AI Image Generator Cost Per Image: 11 Apps Measured

The same Nano Banana Pro image costs 7.5 cents on Magnific and 48 cents on Runway. It is Google's model in both apps, and Runway's $15 Standard plan charges 6.4 times more for each picture than Magnific's $20 Premium plan. Across the 11 AI image apps we checked, only four tell you how many images your plan actually buys. The two biggest, ChatGPT and Gemini, give no number at all.

We read the pricing pages and help-center credit tables of 11 creator apps: Krea, Magnific (formerly Freepik), Runway, Midjourney, Ideogram, Recraft, OpenArt, Adobe Firefly, Canva, ChatGPT and Gemini. Then we divided each plan's price by the number of images it buys with each model. For a reference point, Google's Gemini API price list and OpenAI's API price list show what developers pay for the same models. Prices are in US dollars as listed on October 28, 2026, billed monthly unless we say yearly. Here is what the numbers say.

Key Findings

1. One Nano Banana Pro image costs between 5 cents and 48 cents, depending on the app

Nano Banana Pro is Google's top image model, and most multi-model creator apps offer it. That makes it a fair test: same model, same picture, different price tag. On Magnific's $20 Premium plan, 20,000 monthly credits at 75 credits per image buy about 267 Nano Banana Pro images, 7.5 cents each. Paid yearly, the same plan drops to 5.4 cents. On Runway's $15 Standard plan, 625 credits at 20 credits per image buy 31 images, 48 cents each.

The surprise is where Google's own price sits. Google charges developers $0.134 for a Nano Banana Pro image at 1K or 2K. Magnific sells the picture for less than that, Krea sells it at almost exactly that ($0.136 on the $35 Pro plan), and Runway's entry plan charges 3.6 times Google's price. Runway's plans get much cheaper as they get bigger: its $95 Max plan lists 475 Nano Banana Pro images at 2K, 20 cents each.

Magnific's 75 credits cover Nano Banana Pro at 1K or 2K. Runway charges 20 credits per Nano Banana Pro image on every plan, which is why the gap between its plans comes from the price of a credit (finding 5), not the model.

2. Only 4 of 11 apps tell you how many images your plan buys

Krea, Magnific, Runway and Midjourney publish enough to work out an exact cost per image. Krea lists an image count for every model on every plan. Magnific lists the credits each model costs. Runway's help center gives credits per model, and Midjourney's help center gives the GPU minutes each prompt uses: 0.8 minutes for a standard grid of four images, 1.3 minutes for HD.

The other seven leave you guessing. Ideogram's plan page lists 2,400 credits a month on the $20 Plus plan, but the cost of each image only appears on the button before you run it. Recraft publishes ranges: Google models cost 5 to 40 credits and OpenAI models 2 to 24, and "the exact number of credits is displayed in the product when you choose a model." ChatGPT's plan page promises "More image creation" on Go ($8) and "More complex and accurate image creation" on Plus ($20). Google's AI plans rate Nano Banana Pro access as "Limited", "Expanded", "Higher" and "Highest" across its four tiers, and the Gemini Apps limits page says limits are "compute-based" and AI Pro gets "4x higher than standard limits", without saying what standard is.

3. On one plan, the model you pick changes your image count 64 times over

A plan's headline number is the best case. Krea's $35 Pro plan comes with 20,000 compute units. Spend them on Krea's fast Krea 2 Turbo model and you get 10,000 images, a third of a cent each. Spend them on GPT Image 2.5 Flare and you get about 157, 22 cents each. That is a 64x spread inside one subscription.

OpenArt's $14 Starter plan advertises "Up to ~4,000 images" from 4,000 credits, which only works if every image costs one credit, the cheapest model the app offers. The plan page gives no cost per model, so you find out how far your credits go for Nano Banana Pro or GPT Image 2.5 inside the app.

4. Each app's own model is where images get cheap

Midjourney is the cheapest paid image in our data. Its $10 Basic plan includes 200 minutes of Fast GPU time, and a standard prompt uses 0.8 minutes for a grid of four images. That works out to about 1,000 images a month, one cent each, and 1.6 cents for HD (2K). Google charges developers 13 times as much for one Nano Banana Pro image. On the $30 Standard plan the Fast images drop to two thirds of a cent, and Relax mode adds unlimited images on top.

