10-slide carousel cost: high-quality cover, low-quality bodies

A 10-slide carousel on GPT Image 2.5 costs $2.225 if every slide uses the default quality, because the Images docs say an omitted quality defaults to high. Set quality: "low" on the nine body slides and keep high for the cover, and the same carousel costs $0.445, a drop of 80%.

The saving comes from setting quality per slide. Most carousel requests are sent with one shared payload, so the default quietly wins.

What does each quality tier cost per image?

The images docs list quality: auto|low|medium|high|xhigh|max for GPT Image 2.5 and note that auto reserves max. At the pricing package's default request the per-image prices are $0.02475 for low, $0.055625 for medium and $0.2225 for high. Higher tiers cost more, and the GPT Image 2.5 quality post covers xhigh and max.

What does a 10-slide carousel cost under different mixes?

The table prices six mixes with the same ten slides. The last column compares each against the all-high default.

Which slides deserve the higher tier?

That is a design decision, not a pricing one, and you should test it on your own content before committing a calendar to it. A reasonable starting rule is to spend on the slide a viewer sees before swiping, and on any slide whose job is to carry fine detail, then compare a low-quality sample of the body slides against the high-quality ones before you scale the batch.

• Generate the body slides at low first, and look at them at the size your audience will see them.
• Promote only the slides that fail that look to medium or high; regenerating one slide costs one image, not ten.
• Keep a single seed or reference image if you need slides to match; consistency is a prompt-and-reference matter, and tier does not guarantee it.
• Never send auto quality in a budgeted batch: the docs say it reserves max.

What does a month of carousels cost?

With the cover-plus-low mix at $0.445 a carousel, 8 carousels a month cost $3.56; at the all-high default they cost $17.80. Add a retry allowance of one regenerated slide per carousel, about $0.02 to $0.22 depending on tier, and the monthly figure moves by cents. The monthly content calendar post prices a full calendar; check which image quality it assumed before you apply this mix.

A middle option

If low quality is too rough for every body slide, promote the slides that carry data. A cover plus two high-quality chart slides and seven low-quality slides costs $0.84 (3 x $0.2225 + 7 x $0.02475). That is still 62% less than ten high-quality slides at $2.225, and the slides people screenshot look their best.

Generate the low-quality slides first. If the layout is wrong you have spent a few cents, and only the final versions need the higher price.

• Cover: high.
• Slides with numbers or small text: high.
• Transitional slides with a single image or phrase: low.