Wan 3.0 Release Date: Confirmed Aug 24 Launch — Now on ComfyUI and Third-Party APIs

On 24 August 2026, Alibaba Cloud confirmed the official launch of Wan 3.0 — the third generation of the Tongyi Wanxiang video-model family and the successor to Wan 2.7 — 18 days after putting it into public beta on 6 August. The launch turns the beta's metered, application-gated API into a fully open one and brings Wan 3.0 to third-party creative tools: Envato's AI video tool began offering the model behind its ModelMatch engine the same week, Leonardo.Ai has now added Wan 3.0 to its video generator, and the model is now available natively in ComfyUI, where a single generation runs up to 30 seconds. The consumer video editor PowerDirector (CyberLink) has also added Wan 3.0, announced on Alibaba's official X accounts on 28 August and echoed by PowerDirector's own Japanese account. Alibaba's official X account has also confirmed that a third-party video-generation API platform now serves Wan 3.0 — video and audio in one model, up to 30 seconds, with multimodal references — at a flat $0.20 per second. It is the clearest sign yet that the model has fully shipped. Alibaba's own launch campaign now makes the point in the most direct way possible: the vendor says the Wan 3.0 launch ad was made with the model, and the official Wan account on X has published a full breakdown of the work — the concept, the character sheets, the prompts, and even the generations that failed. The account has since turned the same spotlight on outside creators — an interview with Liz Zhang of Pixmax_ai covers the launch concept film and building a full creative workflow around the model. On September 3 came the first independent verdict on the model itself: Artificial Analysis, which ranks video models from blind head-to-head votes rather than vendor claims, debuted Wan 3.0 at #1 on its Video Editing Leaderboard (With Audio) and at a close #2 in Text to Video with Audio. What the launch still does not include is open weights. The Apache-2.0 "1.3B + 14B" story circulating around Wan 3.0 does not appear in any Alibaba announcement, matches the spec of a 2025 model almost exactly, and cuts against the way Alibaba has actually shipped its video models for the past year. Here is what the August 24 launch changed, what was confirmed back on 6 August, and which parts of the Wan 3.0 story you should still treat as unverified.

A sourcing note up front, because this story has two layers. Everything in the capabilities and pricing sections is Alibaba-reported: it comes from the official public-beta announcement and Alibaba's English blog, cross-checked against the Chinese press coverage. The official launch on 24 August is vendor-announced and covered by multiple outlets the same day. The Envato, Leonardo.Ai, ComfyUI, Pixmax and PowerDirector integrations — and the third-party video-generation API platform that began serving the model in launch week — are announced by Alibaba on X and confirmed by the platforms themselves: Envato on its own blog, Leonardo.Ai in its announcement, ComfyUI on its official blog, Pixmax on its own page, PowerDirector on CyberLink's own account, and the API platform on its own model page, which describes a single $0.20-per-second rate, audio on by default, and omni-modal references. These are vendor-and-partner statements, not independent tests, and they are labeled as such. The launch-ad breakdown described below belongs in the same category: it is Alibaba's own account of its own production, published on the official Wan account on X, not an independent test. The creator showcase described below carries the same label: the official account's interview with Pixmax_ai's Liz Zhang is Alibaba's selection of a partner's account of its own work, published on X, not an independent test. The exception, as of September 3, is Artificial Analysis: its leaderboards are an independent measurement rather than a vendor claim, and they rank Wan 3.0 #1 in video editing (with audio) and a close #2 in text-to-video with audio — the first non-Alibaba score for the model, discussed below. There is still no model card, no parameter count, and no widely available weights to run. The open-weight claim, in particular, is not vendor-confirmed; it is a community rumor that the official launch contradicts, and it is labeled as such wherever it appears.

What Wan 3.0 actually ships

Wan 3.0 is a text, image, video and audio-to-video generation model. The headline capability, repeated in every outlet that covered the beta, is single-run generation of clips up to 30 seconds — twice the 15-second ceiling of Wan 2.7, and the longest native single segment among Chinese video models. That is what reviewers keep describing as "from generating a shot to telling a complete story": 30 seconds is enough for a continuous camera move or a one-take scene, which shorter clips cannot do.

