12,000 Recraft V4 images: fal list $480 vs Sume $600, the $120 gap

Twelve thousand Recraft V4 images cost $480 at fal's listed $0.04 per image and $600 on Sume at $0.05, a difference of $120. The gap is Sume's 25% on top of the provider list price, which is how Sume prices its image models.

The numbers

fal's Recraft V4 text-to-image page lists $0.04 per image (read 2026-10-09). Sume's catalog row for recraft-v4 is $0.05, which is 0.04 x 1.25.

What the margin covers

Sume's image documentation states what you get for the price: Sume-hosted result URLs, a 30-second synchronous window with a 202 job envelope for longer work, status and result endpoints, and no charge when a generation fails or is cancelled. Sume does not disclose the upstream provider behind a model, and it accepts the multi-provider routing fields without effect in v1.

Those are integration conveniences. They do not change what Recraft V4 produces. Sume's docs list the output formats the Image API accepts (png, jpeg, webp, svg), but each model advertises its own subset, so read the descriptor for recraft-v4 before you rely on a format.

When to go direct

At 12,000 images a month the gap is $120, which may be less than the engineering time to run a second integration. At 1.2 million images it is $12,000 a month, and a direct provider contract is worth negotiating. The break-even is whatever a second vendor integration costs you to build and operate, divided by $0.01 per image.

If Recraft V4 is one of several models you use, keep it on Sume for the single wallet and move it only when its volume dominates your image spend.

Reading the price on both sides

The fal page quotes a flat per-image price, and Sume's row is derived from it, so the two are linked today. Check both on the day of the run, because either can change.

For a different spot check of the same rule on other models, see the Ideogram 4.5 and Seedream 5 Lite rows, which follow the same list x 1.25 relation.

Before you decide

Run three checks. Read the current price on fal's Recraft V4 page and on Sume's GET /v1/images/models endpoint, since either side can change. Confirm that the output format you need (for example svg or webp) is in the recraft-v4 descriptor on Sume. Then compare the $0.01 per-image gap against the engineering cost of a second integration, billing account and failure handling.

For a team already on Sume for video, speech and music, the one-wallet argument usually wins at this volume. For a team that only generates Recraft images at scale, call the provider.