House models are not always the bargain, though. In Magnific, its new Magnific One model at 2K costs 180 credits, 2.4 times the 75 credits of Nano Banana Pro in the same app. In Runway, Gen-4 Image at 1080p costs 8 credits, so it is the cheaper choice there: 78 images on the Standard plan at 19 cents each, against 48 cents for Nano Banana Pro.

5. On Runway, the smallest plan pays 2.4 times more per credit

Most apps charge the same for a credit whatever plan you are on. Krea's units cost $0.0018 on Basic and $0.00175 on Pro and Max. Ideogram's credits cost $0.0083 on Plus and $0.0080 on Pro. Magnific's cost $0.001 on Premium and Premium+. Bigger plans buy more credits; they do not buy cheaper ones.

Runway and Midjourney are the exceptions. A Runway credit costs 2.4 cents on Standard, 1.6 cents on Pro and 1 cent on Max, so a Standard subscriber pays 2.4 times as much for the same image. A Midjourney Fast minute costs 5 cents on Basic and 3.3 cents on every bigger plan.

6. Paying yearly cuts the price of every image by 20% to 40%

Every app with a yearly option gives the same credits for less. Krea's discount is the deepest: the Pro plan falls from $35 to $21 a month, which takes a Nano Banana Pro image from 13.6 cents to 8.2 cents. Magnific's Premium falls from $20 to $14.50, Ideogram's Plus from $20 to $15, and Runway's Standard and Midjourney's Basic both drop 20%.

The catch is commitment, and on Magnific a change in how credits arrive. Magnific's yearly plans pay out the whole year at once: "240K credits/year", "Credits valid for 1 year, no monthly resets". That suits a creator with a busy season. Ideogram does the opposite: "Yearly plans still get their credits each month, not all at once."

7. Switching to Nano Banana 2.1 doubles what your plan buys

Google's newest image model, Nano Banana 2.1, costs developers $0.0336 for a 1K image, half the $0.067 of Nano Banana 2. Krea passes the saving straight through: its Pro plan lists about 900 Nano Banana 2.1 images against 450 Nano Banana 2 images, so each picture drops from 7.8 cents to 3.9 cents. Nano Banana Pro costs 3.5 times as much as Nano Banana 2.1 on the same Krea plan.

Not every app has made the change yet. Magnific's pricing table still prices Nano Banana 2 at 75 credits, the same as Nano Banana Pro, and lists a cheaper Nano Banana 2 Lite at 60 credits.

8. "Unlimited" exists, but for house models and slower queues

Seven of the 11 apps offer unlimited images on some plan, and in almost every case it means the app's own model, often in a slower queue. ChatGPT's $100 Pro plan promises "Unlimited and faster image creation". Midjourney's Standard plan ($30) adds unlimited images in Relax mode. Adobe says "All paid plans include unlimited standard image and vector generations" in Firefly, while partner models such as Google's and OpenAI's use credits. Canva Pro's image tool sits outside the monthly AI allowance, though "Fair use limits apply". Ideogram's Plus, Pro and Team plans "keep using Ideogram models in a slower queue, with no limit", but partner models still need credits. Krea lists "unlimited relaxed generations" with its in-house image models once compute units run out.

Magnific is the only app in our set that lists a Google model as unlimited. Its Premium+ plan ($45 a month) includes "Unlimited image generation with most models", with Nano Banana 2 at 1K among them. GPT Image 2.5 is metered in every app we checked: 18 cents on Magnific, 22 cents on Krea Pro. OpenAI's own developer price for its previous model, GPT Image 2, is $0.211 for a high-quality square image and $0.053 at medium quality.

Trend Analysis

Rising: per-model price lists. Krea, Magnific and Runway now print a cost or count per model, because their plans resell models from many different makers at very different prices.

Rising: cheaper Google models. Nano Banana 2.1 halves Google's price for a 1K image, and apps that pass it on double what a plan buys.

Stable: "unlimited" house models. Midjourney, Firefly, Canva, Ideogram and Krea all offer their own models without a hard cap on paid plans, and charge credits for everyone else's.

