Guide
What one AI image costs: subscriptions versus per-image APIs
Image generators sell GPU minutes, credits, tokens or "unlimited" modes, so a $30 plan and a $0.04 API call are hard to compare. This page puts them on one scale: what the vendor says a plan includes, what it says one image consumes, and the per-image price where an API publishes one. Where the vendor gives both numbers we show the division and mark it as our arithmetic. Where it gives neither, the cell says so.
- Cheapest published API price
- $0.009 Black Forest Labs
- Highest published API price
- $0.134 Google
- Plans that state a per-image cost
- 6 of 15
- Checked
- Oct 29, 2026
Per-image API prices, as published
| Vendor | Model | Price per image | 100 images | 1,000 images |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI ↗ | gpt-image-2, low / medium / high quality, 1024x1024 From the vendor's cost table; excludes input tokens |
$0.006 / $0.053 / $0.211 per image | $5.30 | $53.00 |
| OpenAI ↗ | gpt-image-1-mini, low / medium / high, 1024x1024 | $0.005 / $0.011 / $0.036 per image | $1.10 | $11.00 |
| OpenAI ↗ | gpt-image-2.5 (sunburst, flare) | Not stated as a per-image figure; $8 input / $30 output per 1M image tokens, per-image cost only via the vendor calculator | — | — |
| Google ↗ | Nano Banana 2.1 (gemini-nano-banana-2.1), 1K / 2K / 4K No free tier for image models |
$0.0336 / $0.0504 / $0.113 per image; batch $0.0168 per 1K image | $3.36 | $33.60 |
| Google ↗ | Gemini 3.1 Flash Image (Nano Banana 2), 1K / 2K / 4K | $0.067 / $0.101 / $0.151 per image; batch $0.034 per 1K image | $6.70 | $67.00 |
| Google ↗ | Gemini 3 Pro Image (Nano Banana Pro), 1K or 2K / 4K | $0.134 / $0.24 per image; batch $0.067 / $0.12 | $13.40 | $134.00 |
| Black Forest Labs ↗ | FLUX 3 Image, 768px / 1K / 1.5K / 2K / 4K Pay as you go, no subscription |
$0.041 / $0.048 / $0.07 / $0.10 / $0.607 per image | $4.80 | $48.00 |
| Black Forest Labs ↗ | FLUX 3 Image Klein, 768px / 1K / 2K / 4K | $0.008 / $0.009 / $0.014 / $0.036 per image | $0.90 | $9.00 |
| xAI ↗ | grok-imagine-image / image-2.0 / image-quality | $0.02 / $0.04 / $0.05 per image | $4.00 | $40.00 |
| Stability AI ↗ | Stable Image Core / SD 3.5 Medium / SD 3.5 Large / Stable Image Ultra SDXL 1.0 from 0.9 credits |
3 / 3.5 / 6.5 / 8 credits per image at 1 credit = $0.01, so $0.03 / $0.035 / $0.065 / $0.08 | $3.00 | $30.00 |
| Recraft ↗ | V4.1 Flash / V4.1 raster / V4 raster / V4.1 vector 1,000 API units = $1 |
$0.007 / $0.035 / $0.04 / $0.08 per image | $3.50 | $35.00 |
| Runway ↗ | gen4_image 720p / 1080p, gen4_image_turbo 1 credit = $0.01 in the developer portal |
5 / 8 credits = $0.05 / $0.08; turbo 2 credits = $0.02 per image | $8.00 | $80.00 |
| Ideogram ↗ | API, all models | Not confirmed: the API tab shows only 'Loading current prices' | — | — |
The 100 and 1,000 columns multiply the first (or default-quality) price in the row; they ignore input tokens, edits and upscales. Batch prices, where offered, halve the Google figures.
