GPT Image 2.5 Pricing
ChatGPT plans, API token rates, and what a single image actually costs.
GPT Image 2.5 has two price layers: the ChatGPT subscription (where image generation is included on every tier, with limits) and the API (pay-per-use, billed by tokens). Here is the current picture, verified October 1, 2026.
In ChatGPT
ChatGPT Images 2.5 is available across ChatGPT tiers. Image generation is included on the Free tier with daily limits; paid tiers (Plus and Pro) raise those limits. If you mainly create a handful of images a day by chatting, you can use GPT Image 2.5 at no extra cost beyond your existing plan. Exact limits change over time — check OpenAI's official pages for the current numbers.
API pricing (both models)
Flare and Sunburst share identical token rates:
| Token type | Price per 1M tokens |
|---|---|
| Text input | $5.00 |
| Cached text input | $1.25 |
| Image input | $8.00 |
| Cached image input | $2.00 |
| Image output | $30.00 |
What one image actually costs (output only)
For a 1024×1024 image, OpenAI's calculator estimates the output portion at roughly:
| Quality | Output tokens | Estimated output cost |
|---|---|---|
| low | 196 | ~$0.006 |
| medium | 439 | ~$0.013 |
| high | 1,756 | ~$0.053 |
| xhigh | 3,122 | ~$0.094 |
| max | 7,024 | ~$0.211 |
These are output-only estimates for a 1024×1024 request. They exclude prompt input, reference images, progressive streaming images, retries, and — for the Responses API — the top-level language model tokens. Your actual bill is in the usage field of each response.
Three ways to keep costs sane
- Prototype at low/medium quality, then re-render only the winning composition at high or above.
- Count retries as cost. A cheaper quality setting that needs three attempts can cost more than one clean high-quality render.
- Watch input tokens too. Reference images and long prompts add input cost — our structured prompts are detailed but tight for this reason.
Model facts on this page were last checked on October 1, 2026 against OpenAI's announcement and developer documentation coverage. OpenAI updates models and pricing regularly — always confirm current details on OpenAI's official pages before making purchase decisions.