Declining: plain image counts at the biggest names. ChatGPT and Gemini describe image limits in words ("More", "Expanded"), and Gemini's limits are now "compute-based", shared with chat, video and music.

Predictions

Runway will narrow the gap between its Standard and Max credit prices within six months. Its Standard credit costs 2.4 times its Max credit, and on Nano Banana Pro that leaves Standard at 3.6 times Google's own price while Magnific sells below it.

More apps will price Nano Banana 2.1 below Nano Banana 2 by the end of the year. Google's price for it is half, and Krea already shows the doubled count. Magnific still charges the same 75 credits for Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro.

Neither ChatGPT nor Gemini will publish a numeric image cap for their $20 plans. Gemini moved to "compute-based" limits shared across features, and both plan pages describe image access in words, not numbers.

GPT Image 2.5 will stay the most expensive model in multi-model apps. It costs 18 to 23 cents per image in the apps we checked, more than Nano Banana Pro in the same apps.

What This Means for Creators

If you make lots of images in one style: a house model is the cheapest route by far. Midjourney's $10 plan works out to one cent a picture, and its $30 plan adds unlimited Relax images. Krea 3 costs about 3 cents on Krea.

If you want Nano Banana Pro specifically: where you buy it matters more than which plan you pick. Magnific's $20 Premium gives about 267 a month at 7.5 cents. Krea's $35 Pro gives 257 at 13.6 cents. Runway's $15 Standard gives 31 at 48 cents, so if you only want images, it is the wrong plan; Runway's credits make more sense if most of them go to video.

If you already pay for an app: check the model picker before you generate. On Krea Pro, Nano Banana 2.1 gives you about 900 images where Nano Banana Pro gives 257. For drafts and ideas, use the cheaper model and save the expensive one for the final.

If you use ChatGPT or Gemini for images: you cannot work out a cost per image, because neither publishes a cap. Treat them as a bonus on top of a subscription you pay for anyway, not as your main image budget. Canva Pro and Adobe Firefly work the same way for their own image tools: generous, unmetered, but with no number you can plan around.

If you are about to pay yearly: work out what one image costs you on the monthly plan first, then take 20% to 40% off. On Magnific, remember the yearly credits arrive as one pool of 240,000 for the year.

Full Data

Image counts marked with ~ are the apps' own estimates. Krea's counts are for its Pro plan at 20,000 units. Midjourney counts assume four images per standard prompt at 0.8 GPU minutes (1.3 for HD), as its help center lists. Runway's Nano Banana Pro cost is 20 credits per image, from its Standard plan guide (31 images for 620 credits) and its pricing page (475 images for 9,500 credits). Magnific's monthly credits come from its plans documentation (20,000 a month on Premium). We did not run paid generations; every figure is the vendor's published price.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest AI image generator per image in 2026?

Midjourney, among paid plans. Its $10 Basic plan works out to about one cent per standard image, and the $30 Standard plan adds unlimited Relax-mode images. Krea's own Krea 3 model costs about 3 cents per image on Krea's plans.

How much does one Nano Banana Pro image cost?

Google charges developers $0.134 per image at 1K or 2K. In creator apps we measured it at 7.5 cents on Magnific Premium ($20), 13.6 cents on Krea Pro ($35) and 48 cents on Runway Standard ($15).

How many images do you get with ChatGPT Plus?

OpenAI does not publish a number. The plan page says Plus includes "More complex and accurate image creation", and only the $100 Pro plan is described as "Unlimited and faster image creation".

How many Nano Banana Pro images can I make with Google AI Pro?

Google does not publish a count. Its plan page rates Nano Banana Pro access as "Expanded" on AI Pro, and the Gemini Apps help page says limits are compute-based and shared with other features.

Is a yearly AI image plan worth it?

If you will use it every month, yes: yearly billing cut the price per image by 20% to 40% in every app we checked. Magnific's yearly credits arrive as one pool for the year, while Ideogram still pays them out monthly.

Why do apps show "up to" image counts?

Credits are spent at different rates per model. On Krea's $35 Pro plan the same 20,000 units buy 10,000 Krea 2 Turbo images or about 157 GPT Image 2.5 images. "Up to" counts assume the cheapest model.

This research was produced by Creative AI News.

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