Imagen 4 Fast 3 cents vs Ultra 8 cents: text-only, five ratios on Sume

Imagen 4 Fast bills 3 cents per image on Sume and Imagen 4 Ultra bills 8 cents. Both are text-to-image only, so image_urls and input_references are rejected, and both list the same five ratios: 1:1, 16:9, 9:16, 4:3 and 3:4. Ultra adds a resolution choice of 1K or 2K.

Cost at four volumes

Catalog list prices are $0.02 (Fast) and $0.06 (Ultra), times 1.25 gives $0.025 and $0.075, rounded up to 3 and 8 cents. Rounding matters: Fast's real 2.5 cents becomes 3 cents billed, so 10,000 images cost $300, not $250.

Where these rows fit

The limits are plain. There is no 4:5 and no edit mode, so a product shot from a reference photo, an Instagram portrait or a text revision cannot be done on Imagen. What Imagen does give you is a cheap, simple text-to-image call with common landscape and portrait shapes, plus a 2K option on Ultra.

If you need 4:5 at a similar price, Qwen Image and Flux 2 Pro list it at 3 and 4 cents. If you need to edit, move to one of the 14 edit-capable rows.

• Fast for drafts: 100 images are $3.
• Ultra for finals at 1K or 2K: 100 images are $8.
• Anything with a reference photo: pick a different row.

A short check

Before you build on Imagen, send one request with your ratio. A ratio outside the five returns 400 unsupported_parameter, which is cheaper to find out now than after a batch of 500.

A drafting loop

Use Fast for 8 prompt ideas at 4 images each: 32 images and 96 cents. Pick the two prompts that work, then run those on Ultra at 1K, 4 images each, for 64 cents. The whole loop costs $1.60 and produces 8 candidate finals. Add 2K on Ultra only for the one you will print or crop.

If your pipeline sometimes carries a reference photo, put an edit-capable row behind a router in your own code, and send references only to rows whose input_references maximum is above zero.