• Maximum length — up to 30 seconds in a single generation, double Wan 2.7's 15 seconds, with an "intelligent duration" feature that suggests a length from the prompt and a video-extension tool for chaining longer narratives.

• Inputs — text, image, video and audio, plus, for the first time in the family, documents: doc, xls, ppt, pdf, md, txt, key, pages and numbers files, and web links. A single file of up to 100 MB / 50 pages can be turned straight into a video — the "document-to-video" feature behind most of the marketing and education interest.

• Multi-reference — up to 10 images, 5 videos and 5 audio references per generation, for consistency of characters, props, audio, spatial layout and style across shots.

• Editing — instruction-based modification of visuals, plot and dialogue after generation, rather than full regeneration.

• Stated weaknesses — Alibaba acknowledges audio quality and on-screen text accuracy still need work; that is from the vendor's own announcement, not a reviewer's verdict.

Worth separating: "30-second clips" and "native 4K output" have both been floated for Wan 3.0, but the official beta announcement only commits to 30-second generation at 480p, 720p and 1080p. Native 4K appears on third-party marketing pages for the model, not on Alibaba's announcement. Treat 4K as unconfirmed.

Pricing: a metered API, and the pattern it breaks

Wan 3.0 is priced per second of generated video. Alibaba's stated API rates are 0.3 yuan (about $0.05) per second at 480p, 0.6 yuan (about $0.10) per second at 720p, and 1.2 yuan (about $0.20) per second at 1080p. A full 30-second clip therefore costs about 9 yuan ($1.50) at 480p, 18 yuan ($3.00) at 720p, or 36 yuan ($6.00) at 1080p. The August 24 launch confirmed the same per-second structure and added a limited-time 30% discount on Alibaba Cloud's Bailian and Qianwen AI platforms through 23 September — a 30-second 1080p clip drops to about 25 yuan during the promotion, per Alibaba. Chinese coverage noted the 720p rate lands around 60% of the per-second price of mainstream competitors — the pricing message Alibaba is clearly aiming at small and mid-size teams.

The pricing model is the story, because it is a deliberate break from the family's history. Wan 2.1 and 2.2 shipped full open weights under Apache 2.0. Wan 2.5 was announced as open and never released weights. Wan 2.6 was a closed API. Wan 2.7 was only partially open. Wan 3.0 continues that line rather than the Wan 2.1 one: it is a metered, closed API — the beta's application gate lifted at the August 24 launch — and the official launch says nothing about releasing weights. Anyone weighing "should I wait for open weights" is waiting on something Alibaba has not promised and that the recent pattern argues against.

This is also where the routing economics matter. When a video model is priced this granularly — per second, per resolution — the difference between providers is usually not the model but the billing. On OrcaRouter, the 200+ models we route are billed at provider list price, passed through at 0% markup, so a vendor price cut is live on our side the same day rather than after a contract cycle. Wan 3.0 is not on any general-purpose model-routing platform today — it is reachable through Alibaba's own consoles, through third-party creative tools such as Envato, Leonardo.Ai, ComfyUI, Pixmax and PowerDirector, and through the video-generation API platform that began serving it in launch week — but the thing to check, now that the API is fully open, is whether the per-second rate you are quoted is the vendor's own rate. Our model pages show the list price, which is how the comparison should be done.

Where you can actually try it

The API is fully open as of the August 24 launch; during the beta it was application-gated. Alibaba lists these access points in the announcement:

• Model Studio (Bailian) — Alibaba Cloud's AI platform, where you apply for model testing.

• Qwen Cloud — Alibaba's AI-native cloud, currently showing limits of two concurrent jobs, 30 requests per minute and 50 tasks in the async queue.

• Wanxiang official website and the Qwen Creation PC client — the consumer-facing surfaces.

• WonderClip (Wanjing Yike), IF STUDIO and Duiyou — Alibaba's content tools, listed alongside the primary platforms.

• Qwen app — a gradual (gray) rollout rather than a full release.

• Envato's AI video tool — a third-party creative surface that added Wan 3.0 the week of the launch, selected behind the scenes by Envato's ModelMatch rather than picked per generation. Available to Envato users; announced by Alibaba and confirmed by Envato's own blog.

• Leonardo.Ai — a third-party creative platform that has added Wan 3.0 to its video generator, announced by Alibaba on X and confirmed by Leonardo.Ai in its own announcement. Available to Leonardo users as another non-Alibaba route in.

