Cloudflare Workers AI image prices per tile vs Sume per image

Cloudflare Workers AI bills images per 512x512 tile, so a 1024x1024 image is four tiles: about $0.0002 on flux-1-schnell, $0.028 on lucid-origin and $0.023 on phoenix-1.0, going by its pricing page read on 2026-10-05. The cheapest Sume image-router models cost $0.025 per image. That puts Cloudflare's schnell far below Sume and its other two listed image models in the same range.

Cloudflare's per-tile prices

The Cloudflare page lists flux-1-schnell at $0.0000528, lucid-origin at $0.006996 and phoenix-1.0 at $0.005830, each per 512x512 tile. Counting tiles is arithmetic of mine, not a figure on the page: 1024 divided by 512 is two on each side, so four tiles for a 1024x1024 image. If you generate at another size, count the tiles at that size and check the page for any per-step charge or rounding it states.

Sume's image rates

Sume's image router lists each model's price per image, and the rate is the provider list times 1.25. Grok Image, Imagen 4 Fast and Qwen Image are $0.025 per image, Seedream v4 is $0.0325, FLUX.2 Pro is $0.0375, Ideogram 4.5 is $0.0375, $0.075 or $0.275 by quality, and the premium tiers run higher. The live list, with capabilities and prices by model, comes from the image models endpoint described in the image docs.

• $0.025 per image: Grok Image, Imagen 4 Fast, Qwen Image.
• $0.0375 per image: FLUX.2 Pro and Ideogram 4.5 at low quality.
• $0.275 per image: Ideogram 4.5 at high quality.

What the comparison does not say

The models are different. They are different models from different families. Price per image says nothing about prompt following, text rendering, edit support or reference-image support, and the Cloudflare page prices these three models only as text-to-image tiles. Sume's Ideogram 4.5 and GPT Image 2.5 entries, by contrast, take reference images for edits, so a price-only table flatters whichever side lacks the feature you need.

Three batch sizes

Here is the arithmetic at three batch sizes, using four 512x512 tiles per image on Cloudflare and Sume's $0.025 and $0.0375 rows. Each cell is images times the per-image price from above. Nothing is discounted, and no plan fee is included on either side.

A worked example

Say a product team generates 5,000 draft thumbnails a month at 1024x1024 and keeps 10 percent as finals. On Cloudflare's schnell the drafts cost about $1.06. On Sume at $0.025 they cost $125. If the finals are then regenerated at Sume's $0.275 high-quality Ideogram rate, 500 finals add $137.50.

The honest reading is that the draft stage is where a low per-tile rate saves real money, and the final stage is where model choice dominates the price. A pipeline can mix vendors, but each extra vendor adds a key, a bill and a failure path, and the savings have to cover that overhead. Few teams below tens of thousands of images a month come out ahead on the cheapest rate alone.

When Cloudflare's rate is the right pick

If you need very large volumes of small, fast images for drafts or thumbnails, schnell at roughly two hundredths of a cent per 1024x1024 image is hard to beat: 100,000 images is $21.12. The same 100,000 images at Sume's cheapest $0.025 is $2,500. If you need a model Cloudflare does not host, or you are already generating video, speech and tools on Sume, the single balance matters more than the unit price.

Both numbers move. Read Cloudflare's pricing page and the Sume pricing page when you budget.