AI Image Generation Cost Calculator
Estimate what it costs to generate images at scale across OpenAI's GPT Image models and Google's Imagen tiers.
Generation volume
Estimated cost
$240.00/month
Per image
$0.04
Per request
$0.04
How this is calculated
cost = images per request × price per image × requests per day × 30. OpenAI prices are estimated from published per-token image output rates using typical tokens-per-image counts; Google Imagen prices are flat per-image rates from provider pricing trackers.
Pricing is verified against provider pricing pages as of 2026-09-01. AI and cloud pricing changes frequently — confirm the current rate on the provider's own pricing page before budgeting.
Frequently asked questions
How is OpenAI's image generation actually billed?
OpenAI bills image output by token, not by a flat per-image price — image quality and resolution determine how many output tokens a generated image consumes. This calculator converts that into an estimated per-image price using typical token counts for each quality tier.
Why does image quality change the price so much?
Higher quality tiers produce more detailed images using significantly more output tokens — moving from low to high quality can cost 10-20x more per image.
Is Google Imagen priced the same way?
No — Google prices Imagen models at a flat rate per image (e.g. Imagen 4 Standard at $0.04/image), regardless of prompt complexity, which makes Imagen pricing more predictable at scale.
Does this include image editing or variation requests?
No — this estimates text-to-image generation cost only. Editing an existing image typically also consumes input image tokens in addition to output tokens.