing | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| Lg LLM | — | — | 5 | — |
| Fc Function calling | 5 | — | 2 | — |
| Vx Vector store | — | — | — | — |
| Rg RAG | 5 | — | 3 | — |
| Gr Guardrails | 6 | 6 | 2 | 7 |
| Mm Multimodal | 10 | 9 | 9 | 9 |
| Ag Agents | 4 | 3 | 6 | — |
| Ft Fine-tuning | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| Fw Frameworks & harnesses | 8 | 6 | 7 | 3 |
| Ev Evaluations | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| Sm Small models | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Ma Multi-agent | — | — | 4 | — |
| Sy Synthetic data | 7 | — | — | — |
| Pc Protocols | 3 | 2 | 6 | 3 |
| In Interpretability | — | — | — | — |
| Th Thinking models | — | — | 6 | — |
Hover any score for the written reason. Full detail: Runway passport → · Kling AI passport → · Luma AI passport → · Sora (OpenAI) passport →