FLUX.1 schnell $3 per 1,000 images: Replicate, fal and Sume's floor

FLUX.1 schnell is listed at $3.00 per thousand output images on Replicate and at $0.003 per megapixel on fal, so a 1-megapixel image is $0.003 on both and 1,000 of them are $3.00. Sume's image catalog has no FLUX.1 schnell id. Its lowest-priced rows are $0.025 per image, which is 8.3 times the schnell price. Sources: Replicate pricing and fal pricing, both read 2026-10-04.

So if schnell is the model you need, Sume is not the place to buy it today. If you only need cheap images and not that model, the next section shows what the gap looks like.

Two different units

Replicate prices schnell per output image. fal prices it per megapixel. They agree at 1 megapixel and diverge above it: a 2-megapixel image is $0.006 on fal's per-megapixel line. I did not verify how either service rounds a non-integer megapixel count, so the 2 MP row below is simple multiplication, not a quote.

Sume prices per image by row. Its Image API docs say the price on an endpoint is the amount charged to your wallet, and failed or cancelled generations are not billed.

What the $22 gap buys

At 1,000 images the difference between schnell and Sume's floor is $22. That is the price of a different set of models: Sume's lowest rows are from Grok, Qwen and Google, and I did not benchmark them against schnell. FLUX.1 schnell is a distilled model made for speed, so it is a fair choice for thumbnails, drafts and layout tests where you will discard most outputs.

If you generate 200 draft images a day for a month (6,000), schnell costs $18 and Sume's floor $150. Whether the $132 matters depends on how many of those drafts become finals.

A practical split

• Keep schnell on Replicate or fal for throwaway drafts, if your team already has an account there.
• Use a Sume row for images that must sit in the same wallet and job history as your video, avatar and audio work.
• Do not assume a model name carries over: check GET /v1/images/models on Sume for the ids it lists today.

Check before you commit

Both vendor pages can change. Record the date of the price you used, and re-read before a large run. For Sume, the live catalog is the source of truth, not a blog post.