Subscriptions: what a plan includes and what one image uses
| Tool | Plan | Price | What is included | Cost of one image (vendor) | Derived (our arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Midjourney ↗ | Basic | $10/mo ($8/mo paid yearly) | 3.3 hr (200 min) Fast GPU time a month; no Relax mode | Vendor: an SD image prompt costs about 0.8 GPU minutes, an HD prompt 1.3 minutes (each prompt returns a grid of 4 images) | About 250 SD prompts a month, $0.04 per prompt |
| Midjourney ↗ | Standard | $30/mo ($24/mo paid yearly) | 15 hr Fast GPU time a month plus unlimited Relax images | Same GPU costs as Basic; Relax images do not use Fast time | About 1,125 Fast SD prompts a month, then unlimited in Relax (0 to 30 min wait) |
| Midjourney ↗ | Pro | $60/mo ($48/mo paid yearly) | 30 hr Fast GPU time a month plus unlimited Relax images and SD video | Same GPU costs as Basic | About 2,250 Fast SD prompts a month, then unlimited in Relax |
| Runway ↗ | Standard | $15/mo ($12/mo billed annually) | 625 credits a month; vendor states this equals 78 Gen-4 images at 1080p (8 credits each) | Vendor: 8 credits per Gen-4 image (1080p), 2 credits per Gen-4 Image Turbo, 20 credits per Nano Banana Pro 2K image | $0.19 per Gen-4 1080p image if you use the whole allowance on images |
| Runway ↗ | Pro | $35/mo ($28/mo billed annually) | 2,250 credits a month; vendor states 281 Gen-4 images at 1080p | Same credit rates as Standard | $0.12 per Gen-4 1080p image |
| Runway ↗ | Max | $95/mo ($76/mo billed annually) | 9,500 credits a month; vendor states about 1,187 Gen-4 images at 1080p or 475 Nano Banana Pro images at 2K | Same credit rates as Standard | $0.08 per Gen-4 1080p image |
| Adobe Firefly ↗ | Standard | $9.99/mo | 2,000 generative credits a month; plan page lists unlimited standard image and vector generations, credits go to premium features such as video, audio and partner models | Not stated (credits-per-image help page could not be read) | — |
| Adobe Firefly ↗ | Pro | $19.99/mo | 4,000 generative credits a month, unlimited standard image generations per the plan page | Not stated | — |
| Ideogram ↗ | Plus | $15/mo billed annually ($180 a year); monthly price not stated on the page we could read | 2,400 priority credits a month | Not stated (credits per image not on the page); pay as you go at 1 cent per credit | — |
| Ideogram ↗ | Pro | $42/mo billed annually ($504 a year) | 7,500 priority credits a month | Not stated | — |
| Leonardo.ai ↗ | All plans | Not confirmed | Not confirmed: the pricing page sits behind a bot check we do not bypass | Not confirmed | — |
| Recraft ↗ | Basic, Pro, Teams | Not confirmed (plan prices render client-side and did not load for us) | Not confirmed; paid plans grant commercial rights, Free plan images are owned by Recraft | Not stated for plans; API prices are in the table below | — |
| Canva ↗ | Pro | $144 a year for one person (monthly price not shown in USD on the page we read) | A shared AI allowance across Standard, Premium and Ultra AI tools; the page gives no image count | Not stated | — |
| ChatGPT ↗ | Plus | $20/mo | Image generation with separate usage limits; the help article with numbers could not be read | Not stated | — |
| Google Gemini app ↗ | Google AI Pro | $19.99/mo | Image generation included; vendor states 4x higher usage than Free, refreshing every 5 hours until a weekly limit, no image count | Not stated | — |
Figures read from each vendor's own pages on Oct 29, 2026. "Not stated" means the page gives no figure; "Not confirmed" means the page could not be read by us (bot check or scripts) and we did not work around it. No affiliate links on this page.
How to read the two tables
- A subscription is cheap per image only if you use the quota. Midjourney Basic at 250 Fast prompts a month is about $0.04 a prompt, but ten prompts in a quiet month cost $1 each.
- "Unlimited" modes (Midjourney Relax, Firefly standard images) have no per-image price but trade speed or model choice for it; the vendor pages state the wait or the model tier, not a count.
- API prices are per output image and exclude the prompt tokens, reference images, edits and upscales that most real workflows add. For a workflow with three attempts per keeper, multiply by three.
- Chat apps (ChatGPT Plus, Google AI Pro) bundle images into a general usage limit and publish no image count, so they cannot be placed on this scale.