Recraft Studio plan includes all models: when per-image billing wins

Recraft's Studio page says no separate subscriptions are required and all listed models are included in its standard plans, with a free trial and no credit card. That is a plan model for people working in an editor; Sume's Image API instead bills each completed generation to a wallet, so pick the plan for hands-on design sessions and the per-image API for code and automation.

The Studio claims come from AI Image & Video Models in Recraft Studio, read 2026-10-02. The Sume side comes from the Image API billing section.

What does Recraft Studio list as included?

The page lists Recraft V4, Nano Banana, Flux, GPT Image, Ideogram, Imagen, Seedream, Qwen Image, HiDream and Grok Image for images, plus video models such as Sora, Kling, Veo, Seedance and Wan that are reachable from its canvas. It says all models are included in standard plans and a free trial needs no credit card. The page does not state plan prices or credit allowances, so this post does not quote any.

How does Sume bill an image?

The Image API page describes billing as all-or-nothing. A generation either completes and is billed in full, or it fails and is not billed. Failed or cancelled generations are not billed, and a client that disconnects early is billed as a failed generation, meaning not at all. Endpoint pricing lines are the amount charged to your wallet with Sume's margin already applied, so cost_usd x n is what you pay.

Funds run out as a 402 insufficient_credits, listed in the Errors and credits page as a balance that is not sufficient for the requested generation.

Which one fits which job?

A designer iterating on layout in a canvas benefits from not watching a meter, which is the point of a plan. A pipeline that makes 40 product shots on a Tuesday and none on Wednesday benefits from paying per completed image and from having the cost in usage.cost on every response. Neither is cheaper in general; it depends on volume, and you should compute it with your own numbers.

You can do the arithmetic from the live catalog: list a model's endpoint record, read pricing[0].cost_usd, and multiply by images per month. For how list prices turn into Sume prices see list times 1.25.

curl "https://api.sume.com/v1/images/models/recraft/recraft-v4/endpoints" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY"

What about the Recraft API itself?

Recraft's API is billed separately from Studio plans in the posts we have already published; for its units and the Flash price see Recraft API pricing. This post only compares Studio's plan page with Sume's wallet billing.

A quick way to decide

This is a framing post, not a price comparison: Recraft's page gave no plan prices, so we compare billing shapes, not totals.

• Count the images you will generate this month and multiply by the catalog price of the model you would use.
• Add the hours a person spends in an editor; a plan page cannot price your time.
• If the work is repeatable and scripted, per-image billing gives a cost line per job in usage.cost.
• If the work is exploratory design, a plan with many models in one canvas may be the calmer choice.