AI Image Generators Compared: Price per Image and Rights (2026)

Updated: November 2026 · Prices checked: November 2026

Most businesses now need images every week for posts, ads and product pages. The tools change names every few months, but the choice stays simple. You are paying for three things: how good the image looks, how well the tool follows your instructions, and whether you can legally sell what it makes. This guide compares the six tools business owners use most, with prices converted to euros.

The six tools in one table

Prices are the vendors’ own list prices in US dollars, converted at about €0.86 per dollar. Your local price can differ a little because of VAT.

What each tool is good at

Midjourney. Still the tool people pick when the image has to look beautiful. It is strong at lighting, composition and a consistent style. It is weaker when you need exact things: a specific layout, five named objects, correct text. It works in a web app. There is no public API, so you cannot plug it into your own automations.

Kling. Most people know Kling for video. Its image models are cheap and good enough for social posts and product scenes. The real advantage is the pipeline: you make a still, then turn the same image into a clip in the same account. If you already pay for Kling for video ads, the images come almost free from the same credits.

GPT Image (inside ChatGPT). The easiest start, because you can talk to it. You describe what you want, then ask for changes in plain words: move the logo, make the background white, change the season. It follows long instructions well. ChatGPT can now even turn images into animated GIFs. The API version lets you pick low, medium or high quality and pay per image.

Nano Banana (Google Gemini). Google’s image models live inside the Gemini app and the Gemini API. They are very good at editing an existing photo: put this product on a kitchen table, change the shirt colour, keep the same face. That makes them useful for e-commerce. Every image carries an invisible SynthID watermark, which Google uses to identify AI images.

Ideogram. The one to use when words must appear in the image and be spelled right: a poster, a sale banner, a menu board, a T-shirt draft. Other tools have improved at text, and Canva built its own model that gets text right, but Ideogram made this its main focus from the start.

Flux. Made by Black Forest Labs. You can use it through their API, through many other apps, or download some versions and run them on your own computer. It is the developer’s choice: precise pricing per megapixel, no subscription, and models you can host yourself.

Price per image: subscription vs API

There are two ways to pay. A subscription gives you a monthly allowance in an app. An API charges per image and is what you use when software makes images for you. Here is what each costs in practice.

• Midjourney: Basic about €8.60, Standard about €26, Pro about €52, Mega about €103 per month. Yearly billing is 20% cheaper. Basic gives about 3.3 hours of fast GPU time. One image job uses about one minute, so roughly 200 jobs a month. Standard and up add unlimited slow “Relax” mode for images. Extra fast time costs $4 an hour.
• Kling: Standard about €7.60/month with 660 credits, Pro about €28/month with 3,000 credits. Kling’s API lists Image 3.0 at about €0.024 per image at 1K or 2K, and about €0.048 for the 4K omni model.
• GPT Image: Included in ChatGPT Go (about €6.90) and Plus (about €17). On the API, gpt-image-2 costs about €0.005 (low), €0.046 (medium) and €0.18 (high) for a square 1024×1024 image. Newer gpt-image-2.6 models bill by tokens at $30 per million output tokens, so the cost per image depends on quality and size.
• Nano Banana: Included in Google AI Pro (about €17/month). On the API: Nano Banana 2 Lite about €0.029 per 1K image, Nano Banana 2 about €0.058 at 1K and €0.13 at 4K, Nano Banana Pro about €0.115 at 1K or 2K and €0.21 at 4K. Batch requests are cheaper.
• Ideogram: Plus about €17/month, Pro about €52/month, cheaper on yearly billing. On the API, Ideogram 4.5 costs about €0.007 (very low), €0.026 (low), €0.052 (medium) and €0.086 (high) per image.
• Flux: FLUX.2 [pro] from about €0.026 per megapixel, [flex] about €0.043, [max] about €0.06. Resolution rounds up, so a 1920×1080 image is billed as 3 megapixels. Failed or blocked images are not charged.

The maths: say your shop needs 100 product scenes a month at about 1 megapixel. Through the API: Flux.2 [pro] about 100 × €0.026 = €2.60. Kling Image 3.0 about 100 × €0.024 = €2.40. GPT Image medium about 100 × €0.046 = €4.60. Nano Banana 2 about 100 × €0.058 = €5.80. A Midjourney Standard plan is €26 for the same month. The subscription wins only if you also want unlimited exploring and the Midjourney look. For pure volume, the APIs are 5 to 10 times cheaper.

One honest warning. The image itself is rarely the biggest cost. Your time is. Ten tries to get one usable image at €0.05 each is still only €0.50. Pick the tool that gives you a usable result in fewer tries, not the one with the lowest list price. The same rule applies to text models, as I explained in the AI price-war playbook.

Commercial use: the rules that matter

All six vendors let paying customers use their images in business. The traps are in the details.

Three more rules apply no matter which tool you use:

1. Owning the file is not the same as copyright. In many countries, including the EU, a purely AI-made image may not get copyright protection. A competitor could reuse it. If the image is your brand’s core asset, add real human work on top.
2. Don’t copy brands or real people. “In the style of Nike” or a lookalike of a celebrity gets you in trouble with them, not with the AI company.
3. Label AI images where the law asks for it. The EU AI Act brings transparency rules for AI-generated content. For ads that look like real photos, a short “AI-generated image” note is the safe habit.

Which one to pick for your job

If you are just starting, do not buy three subscriptions. Start with the chat assistant you already use. Add a second tool only when you hit a clear wall, like text that keeps coming out wrong.

A simple workflow that keeps costs low

1. Write a short brief. Subject, setting, light, camera angle, format (16:9 for blogs, 4:5 for Instagram, 1:1 for shops). Reuse it as a template.
2. Draft cheap. Use the low quality setting or a fast model for the first tries. Only render the final version at high quality.
3. Edit instead of regenerating. If 80% of the image is right, ask for a change to the 20%. A fresh image throws away what worked.
4. Keep a reference image. Upload your product photo or last good result as a reference. This keeps colours and shapes consistent across a series.
5. Automate only when the volume is real. Above about 50 images a month of the same type, connect an API to a sheet of prompts with a tool like Make. My Make vs Zapier comparison shows what that costs.
6. Check rights before you publish. No real logos, no real faces you don’t have permission for, and the right plan for commercial use.

If you have a strong computer and want zero running cost, FLUX.2 [klein] 4B runs locally and is licensed for business use. The setup is similar to running a language model on your laptop, but most owners are better off paying a few cents per image and saving the hours.

Read also: ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini: Which to Choose and Cost in € (2026) · Google Adds TPU 8tx and 8i Max: Private AI and 2x Compute, No Price Yet · Anthropic Gives Governments 40% Off Claude – Expect Price Pressure

Sources: Midjourney pricing · Midjourney commercial use · Kling plans · Kling API pricing · OpenAI image generation · OpenAI terms · Gemini API pricing · Gemini API terms · Ideogram pricing · FLUX API pricing

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Ivan Ivanov

Founder ofHawkValue

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