fal releases FLUX 3 Max, a video model built with Black Forest Labs that it says ties for first in image to video quality
Introducing FLUX 3 Max, the latest post-trained video model from fal Research in partnership with @bfl_ai. FLUX 3 Max is tied for #1 in image-to-video quality on independent third-party benchmarks, generating a 10-second, 720/768p video in ~12 seconds. For the next three weeks, FLUX 3 Max is 75% off, making it the most affordable frontier video model at its quality level.
Context
A video model that matches top rivals on quality while generating a 10 second clip in about 12 seconds would make high quality AI video far faster and cheaper to iterate on.
The benchmark and speed figures are self reported by fal. The Elo ranking comes from Artificial Analysis Video Arena, which fal describes as preliminary, and the latency numbers come from fal's own tests. fal is a generative media cloud, and Black Forest Labs built the FLUX 3 base model.
Deep dive
On October 19, fal posted that it is introducing FLUX 3 Max, the latest post trained video model from fal Research in partnership with Black Forest Labs. It said the model is tied for first in image to video quality on independent third party benchmarks, generates a 10 second video at 720 or 768p in about 12 seconds, and is 75 percent off for the next three weeks, making it what fal calls the most affordable frontier video model at its quality level.
The chart in the post gives FLUX 3 Max an Elo rating of 1139 on image to video, matching Seedance 2.5 at 1139 and ahead of Gemini Omni Flash 1.1 at 1134, H3 Max at 1124, Wan 3.0 at 1127, FLUX 3 at 1089 and Grok Imagine Video 1.5 at 1068. It lists an average latency of 12.45 seconds for a 10 second video, against 277.80 seconds for Seedance 2.5 and 126.44 seconds for the original FLUX 3.
fal's press release says the 1139 rating came from 4,868 votes in preliminary human preference tests, with confidence intervals overlapping the top models, and that the model was improved through post training, reinforcement learning and inference optimization. Black Forest Labs chief executive Robin Rombach said FLUX 3 was built as a foundation for others to build on. fal's page lists a launch price of $0.0425 per second at 720p until November 7, against a list price of $0.17.
What to expect next
Watch whether FLUX 3 Max holds its tied first place as the Artificial Analysis arena collects more votes, since fal calls the current ranking preliminary. Developers will also test whether the speed holds up under real traffic and what happens to demand when the discount ends on November 7. More post trained versions of open foundation models, built by inference companies rather than the original labs, could follow if this one catches on.