AI Image Generation Cost
A $0.006 draft price and a $0.211 premium price aren't the same question — quality tiers can differ 35×. This calculator compares same-tier, and finds the exact subscription-vs-API break-even.
For teams generating images at volume — computes the fair same-tier price comparison and the exact subscription-vs-API break-even, not a 'this model is cheap/expensive' guess across mismatched quality tiers.
Image prices hand-verified against official provider pages
01 Model + volume
02 Same-tier price check
1.8× the cheapest production-tier option — $34.50/mo available (43%).
03 Subscription vs API
Midjourney Pro ($60.00/mo) beats the API by $19.50/mo.
Related cost calculators
Image prices hand-verified (checked 2026-07-13), re-audited quarterly — image-gen prices move faster than LLM text prices: OpenAI image generation pricing · Google Gemini API pricing · Black Forest Labs pricing · Midjourney plan comparison. Midjourney images/month is a derived estimate (~60/fast-GPU-hour), not an official per-image figure. All math runs in your browser.
How the math works
GPT Image 2 (medium) (OpenAI) costs $0.053 per 1024×1024 image at standard rates — but that number alone doesn't tell you if it's a good price. GPT Image 2 (medium) is a **production**-tier model; the fair comparison is against other production-tier models, not a draft model against a premium one (draft-to-premium price gaps run up to 35× within a single provider's own lineup).
Same-baseline check: the cheapest production-tier model available is FLUX.2 pro at $0.03/image. At 1,500 images/month, switching to it would save $34.50/month (43%) — GPT Image 2 (medium) costs 1.8× what the cheapest production-tier option costs, for whatever quality difference justifies it.
Separately: Midjourney has no API — it's subscription-only, with a fixed monthly fee and an included "fast" image quota, the opposite cost shape from pay-per-image APIs. Midjourney Pro ($60.00/mo, ~1,800 fast images estimated) beats this API spend by $19.50/month — if a Discord-based workflow fits and you don't need a real API.
Same baseline, one identity: API spend ($79.50/mo) minus the covering Midjourney plan ($60.00/mo) = $19.50 — whichever number is smaller is the real monthly cost, not whichever one you happened to default to.
Prices hand-verified against each provider's official pricing page (checked 2026-07-13), re-audited quarterly — image-gen prices move faster than text-token prices. Midjourney's fast-image quota is published in GPU-hours; the images/month figure here is a derived estimate (~60 images per fast GPU-hour, Midjourney's own commonly-cited ballpark), not itself an official per-image number.
Frequently asked questions
Is GPT Image 2 (medium) a good price for your workload?
Not the cheapest in its tier: FLUX.2 pro does the same production-tier job for $0.03/image vs $0.053/image — switching would save $34.50/month (43%) at 1,500 images/month, if quality holds on your prompts.
Should I use a pay-per-image API or a Midjourney subscription?
Midjourney Pro ($60.00/mo, ~1,800 fast images estimated) beats this API spend by $19.50/month — if a Discord-based workflow fits and you don't need a real API.
Why isn't the cheapest-looking model always the best deal?
Because a $0.006 draft-tier price and a $0.211 premium-tier price aren't answering the same question — they're different quality tiers, not competing options. The only fair comparison is within a tier: this page always compares GPT Image 2 (medium) against FLUX.2 pro, the cheapest other production-tier model, never across tiers.
Does batch processing change which is cheaper?
GPT Image 2 (medium) offers a 50% batch-API discount if generation can tolerate delay — that cuts this page's own monthly cost, but the same-tier comparison above uses standard (non-batch) prices since not every model in a tier offers batch pricing.
How was the Midjourney images/month figure calculated?
Midjourney publishes fast-generation quotas in GPU-hours (e.g. 30 hours for Midjourney Pro), not a direct image count. The images/month figures here are a derived estimate (~60 images per fast GPU-hour, a commonly-cited ballpark), not an official per-image number — treat them as approximate.
Are these prices current?
Hand-verified against each provider's official pricing page (checked 2026-07-13), re-audited quarterly since image-gen prices move faster than LLM text-token prices. All math runs client-side with tested code.