Google is widening the Veo lineup with a new option aimed squarely at builders who care more about scale than cinematic perfection: Veo 3.1 Lite. It’s now rolling out to developers via the Gemini API and Google AI Studio as the most affordable way to plug Google’s video generation into apps and workflows.

In simple terms, Veo 3.1 Lite is the “volume” model in the family — designed for teams that need to churn out lots of short clips without burning through budget. Google says it comes in at less than half the cost of Veo 3.1 Fast, while keeping similar speed, so you can prototype, A/B test, or auto-generate content at scale and still stay within spend limits. Fast itself is also getting a price cut on April 7, which signals Google is clearly trying to make Veo more competitive for everyday production, not just high-end experiments.

On the capability front, Lite keeps the basics you’d expect from a modern AI video model: text-to-video and image-to-video are both supported, so you can either write a prompt or feed in a still and have it turned into motion. It handles the usual social-friendly formats — landscape 16:9 and vertical 9:16 — at 720p or 1080p, which is more than enough for TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, and in‑app explainer clips. Clips can be configured to 4, 6, or 8 seconds, with pricing scaling based on duration, giving developers a relatively simple knob to tune cost versus output length.

The bigger story is where Veo 3.1 Lite fits in the broader Veo 3.1 stack. The full Veo 3.1 models focus on higher fidelity, 4K output, and more advanced controls, including tighter audio–video sync and support for longer, stitched sequences. Veo 3.1 Fast trims some of that premium edge to prioritize quick turnaround and cheaper runs, making it a go-to for drafts or rapid content iteration. Lite now undercuts even Fast on price, effectively becoming the entry-level on-ramp for anyone building video-heavy products — think generative ad platforms, UGC tools, educational apps, or in-product video assistants.

Access is straightforward: Veo 3.1 Lite launches in a paid preview tier through the Gemini API, and you can also play with it directly inside Google AI Studio with a prompt-based interface. For developers, Google’s docs lay out the model IDs, supported resolutions, aspect ratios, durations, and the updated Veo pricing tables, so teams can quickly estimate what running thousands of short clips per day will actually cost in production. Between Lite and the new Fast pricing, Google is clearly betting that the next wave of AI-native apps will be video-first, and it wants Veo to be the default pipeline behind them.