Ideogram sells five tiers: a free plan, Plus, Pro, Team and Enterprise. Off the vendor’s pricing page on 2026-09-15, Plus costs $20 a month or $15 billed annually, Pro $60 or $42, Team $30 or $20 per user. What the free plan grants has no published number.
The plans Ideogram sells today
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually | Each month | Concurrent generations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | — | Slow credits, weekly | 1 |
| Plus | $20 | $15/mo, $180/yr | 1,000 credits | 8 |
| Pro | $60 | $42/mo, $504/yr | 3,500 credits | 32 |
| Team | $30 per user | $20/user/mo | 1,500 credits per user | Not published |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Post paid | Custom credit amount | Custom |
The tiers differ by more than volume. Plus unlocks private generation, unlimited slow credits and unlimited character consistency. Pro adds batch generation, quality export and the largest queue. Team adds central billing and administration plus collaboration features, with a two-user minimum. Enterprise adds private custom models trained on your own visual data.
Monthly versus annual
The pricing page opens on the yearly view and advertises up to 33 percent off, which is where most of the circulating numbers come from. Comparison sites quote $15, $42 and $20 as list prices; they are annual equivalents, and every monthly price is higher.
What one credit actually buys
The vendor publishes a cost per model and rendering tier, and most pricing round-ups leave this table out.
| Model | Tier | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 4.0 (2K) | Turbo | 1 credit per image |
| 4.0 (2K) | Balanced | 2 credits per image |
| 4.0 (2K) | Quality | 3 credits per image |
| 3.0 | Turbo / Default / Quality | 2 / 4 / 6 credits per 4 images |
| 2a | Turbo / Default / Quality | 0.5 / 1 / 1.5 credits per 4 images |
| 2.0 | Turbo / Default / Quality | 1 / 2 / 3 credits per 4 images |
| 1.0 | Turbo / Default / Quality | 1 / 1 / 1 credit per 4 images |
| Upscale | Default | 1 credit per image, paid plans only |
Two things stand out. Ideogram 4.0 bills per single image while older models bill per set of four, so one credit buys very different amounts by model. And against Plus: 1,000 credits is 1,000 images at Turbo, 500 at Balanced, and just over 333 at Quality.
The free plan, and the number Ideogram does not publish
The free tier exists, costs nothing, and allows one running or queued generation at a time. Its allowance appears on the pricing page only as slow credits, weekly, for eligible accounts. The FAQ goes no further: eligible free accounts receive weekly credits when signing in with Google, Apple or Microsoft, and the amount may vary.
That is the whole published answer. No credit figure for the free plan, and no daily or weekly image count on any page read for this article. If you have seen a number, it came from somewhere else.
Third-party figures disagree with each other: ten prompts a day, ten credits a week, and one comparison site that states both that no free tier exists and that it grants ten prompts a day. Each is that site’s own claim.
Two documented details shape what free means. Reference and edit image tools normally draw on priority credits, but on the free plan they run on slow credits. And no discounts or free trials exist for subscription plans, so free is the only way to try the model.
Worked examples: two jobs priced out
Both examples price the same job so the two bills compare directly.
Example one: 300 finished images in the app
The setting is Ideogram 4.0 at 2K on the Quality tier, 300 finished images. The vendor’s own documented example prompt serves as input:
A poster on a wall with text that reads: "Everything you can imagine is real."Quality costs three credits per image, so 300 images consume 900 credits. The job fits Plus’s 1,000 monthly credits with about a hundred to spare, which is why that tier is usually the first paid step. It costs $20 monthly or $180 a year, and the allowance then refreshes twelve times.
Example two: the same job over the API
The same 300 images at 4.0 Quality bill per image at ten cents each, so $30. At Default the bill is $18, at Turbo $9. The two tables name their middle tier differently, Balanced in the app and Default in the API list.
Thirty dollars for 300 images is less than a month of Plus, the honest argument for the API at that volume. It is not an even swap: the API needs its own account, payment method and balance.
API pricing, and why your subscription does not pay for it
The documentation is blunt: Ideogram user subscriptions and API accounts are separate, with separate payment and billing setup. It repeats that API billing uses the API account setup, not your normal subscription plan. A Plus subscription therefore contributes nothing to API calls, and no tier gates access.
Getting in takes six documented steps: log in, open the API Dashboard, accept the Developer API Agreement, add payment information, create an API key. Keys appear in full only at creation.
Where the API price jumps
Ideogram 4.0 lists at three cents per image on Turbo, six on Default and ten on Quality. Transparent background is where the curve bends: on Quality, ten cents at 1K or 2K, twenty-six at 4K, forty-two at 8K. Cheaper tiers jump at the same thresholds.
Single-purpose endpoints cost less: background removal and Describe are a cent each, upscale six cents, layerize nine, instructional edit twenty cents at 1K and 2K. A self-serve custom model training run is forty dollars once.
Two operational facts matter at scale: the default rate limit is ten in-flight requests, and material price changes reach developers at least fourteen days ahead. The Ideogram API guide covers the request side.
Top-ups, expiry and the billing details worth knowing
Paid plans can buy extra priority credits, and every plan card prints the same entry price of four dollars. What that buys is not published: the documentation says the pack size varies by plan.
Expiry runs on two clocks. Priority credits included in a subscription expire at the end of each billing cycle, so unused ones are lost. Top-up credits are spent only after that allowance runs out, carry over month to month, stay usable after a subscription ends, and expire a year after purchase.
Three smaller terms matter before checkout. Upgrades are prorated automatically. Prices exclude tax, added at checkout by billing address. Payment runs through Stripe cards only, with no PayPal.
What Ideogram does not publish
Naming the gaps beats filling them with somebody else’s figures.
- The free plan’s credit amount, described only as weekly for eligible accounts, amount may vary.
- Any daily or weekly free image count.
- Enterprise pricing, which is contact sales, post paid, custom credit amount.
- Team’s concurrent generation count, left blank in the vendor’s own table.
- The pack size behind the four-dollar top-up.
- A date on the pricing page. The documentation page carries a verification stamp instead, August 21, 2026, and warns against relying on static tables.
The getting-started guide covers the app side, and the Ideogram topic page collects the rest.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free version? Yes, and it is the only free path, since no trials are sold. Its allowance is weekly slow credits, with no published amount.
Do I need Plus to use the API? No. Subscriptions and API accounts are separate, so a plan does not fund API calls and no tier gates access.
What happens when credits run out? Priority credits that run out move eligible generations to the slow queue, where waits depend on server capacity. Editing with AI and image reference will not run there.
Which plan fits a small studio? For 300 finished images a month at 4.0 Quality, Plus covers it at $20 monthly or $180 a year. Past that, Pro’s 3,500 credits and larger queue are the next step.