4K hero image on Sume: native $0.20 or 1K plus upscale $0.30

Generating a 4K image directly with Nano Banana 2.1 costs $0.20 on Sume. Generating a 1K image ($0.10) and running it through Image Upscale ($0.20 per image) costs $0.30, which is 50 percent more and two jobs instead of one. If you are making the image from scratch, ask for 4K. The upscale makes sense when the image already exists and has no generation step to move.

The upscale catalog entry says it charges $0.20 per image and reserves about 16 megapixels of generative output. A 4K frame is also around that scale, so check the output size of your result before assuming the two routes give the same dimensions.

Routes compared

Sume prices as of 2026-10-09.

When two jobs are worth it

There are two reasons to choose the two-step route. The first is control: you can review the 1K image at $0.10 and only spend the extra $0.20 on the ones you keep. If one in three 1K drafts is kept, the cost per kept image is 3 x $0.10 + $0.20 = $0.50, against a blind 4K run of 3 x $0.20 = $0.60 per kept image. The break-even is a keep rate of one in two: at that rate, 2 x $0.10 + $0.20 = $0.40 equals 2 x $0.20.

The second is input you did not generate: product photos, scans and renders. There is no native 4K route for them, and the upscale is the only line to price.

Admission and cost of mistakes

Each job holds its estimate when it is accepted, and a failed image is not billed. The upscale is a fixed $0.20 whether the input is a clean photo or a poor one, so filter obviously unusable inputs before you pay for them. Two-step flows double the number of jobs in flight, so on Free (6 accepted jobs) a batch of 20 hero images is twenty first-step jobs followed by twenty upscales, across several submit rounds.

Checking the output you get

Before committing a catalog to either route, run one image through each and measure the pixel size of the result. The upscale reserves about 16 megapixels of generative output, and the native route's 4K size is named by the image model's own size options. If one route lands below your delivery spec, its lower price does not matter. Keep both routes' job ids in your log so the ledger can attribute each cost to the image it produced.