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Kling 4.0's 30-second clips are still an October promise, with only a 720p Flash tier live

Kuaishou announced the model on September 28 and set the full release for October 2026 without a date, leaving Ultra annual subscribers a 20-second, 720p, 8-bit version and no API or pricing.

By Daniel Ochoa · 4 October 2026

The number Kuaishou built the Kling 4.0 announcement around, 30 seconds of video in a single generation, is not available to anyone right now. Kling AI announced the model on September 28, 2026 and said the full version will launch in October 2026, without naming a day. What actually opened that same day was Kling 4.0 Flash, a lighter tier limited to a subset of subscribers, and it does not reach the specs that made the announcement interesting.

Flash runs 3 to 20 seconds at 720p; the 30-second model is the one still in October

Kling's own product page describes Flash as a faster, lighter member of the 4.0 family, generating up to 20 seconds in a single pass at up to 720p, available in a limited rollout, with the full Kling 4.0 described as coming this October. Early access began rolling out on September 28 to a limited group of users. Flash renders in 8-bit SDR color, which is a full step below the headline color spec attached to the full model.

The full Kling 4.0 is the version carrying the claims worth checking: single generations up to 30 seconds, up to 10 keyframe images to steer a sequence, up to 15 multimodal references in one request, 4K and 1080p output, 10-bit HDR color and stereo audio with improved lip-sync. TechTimes reported that the 10-bit HDR output is itself listed as coming soon rather than shipping with the model, which matters because 10-bit is the color depth floor for professional broadcast and streaming pipelines. By that reading, the capability most likely to move generated footage into those pipelines is promised twice over, once for the model and once for the feature.

No API identifier, no published price, no third-party comparison

Kling has not published an API endpoint or pricing for 4.0, which means third-party platforms and resellers cannot offer it even in the form that exists today. Kling 3.0 remains the version with general availability and API access, so any pipeline built on Kling is still running the previous generation regardless of what was announced last week.

The announcement also arrived without comparative quality numbers. There is no win rate, no side-by-side against Seedance 2.5 or Veo 3.1, and no public arena placement for either 4.0 or 4.0 Flash, because neither has been open enough for long enough to accumulate votes. Every figure above is the company's own description of its own model, and the only tier that outside users can test is the one with the lower ceilings.

Announced and shipped are separate events, and the gap is where the specs live

The pattern here is familiar from the rest of the video model market, where a spec sheet circulates for weeks before the model behind it is reachable. We have written about how next-version expectations outrun actual releases in this category. Kling 4.0 is a step past rumor, since the company has confirmed it and put a staged rollout behind it, but the practical status on October 4 is unchanged from September 28: Flash only, one subscription tier, 720p, no API, no price, and a launch window with 27 days left in it.

Sources: Kling AI, Kling AI product page, TechTimes.