AI Image Generator Comparison: Pricing, API & Commercial Use

This is a transparent lookup and rule-based recommender, not an opinion poll. Each of the 8 generators is stored as a typed record, its cheapest paid plan (USD/mo), free tier, per-image API price, max resolution, commercial-use licence, open-weights flag and a single text-in-image rating. Every figure is cited inline to the vendor's own pricing or licensing page and was verified on June 20, 2026. No money math runs on your input; the only judgement call is the text rating, which follows a fixed rubric.

The text-in-image rating is anchored, not subjective:

• 5, reliably renders multi-word legible text (Ideogram, GPT Image).
• 4, usually legible, the odd slip (Imagen, FLUX, Firefly).
• 3, short words fine, longer phrases unreliable (Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Leonardo).
• 2–1, frequently garbles or rarely usable text.

When you set the controls, three deterministic steps run in order:

1. Toggle filter. The four toggles, Free tier, Public API, Commercial-safe, Open weights, are boolean predicates that AND together. “Commercial-safe” keeps cleanly-licensed rows (commercial use “Yes” or “Paid plans”) and drops any row whose commercial use carries a caveat, the only such row is FLUX, because its [dev] weights are non-commercial.
2. Use-case gate. The recommender adds the use case's own filter: “Self-host” keeps only open-weight models; “Lowest API cost” keeps only rows with a public API; “Best free tier” keeps only rows with a free tier.
3. Rank the survivors. Each use case uses a total-order comparator, Commercial work ranks the indemnified vendor first then the cheapest commercial plan; Text in images ranks by the text rating; Lowest API cost by per-image price ascending; Best free tier by free-tier generosity; Self-host by text quality. Ties always break on name, so identical settings always return the same picks. A second, independent scoring pass re-derives the same order as a built-in cross-check.

The table sorts independently by cheapest paid plan, cheapest per-image API (no-API rows last), max resolution (megapixels parsed from the stated resolution) or name. Prices are in US dollars because every vendor bills in USD; from a Sri Lankan card expect roughly 18% on top in foreign-transaction and conversion add-ons, use the currency converter for the day's rate. To forecast a monthly bill by image volume, use the image-generation cost calculator; to actually create images, see the prompt generator.

• Midjourney: subscription plans (fast GPU-hours, commercial terms)
• OpenAI: API pricing (GPT Image / gpt-image-1 per-image cost)
• Google: Imagen pricing and resolution via the Gemini API
• Black Forest Labs: FLUX API per-megapixel pricing and open weights
• Adobe Firefly: plans, free credits and commercial indemnification
• Stability AI: open-weight licensing (Community / Enterprise)
• Ideogram: pricing, free credits and public-gallery caveat
• Leonardo AI: plans, daily free tokens and API

Prices and capability flags were last verified against the official pages on June 20, 2026. The cheapest paid plan across the table is $8/mo and the cheapest per-image API is about $0.01. Vendors change image-generator pricing frequently, if you spot a figure that has moved, email me and I'll update it.