• ComfyUI — the node-based workflow platform, which added Wan 3.0 natively with its v0.33.4 update and on Comfy Cloud. A single generation runs up to 30 seconds at 480p, 720p or 1080p, and ComfyUI's Omni-Reference nodes pull in up to 20 image, video and audio references, plus documents and web pages. Announced by Alibaba on X and confirmed by ComfyUI on its own blog; available to ComfyUI and Comfy Cloud users.

• Pixmax — a third-party AI creation platform that added Wan 3.0 around the same time, announced by Alibaba's official account on 25 August and confirmed on Pixmax's own page, which pitches “cinema-grade output” and “flawless visual consistency across any art style.” It is also the home of the official account's first creator showcase: Liz Zhang of Pixmax walks through the launch concept film and the creative workflow built around the model. Vendor-announced and confirmed on the platform's own page.

• PowerDirector — the consumer video editor from CyberLink, which has added Wan 3.0 so that users can turn simple prompts into finished AI video inside the editor itself. Announced on Alibaba's official X accounts on 28 August and echoed by PowerDirector's own Japanese account; the first mainstream consumer video editor to surface the model. Vendor-and-partner-stated, not an independent test.

• Third-party video-generation API platforms — the newest route in, announced by Alibaba's official X account in launch week. The first such platform to serve the model exposes it over a simple task-based API for prompt-to-video generation, priced at a single $0.20 per second — Alibaba's list rate for 1080p output — with audio generated in the same pass (on by default), runs of 2–30 seconds, and omni-modal references: images, video clips, audio, files and web links, plus first/last-frame conditioning as an alternative input. Vendor-announced and confirmed on the platform's own model page.

As of the August 24 launch the API is fully open; the invite-only gate described in early-August coverage has been lifted. The realistic answer to "can I call this today" is now yes — through an Alibaba console, through a creative tool such as Envato, Leonardo.Ai, ComfyUI, Pixmax or PowerDirector that has integrated Wan 3.0, or through the third-party video-generation API platform that began serving it in launch week.

The release timeline: Aug 6 beta, Aug 10 showcase, Aug 24 launch

The event flagged in the tracking signals — a "Wan 3.0 launch" on 10 August in Hangzhou — needs a precise label. It exists and it is official: the "Wan 3.0 Release and AI+Marketing Special Event", 14:00 on 10 August at the Alibaba Center in Hangzhou's Weike area, organised by the Hangzhou Industrial and Information Service Center with Weike Alibaba Center. The agenda covers the new model's technical evolution and features, AI+marketing and e-commerce solution sharing, and hands-on Wan 3.0 exercises.

But the model was already in public beta by then. The 10 August event is not the moment the model became real — that happened on 6 August — and it is not the launch either, which landed on 24 August. It is the formal, enterprise-facing showcase: Alibaba positioning Wan 3.0 to marketing and e-commerce buyers, in the same two-day consumer-plus-enterprise cadence it ran for the Qwen app. The dates matter for one reason: if you have been reading "Wan 3.0 comes out August 10," the accurate statement is that the model entered public beta on 6 August, got its enterprise showcase on 10 August, and officially launched on 24 August. The 24 August launch is the release that counts.

The launch ad was made with Wan 3.0 — here's the workflow

The most direct confirmation that Wan 3.0 has genuinely shipped is that Alibaba used it for its own launch campaign. Alibaba's official Wan account on X (@Alibaba_Wan) published a full breakdown of the Wan 3.0 launch ad — the concept, the character sheets, the prompts used, and even the generations that failed. To be precise about what this is: it is the vendor's own account of its own production, not an independent test, and it is the strongest evidence the vendor can offer that a closed, API-only model is doing real production work. The breakdown's existence is itself a shipping signal — Alibaba trusted the model with its own marketing.

Alibaba has since pushed the same evidence outward. The official account's creator series — “How do creators actually use Wan 3.0 in real projects — beyond pressing generate?” — opened with Liz Zhang of Pixmax_ai, discussing the launch concept film, building a full creative workflow around the model, and what is next for the platform. This is the same category of evidence as the launch-ad breakdown: a vendor-published conversation with a partner, not an independent test, but a concrete account of the model doing production work outside Alibaba's own marketing.

