Griptape Nodes Pricing vs Pay Per Use: Studio Canvas

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Visual Sandbox vs Griptape

One is a pipeline for a studio. One is a price for a run.

In short

  • Griptape is free non-commercially, $40 a user a month for small teams, custom for studios.
  • Professional includes $40 of model credits a month and lets you bring your own API keys.
  • It runs models locally too, which nothing hosted can say.
  • The buyer is a VFX pipeline lead. Ours is a person with a prompt.

Our take. Use Griptape if you run a studio pipeline and need provenance. Use Visual Sandbox if you want a model at a price today.

See a model's price
Griptape logoGriptape

Griptape Nodes became a Foundry product: a node canvas for VFX studios to orchestrate AI models inside secure pipelines, next to Nuke and Katana.

Pricing
Free, $40 a user a month, or custom
Free plan
Yes, non-commercial, one user
Also does
Local models, provenance, on-prem, Foundry pipelines

Side by side

The same 9 questions, asked of Griptape

Visual Sandbox compared with Griptape, question by question
What is comparedVisual SandboxGriptape logoGriptape
What you pay forEach generationA seat, then model credits or your own keys
What the balance is inMoney. One credit is one centModel credits at pay as you go, or your own provider bills
Free tierNone. A $10 minimum top upNon-Commercial: one user, cloud or local, model credits pay as you go
Cheapest paid tierThere is no planProfessional, $40 a user a month, or $400 a year, up to 3 users
A month you make nothing$0The seat fee. $0 on Non-Commercial
The price before you runA dollar figure on every model page, before you sign inYour provider's price, if you bring your own keys
Working as a teamNot offeredUp to 3 on Professional; unlimited with permissions on Enterprise
From the terminal or an agentA CLI, an MCP server and an API, on the same balanceWorkflows become an API; provenance and metadata tracking
The catalogue37 modelsWhatever your keys or Foundry credits reach, plus local models

Key takeaways

Is Visual Sandbox a good Griptape alternative?

Where we win

Nothing to install
No node graph to build, no keys to manage, no pipeline to plumb.
A dollar price before you sign in
Nano Banana 2 reads $0.09 at 1K. Veo 3.1 reads $0.25 a second.
No seat
One balance, however many people or agents spend it.
Three doors an agent can use
The CLI, the MCP server and the API, on the same balance as the web app.
3D, vector and audio too
Hunyuan 3D 3.1 at $0.63, Eleven Music at $0.19.

Where Griptape wins

Built for a studio pipeline
Provenance, metadata, permissions, on-prem deployment, and Foundry behind it.
Local model execution
Run open weights on your own machines, inside the same graph.
Bring your own keys
Pay the providers directly and use Griptape as the canvas.
Free for non-commercial use
The whole canvas, one user, model credits pay as you go.
Workflows become APIs
A graph you built becomes an endpoint your pipeline calls.

Worth checking

A seat is a seat
$40 a user a month before any model runs. The included $40 of credits softens it, once.
Enterprise is a call
Studio scale, on-prem and unlimited users are custom priced.
It moved house
griptapenodes.com/pricing now redirects to foundry.com. The May dossier found no public prices; Foundry publishes them.
This is not for a prompt
Griptape orchestrates a pipeline. If you have one image to make, it is the wrong tool.
Our canvas is on a waitlist
Treat it as not shipped.

A pipeline or a run

The price is on the page before the first run

This is the live price card off our Nano Banana 2 page. Griptape charges a seat, then whatever your keys or its credits cost per run.

  • No account needed to read it.
  • Griptape Professional is $40 a user a month, with $40 of model credits inside.
  • A quiet month here costs $0. A quiet month there costs the seat.

Griptape sells the seat and the pipeline. We sell the run.

Nano Banana 2

What one run costs, before any account

1K
$0.09 / image
2K
$0.13 / image
4K
$0.19 / image
See it on the model page

The money

What each one costs to run

Griptape's price is the seat. The model cost is whatever your provider charges, or Foundry's pay as you go credits, so this table stops at the seat.

$0.09

Visual Sandbox

Nano Banana 2 at 1K, in any month. No seat.

$40

Griptape Professional, a user a month

$400 a year. $40 of model credits included.

$0

Griptape Non-Commercial

One user, model credits pay as you go.

Griptape planA monthA yearUsersModel cost
Non-Commercial$0$01Pay as you go credits
Professional$40 a user$400 a userUp to 3$40 of credits included, or your own keys
EnterpriseCustomCustomUnlimitedPay as you go, or your own keys
  • Forty dollars here buys 444 Nano Banana 2 images at 1K, or 160 seconds of Veo 3.1 with audio off, in any month, with no seat.
  • Prices exclude tax. The yearly price is $400 a user against $480 for twelve monthly payments.
  • If you already pay the providers directly, Griptape's canvas costs you the seat and nothing else. That is a different product from ours.

Which one fits

Which one fits you?

Four questions. The answer names Griptape when Griptape is the right call.

01 of 04

Do you run a studio pipeline?

Or use both

Griptape covers the pipeline. We cover the hosted run at a printed price.

  1. 01

    Build the pipeline in Griptape, with provenance on every asset.

  2. 02

    Call our API from a node for the hosted models with no open weights.

  3. 03

    Pay for those runs only, with no plan underneath them.

The call

Which one to pick

Pick Visual Sandbox when

  • You want a model at a printed price, today.
  • You want no seat and nothing to install.
  • You want an agent to generate through the CLI or the MCP server.
  • You want image, video, 3D, vector and audio on one balance.
  • You do not want another subscription.

Griptape logoPick Griptape when

  • You run a VFX pipeline and Foundry is already on your desk.
  • You need provenance, metadata and permissions on every asset.
  • You run models locally or on-prem.
  • You bring your own provider keys and want a canvas around them.
  • You want a graph that becomes an API for the rest of the studio.

Read the price, then run it

37 models across image, video, audio, 3D and vector. Each one prints its dollar price before you sign in.

See a model's price

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All comparisons

Non-Commercial is free for one user, with model credits pay as you go. Professional is $40 a user a month, or $400 a user a year, for up to three users, with $40 of model credits a month included and your own API keys allowed. Enterprise is custom. Prices exclude tax.