OpenAI Images (gpt-image) vs Replicate pricing
Both are in image generation apis. OpenAI Images (gpt-image) is billed per token (~$0.02-0.25/image); Replicate is billed per image / gpu-second ($0.003-0.04). Numbers below are copied from each vendor's pricing page.
OpenAI Images (gpt-image)No free tier
- Free tier
- None (pay-per-use; shared org credits)
- Billed
- Per token (~$0.02-0.25/image)
- Best for
- Frontier image gen + editing inside the OpenAI platform
- Verified
- Jun 27, 2026
ReplicateNo free tier
- Free tier
- None (limited playground try-for-free only)
- Billed
- Per image / GPU-second ($0.003-0.04)
- Best for
- Run any open model via one API
- Verified
- Jun 27, 2026
OpenAI Images (gpt-image) plans
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| gpt-image-1-mini | $2.50 in / $8.00 out per 1M tokens | Cheapest/fastest tier; cached input $0.25/1M. Batch: $1.25 in / $4.00 out. |
| gpt-image-1.5 | $8.00 in / $32.00 out per 1M tokens | Dec 2025 model; per-image square approx $0.009/$0.034/$0.133 for low/med/high. Batch: $4 in / $16 out. |
| gpt-image-2 (flagship) | $8.00 in / $30.00 out per 1M tokens | Current top model; per-image square approx $0.006/$0.053/$0.211 low/med/high. Batch: $4 in / $15 out. |
| gpt-image-1 (original) | ~$0.02 / $0.07 / $0.19 per image | Per-image low/medium/high quality (1024x1024); token-based ($5 text in, $10 image in, $40 image out per 1M). |
- More expensive and slower than self-hosted open-weight diffusion models for high-volume use
Replicate plans
| Plan | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go (time-based) | From $0.000225/sec (T4) to $0.001525/sec (H100) | Per-second GPU billing used by most community models; you pay for setup, idle and active time on private models. Multi-GPU up to 8x A100/H100 available with committed contracts. |
| FLUX Schnell (official, per-image) | $3.00 / 1,000 images ($0.003 each) | Fast, low-cost text-to-image official model billed per output image rather than per second. |
| FLUX Dev (official, per-image) | $0.025 / output image | Higher-quality FLUX variant with output-based pricing. |
| FLUX 1.1 Pro (official, per-image) | $0.04 / output image | Top-tier FLUX model on Replicate, billed per generated image. |
| Recraft V3 / Ideogram v3 | $0.04 / image (Recraft V3); $0.09 / image (Ideogram v3 Quality) | Commercial official image models with flat per-image pricing. |
| Enterprise | Custom | Volume discounts, committed-use multi-GPU capacity, and dedicated support. |
- Per-second GPU billing on community models is hard to predict at production scale
- Frequently cited as 5-15x more expensive than direct/specialized providers for a single high-volume model
- No persistent free tier for sustained production use
Source: https://replicate.com/pricing