The workflow the breakdown describes is built around the family's hardest problem: keeping a character recognizable across multiple shots inside a single 30-second run. Alibaba's account centers on character sheets that anchor identity across shots. Community analysts who have reverse-engineered the official examples describe the same discipline in structural terms: bind each reference asset to a named subject in the prompt instead of describing it once; set global rules that hold for the whole clip, including an explicit "do not" list for motion the model otherwise defaults to; and write the timeline as timestamped beats rather than atmosphere. Those structural findings are community work on the official sample set, not vendor guidance, but they line up with what Alibaba shows.

The detail that sets the breakdown apart is that it shows the misses. Alibaba publishes generations that failed — the identity that drifted, the beat that fell apart — rather than only the frames that landed. That is an honest look at where the model still struggles and a practical norm for anyone building on it: first-pass failures are part of the workflow, not a sign the model is broken.

The open-weight rumor, and why it's unverified

Around Wan 3.0 you will find a specific claim: that it ships open weights under Apache 2.0 in two sizes — a 1.3B consumer checkpoint and a 14B professional one — and that the weights land on Hugging Face around 10 August. This is the claim to be most careful about, because it is the most widely repeated and the least supported.

• It is not in any Alibaba announcement. The official public-beta posts describe a paid, metered API. No license, no weight release, no Hugging Face or GitHub repository appears anywhere in Alibaba's own material.

• The numbers look recycled. The 1.3B + 14B pairing is the exact spec of Wan 2.1, released in February 2025. An independent teardown of the Wan 3.0 rumors published on 4 August — before the beta announcement — flagged the "1.3B + 14B, Apache 2.0" tables as unsourced and consistent with Wan 2.1 facts rather than anything Alibaba has said.

• It cuts against the trend. Open weights in the Wan family stop at Wan 2.2 (August 2025). Wan 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 never had core weights published; what Alibaba did open in 2026 are peripheral models — a music-to-dance model, a technical report — while the core video line stayed closed. An open Wan 3.0 would reverse that pattern, which is why the skeptical read treats it as "possible, unpromised, and against the recent trend."

• The 10 August weights rumor is unverified. It originates from a manual tracking note, not from Alibaba or any traceable source, and the 10 August event agenda is about marketing and e-commerce, not about a release on Hugging Face.

None of this proves open weights will not happen — a vendor can change course. But every element of the claim currently fails a primary-source check, and the official launch describes the opposite distribution model. Until Alibaba publishes a repository or a license, the accurate label for Wan 3.0 open weights is: unconfirmed, and contradicted by the official announcement.

Independent verification arrived this week

The line this post has held since launch — every number above is Alibaba's own claim until an independent lab runs the model — changed on September 3. Artificial Analysis, whose Video Arena ranks models from blind head-to-head votes on real generations rather than from vendor-supplied numbers, added Wan 3.0 to its boards and the model debuted at #1 on the Video Editing Leaderboard (With Audio): Elo roughly 1,189 from a few thousand votes, a clear margin over MiniMax H3 (about 1,129) and Gemini Omni Flash (about 1,124). On Text to Video with Audio it landed a close #2 at about 1,237, effectively tied with Gemini Omni Flash at the top (about 1,238), and AA also lists it #5 on Image to Video with Audio. The boards show the generational jump in the family too: Alibaba's previous model, Wan 2.7, sits #5 on the same video-editing board at about 1,077. What the arena verdict does and does not prove: an Elo from blind voting measures which output people prefer in a head-to-head — a strong, independent quality signal, but not a controlled lab benchmark — and Alibaba has still published no model card, no parameter count, and no widely available weights. The label 'unverified' no longer applies to the model's headline quality; it applies to everything under the hood.

The release-date question, answered

For the searches this post targets, the summary is short:

• When did Wan 3.0 release? Public beta: 6 August 2026, confirmed by Alibaba. Enterprise showcase: 10 August 2026 in Hangzhou. Official launch: 24 August 2026.

• Is it open source? No confirmed weights. The Apache 2.0 / 1.3B + 14B claim is unverified, and the official launch is API-only.

• What does it cost? 0.3 / 0.6 / 1.2 yuan per second at 480p / 720p / 1080p; about 36 yuan ($6.00) for a 30-second 1080p clip.

