AI Image Generation Pricing Compared

A generated image costs between $0.003 and $0.045 depending on which model and which provider you pick — a fifteen-fold spread for a job that is, from the outside, the same job.

Some of that spread buys you something. Some of it is the same model at two providers, priced twice as far apart as it needs to be. And one part of it is a rounding rule that quietly doubles the bill on the most common image size there is.

Here is what one image actually costs today, with every number read from the provider's own page.

Pricing last checked: August 26, 2026. Prices move often; live figures are on the ElliSekiz compare page.

What one image costs

These models publish a flat price per finished image, so they can be compared directly.

Replicate publishes FLUX Schnell as "$3 per thousand output images". That is $0.003 each — the same price Atlas Cloud charges, written a thousand times larger. If you were scanning a list for the cheapest option, that $3 would have thrown you off it.

At 10,000 images

The same table, multiplied by a realistic batch:

Thirteen times between the cheapest and the dearest row here. At prototype volumes that is nothing; at 10,000 images a month it is the difference between a line item and a rounding error.

The same model, two providers, two prices

Seven of the models above are served by more than one provider. Some agree exactly; some are a factor of two apart.

The FLUX dev rows are the ones worth pausing on. Same model, same unit, same finished image — and one provider charges slightly more than double. Nothing in the price tells you why; hardware, utilisation and margin are not published.

Two things follow. Cross-check the model you have chosen against every provider that serves it, and note which prices are promotional: several of the Atlas Cloud figures above are currently discounted from a higher list price, including Seedream 4 ($0.03 list) and Qwen-Image Edit Plus ($0.03 list).

Current offers per model are on the compare page, one row per model and provider — for instance FLUX dev, where the two-times gap is visible in a single row, or Seedream 4.

The rounding trap

fal.ai prices several image models per megapixel rather than per image. That is a perfectly reasonable unit — until you read the sentence next to it.

For Qwen-Image, fal states: "Your request will cost $0.02 per megapixel. Images are billed by rounding up to the nearest megapixel."

A 1024×1024 image is 1,048,576 pixels. That is 1.05 megapixels — four percent over the line. Rounded up, it bills as two.

So the most common image size in the entire field — 1024 square — costs double what the headline rate suggests. Dropping to 1280×720 halves the bill. Nothing about the model changes.

The same rule applies elsewhere on fal.ai:

• FLUX.2 pro — "$0.03 for the first megapixel of output, plus $0.015 per extra megapixel of input and output, rounded up". A 1024×1024 output rounds to 2 MP: $0.045, against $0.030 on Atlas Cloud for the same model.
• FLUX.2 flex — "$0.05 per megapixel on both input and output side, rounded up". A 1024×1024 text-to-image: $0.10.
• Qwen-Image Edit — $0.03 per megapixel, with no rounding rule stated on the page.

Per-megapixel pricing is not worse than per-image pricing. It is cheaper for small outputs and much more expensive for large ones, and the rounding rule decides where the line falls. What it is not is directly comparable to a flat per-image price until you have named your output size.

What the price does not tell you

Whether it can edit. A text-to-image model and an image-editing model are different products at similar prices. Qwen-Image Edit Plus, FLUX Kontext dev and Seedream 4 Edit take an input image; FLUX Schnell does not.

Resolution tiers. Seedream v5 Pro on fal.ai is $0.0675 per image up to 1536×1536 and $0.135 above that. The headline figure is almost always the entry tier.

Whether the discount lasts. Atlas Cloud publishes both a list price and a current price. Budget on the list price.

Quality. This article ranks price, and price only. A $0.003 image and a $0.038 image are not the same picture, and no table can tell you which one your use case needs. That part has to be tested, not read.

Which should you pick?

• High volume, forgiving quality bar — thumbnails, placeholders, drafts, variations. FLUX Schnell at $0.003 or Z-Image Turbo at $0.005. Ten thousand images for the price of a lunch.
• General production work. FLUX dev at $0.012 on Atlas Cloud is the best value in the middle of the table; Seedream 4 at $0.027 and Wan 2.7 at $0.030 sit a tier up.
• Editing an existing image. Qwen-Image Edit Plus at $0.021 or FLUX Kontext dev at $0.025.
• Large outputs, 2K and above. Prefer flat per-image pricing. Per-megapixel rates multiply, and rounding makes them multiply sooner than the arithmetic suggests.
• Top of the range. Nano Banana at $0.038 and Seedream 4.5 at $0.036–$0.040. Worth it only if you have tested that the difference shows in your outputs.

Whatever the shortlist, run the same prompt through each candidate before committing. Every model page on ElliSekiz has a playground, and the image models index lists them all with today's prices.

Checking today's numbers

There are 120 image models with a published price in Atlas Cloud's catalogue alone, and the figures above are a snapshot of one day. Providers change prices, promotions end, and new models land weekly.

ElliSekiz records each price in the unit the provider bills in, stamps it with the date it was verified, and refuses to rank two prices whose units do not match. The compare page is the live version of every table here.

Conclusion

• One generated image costs $0.003 to $0.045 today. Most of that range is model choice, not provider choice.
• But provider choice can still double the bill: FLUX dev is $0.012 at one provider and $0.025 at another.
• A headline of "$3" can mean $0.003. Read the unit before the number.
• Per-megapixel pricing rounds up, and 1024×1024 is just over one megapixel — so the most common size in the field bills as two.
• Price is not quality. Shortlist on price, then decide on output.

Explore more on ElliSekiz

Compare every image model and provider. One table, each price in its own billing unit, stamped with the date it was checked — on the compare page.

Run the same prompt through your shortlist. Every model page has a playground, so you can put three candidates against one prompt before you pick.

Sources

All prices were read from the providers' own sources on August 26, 2026.

• Atlas Cloud model catalogue API, https://api.atlascloud.ai/api/v1/models
• Replicate — FLUX Schnell
• Replicate — FLUX dev
• Replicate — Seedream 4
• Replicate — Seedream 4.5
• fal.ai — Qwen-Image
• fal.ai — Wan 2.7 Text-to-image
• fal.ai — FLUX.2 pro
• fal.ai — FLUX.2 flex
• fal.ai — Seedream v5 Pro