Wan (by Alibaba) is an open-source video generation model competitive with commercial tools. You can run it locally for free or access it through hosted platforms. Its open weights make it popular for fine-tuning and research.
Best for
Developers who want an open-source video model to run or fine-tune.
Pros
- Free and open-source, competitive with commercial tools on output quality
- Can run locally at zero marginal cost, or be fine-tuned for a specific style or use case
Cons
- Running it locally requires real GPU compute and technical setup
- No polished, first-party hosted consumer app — you're either self-hosting or relying on third-party platforms
Tags
open-sourcetext-to-videolocalalibaba
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be a developer to use Wan AI?
To run it yourself, some technical setup is required. If you'd rather not self-host, several third-party platforms offer hosted access to Wan without needing your own hardware.