Leonardo AI Pricing vs Pay Per Use: Tokens or Cents

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Visual Sandbox vs Leonardo.Ai

One banks your tokens. One never issued any.

In short

  • Leonardo plans run $12 to $60 a month for 8,500 to 60,000 fast tokens.
  • Unused tokens bank up to three months' worth. Premium and up add unlimited relaxed images.
  • The pricing page does not say what one image costs in tokens.
  • Free gives 150 tokens a day, in public.

Our take. Use Leonardo for its own models, training and relaxed unlimited. Use Visual Sandbox for a price per run and no plan.

See a model's price
Leonardo.Ai logoLeonardo.Ai

Leonardo is a creator-first image and video platform with its own Phoenix and Lucid models, personal model training, a realtime canvas, and Canva behind it.

Pricing
$12 to $60 a month, in tokens
Free plan
150 tokens a day, public
Also does
Phoenix, Lucid, model training, realtime canvas

Side by side

The same 9 questions, asked of Leonardo.Ai

Visual Sandbox compared with Leonardo.Ai, question by question
What is comparedVisual SandboxLeonardo.Ai logoLeonardo.Ai
What you pay forEach generationA monthly token plan, with a bank and a relaxed lane
What the balance is inMoney. One credit is one centFast tokens. The cost per image is not on the page
Free tierNone. A $10 minimum top up150 fast tokens a day, public creations, basic quality
Cheapest paid tierThere is no planEssential, $12 a month, excluding tax
A month you make nothing$0The plan price. Tokens bank, up to a cap
The price before you runA dollar figure on every model page, before you sign inToken totals per plan. No cost per image
Working as a teamNot offeredTeam Starter, $72 a month for 3 seats, shared tokens
From the terminal or an agentA CLI, an MCP server and an API, on the same balanceA pay as you go API on a separate balance
The catalogue37 modelsPhoenix, Lucid Origin and Realism, FLUX, Motion, plus third-party models

Key takeaways

Is Visual Sandbox a good Leonardo.Ai alternative?

Where we win

No subscription
Nothing to cancel. A quiet month costs $0.
A dollar price before you sign in
Nano Banana 2 reads $0.09 at 1K. FLUX.2 Klein reads $0.02 at 1 MP.
The balance does not expire
No bank cap, no monthly reset.
One balance for the API too
The CLI, the MCP server and the API spend the same cents. Leonardo's API is a separate balance.
Video, 3D and audio too
Veo 3.1 at $0.25 a second, Hunyuan 3D 3.1 at $0.63 a model.

Where Leonardo.Ai wins

Its own models
Phoenix and Lucid for images, Motion for video. Nobody resells them.
Train your own
10 to 50 personal models a month by plan, on your own images.
A token bank
Unused fast tokens carry forward, up to three months' worth.
Relaxed unlimited
Premium runs selected image models without tokens. Ultimate adds video.
A realtime canvas
The image updates as you draw. Free has a taste of it.

Worth checking

Nobody prices the image
8,500 tokens a month, and no word on what one image costs. You find out inside.
Relaxed is selected models
Lucid, Phoenix, FLUX Dev and Schnell. Not the third-party ones.
Two toggles, one price
Pay Yearly promises up to 20% off, but both toggles showed the same prices when we read the page.
Prices exclude tax
The page says so on every card.
We have no Phoenix
No Leonardo models here, and no training.

Tokens or cents

The price is on the page before the first run

This is the live price card off our Nano Banana 2 page. Leonardo sells images inside a token plan and does not say what one costs.

  • No account needed to read it.
  • Leonardo Essential is $12 for 8,500 tokens. What an image costs is not on the page.
  • A quiet month here costs $0.

Leonardo sells the month and banks the rest. 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 the plans cost

Leonardo does not publish a token cost per image on its pricing page, so this table stops at the plan, the tokens and the bank.

$0.09

Visual Sandbox

Nano Banana 2 at 1K, in any month.

$12

Leonardo Essential, a month

8,500 fast tokens, a 25,500 token bank.

$0

Leonardo relaxed images

Unlimited on Premium and up, selected models, slower.

Leonardo planA monthFast tokens a monthToken bankRelaxed unlimited
Free$0150 a day150No
Essential$128,50025,500No
Premium$3025,00075,000Images, selected models
Ultimate$6060,000180,000Images and video, selected models
Team Starter$72 for 3 seats75,000 shared225,000Images and video
  • Prices exclude tax. The page advertises up to 20% off yearly, but showed the same prices under both toggles in two reads.
  • Twelve dollars here buys 133 Nano Banana 2 images at 1K, or 600 FLUX.2 Klein images at 1 MP, in any month.
  • The API is pay as you go on its own balance, and its credits do not expire. That is the closest Leonardo comes to our model.

Which one fits

Which one fits you?

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

01 of 04

Do you train models on your own images?

Or use both

Leonardo covers its own models and the relaxed volume. We cover the priced run and the rest.

  1. 01

    Keep Leonardo for Phoenix, Lucid and the models you train.

  2. 02

    Run Nano Banana, Veo, 3D and audio here, per run.

  3. 03

    Point your agent at our MCP server, on the same balance as the web.

The call

Which one to pick

Pick Visual Sandbox when

  • You want to know the price per image before you run.
  • Your output is uneven and an allowance would go to waste.
  • You want the API, the CLI and the web app on one balance.
  • You want video, 3D, vector and audio next to image.
  • You do not want another subscription.

Leonardo.Ai logoPick Leonardo.Ai when

  • You want Phoenix or Lucid.
  • You train personal models on your own images.
  • You generate most days and relaxed unlimited fits your pace.
  • You want a realtime canvas.
  • You want tokens that bank when you skip a month.

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

Free gives 150 fast tokens a day. Essential is $12 a month for 8,500 tokens. Premium is $30 for 25,000 with unlimited relaxed images. Ultimate is $60 for 60,000 with unlimited relaxed images and video. Team Starter is $72 a month for three seats. Prices exclude tax.