Model index · Image · updated 2026-08-16

Image models, priced and ranked

Every Image model we know of — 446 from 38 companies, 103 of them with a published price per image.

Every price on this page is per image. 14 priced Image models are sold in a different unit and are left out of the rankings rather than converted with a guess — they are still in the full list at the bottom, and on their own pages.

Most widely-used Image models and their cheapest credible alternative

One model per company, ordered by how prominent the company is and how many independent providers serve the model — hosts only carry what customers ask for, so that is measured demand. It is not traffic or usage data, which we do not have. A matched alternative scored within 10 points on our own probe suite; unverified means it is cheaper but we have not measured one or both sides, so no quality claim is made.

None of these alternatives are quality-matched yet — quality is measured on request, so the savings shown are price-only. Each alternative does the same job as the model beside it; that is a hard filter, not a ranking hint.

Cheapest Image models right now

Per image, cheapest host per model.

* OpenRouter chooses a host for each request, and the figure above is what its default choice costs — not a fixed rate for this model. Selecting a specific host through the same account costs whatever that host charges, which is why this row can sit above or below the hosts listed beside it. Token rates are passed through from the underlying provider with no markup, so the per-1M price above is what that host charges directly — OpenRouter's own charge sits on funding instead: 5.5% (min $0.80) by Stripe or 5% by Coinbase to buy credits, 5% of the equivalent spend if you bring your own provider key. So budget about 5% above the rate shown unless you already hold credit. Fee schedule.

Best value: measured quality per dollar

Our own probe suite at temperature 0, scored by deterministic checks — no LLM judge and no vendor claim. Quality is measured on request, so most of the catalog has no score; a blank is not measured, never a low score.

Newest Image models

By first-published date. In this market recency is the strongest single signal of relevance, and it is a fact we hold for every model rather than a proxy.

What Image models actually do

A category is not one market. Comparison on each model page is restricted to models doing the same job, because a price difference between two different jobs is arithmetic rather than advice.

All 446 Image models

Everything we hold in this category, newest first, priced or not. A model with no price is a fact about what its provider publishes, not a gap we hide.

Other categories

Text · Video · Music & Sound · 3D · All models

Frequently asked