Mischief 1: 5-Second AI Video for $0.05, 8x Cheaper Than the Wan 2.2 It’s Built On

A 5-second AI video from a photo now costs 5 cents, and it won’t fit a TikTok: it makes landscape clips only. Mischief 1, released by The Biological Computing Co. (TBC) on October 30, 2026, is listed on fal at $0.01 a second at 720p and $0.005 at 480p, 8 times less than the Wan 2.2 model it’s built on. That makes it the cheapest image-to-video model on fal and OpenRouter, TBC says. It isn’t on RenderHour; the cheapest way to animate a photo here is Grok Imagine 1.5 Lite, which we ran on the same frame as Wan 3.0 below.

What is Mischief 1?

TBC grows living neurons in a lab, studies how they process information, and turns what it finds into software that makes existing AI models cheaper to run. Mischief 1 is the first public model from that work: Wan 2.2, the open-weight video model from Alibaba, with TBC’s software added. TBC says the addition is less than 0.1% of the base model’s parameters, that the model generates video 5 times faster than Wan 2.2, and that it matches its quality. The release doesn’t say how speed or quality were measured.

It takes one start image and a prompt and returns a silent clip. By default fal rewrites your prompt against the image before it runs; set prompt processing to “original” to keep your words as typed.

How much does Mischief 1 cost per clip?

OpenRouter lists Mischief 1 too, but its page shows no price; each call reports its own cost, and failed runs aren’t billed. TBC’s release puts 100 clips at $2.50, the 480p price.

What can’t Mischief 1 do?

The shape is the big one for this audience. fal’s API takes no aspect ratio: 480p means 832x480 and 720p means 1280x720, both landscape, and a vertical photo is center-cropped by default. A 9:16 Reel or TikTok would need a crop back to vertical, which leaves a 405x720 picture at most from the 720p clip, by our arithmetic. At 16 fps, a 5-second clip has 81 frames against 120 at 24 fps.

Is Mischief 1 any good?

Nobody outside TBC has ranked it yet. Mischief 1 isn’t on the Artificial Analysis image-to-video leaderboard, and neither is Wan 2.2, so there’s no public score for its base model either. The board’s #1 is Seedance 2.5 at 1,153 Elo; Alibaba’s newer Wan 3.0 is #9 at 1,111, and Grok Imagine 1.5 Lite is #19 of 29 at 999. TBC’s quality claim is that Mischief 1 matches Wan 2.2, which is a claim about Wan 2.2, not about the top of the board.

One photo, 2 models on RenderHour: what did we get?

We can’t run Mischief 1 here, so we ran the job it’s built for on the cheapest and the highest-ranked Wan we have. FLUX 3 Klein made a vertical start frame for 0.65 credits; then the same frame and motion prompt went to Grok Imagine 1.5 Lite at 480p and Wan 3.0 at 1080p, both 9:16, the shape Mischief 1 can’t make.

What the frames show: both models kept the mug, the croissant and the rainy street from the start frame, and both added cars with their lights on passing outside, which the prompt didn’t ask for. Grok Imagine 1.5 Lite made a slow push-in with a clear, rising plume of steam; the croissant slides toward the edge of the frame. Wan 3.0 pushed in further, until the mug fills most of the width by the last second, with fainter, curling wisps of steam and reflections on the wet road. Its file came back at 1080x1920 and 30 fps, against 400x736 and 24 fps for Grok Lite. Both files had a sound track; the copies on this page are silent.

Grok Lite cost 9.4 times fewer credits than Wan 3.0, by our arithmetic, and finished in seconds rather than minutes, on one run each. Wan 3.0 is the model to use for the final, full-HD cut; Grok Lite is the one for testing 10 ideas.

Mischief 1 in 6 numbers

• $0.005: the price of 1 second of 480p video on fal, half a cent.
• 8x: how much more fal charges per second for Wan 2.2, the model Mischief 1 is built on, at both 480p and 720p ($0.04 against $0.005, $0.08 against $0.01).
• 40: 5-second 480p clips that $1 buys on fal, by our arithmetic.
• 3.2x: Grok Imagine 1.5 Lite’s price over Mischief 1’s for a 5-second 720p clip on fal ($0.16 against $0.05), by our arithmetic.
• 0.1%: the most TBC’s software adds to the base model’s parameter count, per TBC.
• 0: aspect ratio settings in its fal API. Every clip is landscape.

What this means if you make videos for social and ads

1. For YouTube, web banners and landscape ads, it’s a cheap draft tool. At $0.025 a 480p clip, 20 takes of one product shot cost 50 cents on fal.
2. For TikTok, Reels and Shorts, check the crop first. It makes landscape only; a vertical cut of a 720p clip is 405 pixels wide.
3. Plan the sound. Mischief 1 is silent, so music, voice-over or effects come from your editor.
4. Don’t buy on the quality claim alone. It’s TBC’s own, against Wan 2.2, with no public leaderboard score yet.
5. Need vertical and no code? Grok Imagine 1.5 Lite makes 9:16 clips from a photo for 7.5 credits; for a final cut, Wan 3.0 ranks #9 for image to video. Compare what the free credits make on the free image to video page.