• Can I use it? Yes. The API is fully open as of 24 August — through Model Studio or Qwen Cloud, the consumer surfaces listed above, third-party creative tools such as Envato's AI video tool, Leonardo.Ai, ComfyUI, Pixmax or PowerDirector, or a third-party video-generation API platform that began serving it in launch week.

Questions people are actually asking

Is Wan 3.0 actually released, or is it still a rumor?

It is fully released: the public beta went live on 6 August, the enterprise showcase ran on 10 August, and the official launch landed on 24 August. Any coverage that still calls Wan 3.0 a rumor, or an unreleased beta, is stale — including "not yet announced" analyses that were accurate before 6 August.

Will Wan 3.0 get open weights?

Nothing in Alibaba's announcement says so, the widely circulated 1.3B + 14B spec matches Wan 2.1 rather than anything new, and the family's trajectory since Wan 2.2 has been toward closed, API-only video models. Treat "open Wan 3.0" as a rumor until a repository or license appears; the recent pattern is the strongest evidence against it.

How much does a 30-second Wan 3.0 video cost?

At the stated API rates, about 36 yuan ($6.00) at 1080p, 18 yuan ($3.00) at 720p and 9 yuan ($1.50) at 480p, per clip. These are Alibaba's list prices, per second, and the API is now fully open. A 30% launch promotion runs through 23 September on Bailian and Qianwen AI.

Is the 30-second generation real, and what's the catch?

The 30-second single-run generation is the feature Alibaba is leading with, and it is the longest native single segment among Chinese video models, doubling Wan 2.7. The caveats are the vendor's own: audio quality and on-screen text accuracy are acknowledged weak points. The independent picture that exists is the Artificial Analysis arena verdict from September 3 — #1 in video editing (with audio) and a close #2 in text-to-video with audio — which measures overall output quality from blind votes rather than testing the 30-second ceiling specifically.

Has anything real actually been made with Wan 3.0?

Yes — the launch ad itself. Alibaba's official Wan account on X says the Wan 3.0 launch campaign was produced with the model and has published a full breakdown of the work: the concept, the character sheets, the prompts, and the failed generations. It is a vendor-stated example rather than an independent test, but it is genuine production usage of the closed API by the people who sell it. Alibaba's official account has also showcased outside creators doing real work with the model: an interview with Liz Zhang of Pixmax_ai about the launch concept film and the creative workflow around Wan 3.0. Same label — vendor-stated, selected by Alibaba — but it moves the production-use evidence beyond Alibaba's own marketing.

The bottom line

Wan 3.0 is real, it is launched, and it is priced aggressively — 30-second generation, document-to-video, per-second rates that undercut the mainstream competition at 720p, and now third-party creative routes in through Envato's AI video tool, Leonardo.Ai, ComfyUI, Pixmax and PowerDirector, plus a video-generation API platform serving the model at a flat $0.20 per second. The most direct proof that it is shipping as production software is the launch campaign itself: Alibaba says the Wan 3.0 launch ad was made with the model and has published the full breakdown, character sheets and failed generations included. In the days since, the official account has showcased the same proof from outside creators: an interview with Liz Zhang of Pixmax_ai about the launch concept film and the full creative workflow around the model. The thing to resist is the story that has grown around it. The open-weight claim is a recycled-spec rumor that the official launch contradicts. The quality story is no longer Alibaba's alone: within ten days of launch, an independent arena ranked Wan 3.0 #1 in video editing (with audio) and a close #2 in text-to-video with audio. What still needs an independent check is everything under the hood — architecture, parameter count, and any claim that depends on running the model rather than voting on its output.

What would still change this read is specific: a model card or parameter count would answer the open questions about architecture; a repository or license would make the open-weight rumor real; and a controlled lab benchmark — as opposed to the arena Elo Artificial Analysis released this week — would turn the quality claims into fully checkable facts. As of this update, the accurate one-line summary of Wan 3.0 is: a confirmed, aggressively priced launch that now sits #1 in independent video-editing rankings and a close #2 in text-to-video with audio — reachable through third-party creative tools in Envato, Leonardo.Ai, ComfyUI, Pixmax and PowerDirector and through a third-party video-generation API platform — with open weights that the evidence says are unlikely to follow.