AI Image pricing compared
What 8 ai image tools actually cost — free tiers, the cheapest paid plan, and where each free plan runs out. Each figure is taken from the vendor’s own pricing page and dated, so you can see when we last checked.
| Tool | Free tier | Cheapest paid plan | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| FLUX | Yes | $0.002/per image · Pay-as-you-go | 14 Jul 2026 |
| Recraft | Yes | $10/mo · Paid tier 1 | 14 Jul 2026 |
| Leonardo AI | Yes | $12/month · Apprentice | 14 Jul 2026 |
| ComfyUI | No | $20/month · Standard | 14 Jul 2026 |
| Stable Diffusion | Yes | $50/mo · Core | 14 Jul 2026 |
| DALL·E | Yes | ₹399 · Go | 14 Jul 2026 |
| Adobe Firefly | Yes | ₹797.68//mo · 2,000 credits/mo | 14 Jul 2026 |
| Krea AI | Yes | Custom / contact | 14 Jul 2026 |
Prices are as published by each vendor and may be region-specific — many vendors price by country. Confirm on the vendor’s page before buying.
Sorted cheapest paid plan first. A “free tier” means there is a genuinely free plan — tap through to any tool to see the full tier breakdown and exactly where the free plan stops. We list no fabricated prices: where a vendor only quotes “contact sales” we say so.
What drives ai image pricing
Image generators price on credits — a consumable unit spent each time you generate — and a tier is really just a monthly credit allotment. Adobe Firefly makes this explicit, selling 2,000, 4,000, 10,000 and 50,000 credits per month at rising prices, and Recraft (1,000 then 2,000 credits) and Stable Diffusion (5,000 credits on Core) work the same way. The critical detail is rollover: Stable Diffusion's credits expire monthly, so unused capacity is money lost. Leonardo runs on daily free tokens plus monthly allotments, Krea on compute units, and ComfyUI on workflow runtime caps of 30 to 60 minutes. FLUX shows the raw mechanic underneath — pure pay-as-you-go at roughly $0.002 to $0.07 per image depending on model and megapixels, with no subscription at all. So two questions set your cost: how many images you generate, and how expensive each generation's model and resolution are.
How to choose on price
Estimate images per month and pick the credit tier that just covers it, because over-buying credits that expire (as Stable Diffusion's do) is pure waste while under-buying stalls you mid-project. The free tiers are real for evaluation and light work — Krea's 5,000 monthly compute units, Leonardo's daily tokens, Firefly's trial credits — but they throttle exactly when you get productive. For unpredictable or bursty volume, a pay-as-you-go model like FLUX is often cheaper than a subscription you underuse, since you pay per image instead of pre-buying a bundle. Watch two hidden costs: higher-resolution and premium models burn credits faster, so a tier's image count is nominal, not guaranteed; and licensing matters — Recraft's free images are publicly visible and not licensed for commercial use, making the cheapest option unusable for client work. Choose on realistic monthly volume and the resolution you actually output, not on the headline credit number.
AI Image pricing FAQ
What is a "credit" and how fast do they burn?
A credit is the unit spent per generation, and the rate isn't fixed — higher resolution and premium models consume more per image. So Firefly's 2,000-credit tier or Stable Diffusion's 5,000 don't map to a guaranteed image count; upscaling and fancier models draw them down faster than you'd expect.
Do unused image credits roll over?
Often not. Stable Diffusion states its Core credits do not roll over month to month, so anything unused is forfeited. That makes right-sizing your tier important — buying a large bundle you don't fully consume is money lost each cycle rather than banked capacity.
Is pay-as-you-go like FLUX cheaper than a subscription?
For irregular or low volume, usually yes. FLUX charges roughly $0.002–$0.07 per image with no monthly commitment, so you pay only for what you generate. Subscriptions win once you generate steadily enough to use most of the bundled credits each month.
Can I use free-tier images commercially?
Not always — check the license, not just the price. Recraft's free images, for example, are owned by Recraft and publicly visible, not licensed for commercial use, so the free tier is fine for testing but not for client or product work.
See the full breakdown
Open any tool for its complete pricing tiers, free-tier limits, screenshot and honest review.