Image upscale costs $0.20 on Sume: the 16 MP reserve explained

Sume's sume/image-upscale-1.0 is listed at $0.20 per image. Its catalog record describes the figure as a reserve of about 16 output megapixels of generative upscaling at list price times Sume's standard margin, and the minimum and maximum are both 20 cents. So budget $0.20 for every upscale call. The docs we checked do not describe a lower settlement, so do not plan on paying less.

What the record says

From Sume's catalog record, read 2026-10-05. The implied list price is our arithmetic: $0.20 / 1.25 = $0.16.

Upscale or generate at 4K?

Two ways to get a large image: make a small one and upscale it, or ask a model for 4K directly. Prices below come from different vendors on different bases: BFL's and Google's are their own list prices, and the Sume upscale price already includes Sume's margin. Treat the totals as rough orders of magnitude, not like-for-like.

• FLUX 3 Image is not in the Sume image catalog, so the second row mixes BFL's list price and Sume's upscale price for illustration.
• BFL's page lists 4k as about 16 MP; the Sume reserve is also about 16 MP. The numbers line up, but we do not claim the two outputs match in quality.

When the reserve matters

A reserve is money held while a job runs. Sume's catalog for this model sets minimum and maximum equal, so the held amount and the charge are the same $0.20 in the catalog. Where the final charge is defined, the live job and wallet records are authoritative; read them for your first few calls.

PRICE = 0.20
for n in (10, 100, 1000):
    print(n, "upscales:", round(n * PRICE, 2), "USD")

Rule of thumb

If you already have a good 1K image and need print size, an upscale is a fixed $0.20. If you are still choosing the image, generate at the lowest resolution, pick, then upscale only the winner. See AI image 4K: generate or upscale for the general trade-off.

Before you run it at scale

Run three upscales on your own images, then compare your wallet balance and the job records with the $0.20 line. If your images are much smaller than 16 megapixels, the docs we checked do not say whether the charge changes, and the catalog minimum equals the maximum, so assume it does not. Re-check the price before a large batch, since it is tied to a rate-card version dated 2026-09-03.