Veo 3.1 Lite on Vertex AI: Upscaling Preview, Model Tiers, and Enterprise Deployment Details

News

Google DeepMind's Official Veo 3.1 Lite Developer Announcement: Specs and Pricing

The official developer-facing announcement confirms Veo 3.1 Lite costs less than 50% of Veo 3.1 Fast at the same generation speed, with pricing starting at $0.05/sec for 720p. Notably, Google signals more video news is coming soon — this feels like the start of a broader push, not a one-off release.

Google Signals Long-Term Video Gen Commitment as Sora Exits the Market

9to5Google highlights the strategic subtext: Google explicitly framed Veo 3.1 Lite's launch as a commitment to video generation just days after OpenAI confirmed Sora's shutdown. With Veo now embedded in YouTube Shorts, Google Photos, Google Vids, and Gemini, the distribution moat is real and widening.

Analysis

Full Veo 3.1 Pricing Table: Lite vs. Fast vs. Flagship Across All Resolutions

The Decoder surfaces the complete per-second pricing breakdown across all three Veo 3.1 tiers and resolutions, including the April 7 Fast price cuts — the most tactically useful single reference if you're modeling API costs for a video product. Veo 3.1 Lite at $0.05/sec for 720p is genuinely cheap enough to rethink what's feasible at volume.

Veo 3.1 Lite Feature Matrix: What's In, What's Out vs. the Flagship

This breakdown makes explicit what Lite trades away — 4K output and Scene Extension — versus what it fully inherits, including native synchronized audio and dual text/image input modes. If you're deciding between tiers for a specific workflow, the side-by-side comparison table here saves time.