If you publish or sell what you generate — social posts, ad creative, thumbnails, client work — the model is only half the question. The other half is in the terms: which plan actually lets you use the image commercially, who owns it, and what each finished image really costs. This guide compares Leonardo.Ai, Ideogram, Freepik AI and Magnific on those published terms.
Essential, billed annually ($12/mo monthly). 8,500 tokens/month.
Plus, billed annually ($20/mo monthly). 2,400 credits/month.
Premium, billed annually ($20/mo monthly). 240,000 credits/year.
Included in the Magnific plans above — no separate upscaler plan exists anymore.
| Leonardo.Ai | Ideogram | Freepik AI (Magnific) | Magnific Upscaler | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Creators and freelancers who need private, owned output | Designs with text in them: posters, thumbnails, merch concepts | Marketers who want generation and stock assets under one license | Anyone finishing images: enlarging AI art or photos for print and ads |
| Commercial use on the free plan | A non-exclusive, royalty-free license is granted — but Leonardo owns the output and it is public | Allowed by the terms on every plan — but free output is public and remixable | No — personal use only, attribution required | Same plan as Freepik AI: no commercial use on free |
| Commercial use on paid plans | Yes — and the IP in your content vests in you on creation (Terms §8.3) | Yes — Ideogram claims no ownership and assigns any rights it acquires to you | Yes — commercial AI license included; but AI output is excluded from the vendor's legal protection | Yes — covered by the same commercial AI license |
| Who owns the output | Paid: you. Free: Leonardo (you get a license back) | You, on all plans, per the terms | The vendor does not guarantee copyright ownership of AI output in all jurisdictions | Same as Freepik AI — upscaling your own file does not change its rights position |
| Watermark / attribution | No watermark is documented in the vendor's pricing or terms we checked; the free-plan catch is publicity and ownership, not a mark | No watermark documented; the free-plan catch is that everything is public | Free: attribution ("Designed by Magnific") always required. Paid: no attribution | Same as Freepik AI |
| Privacy of generations | Free: public, others can copy and remix. Paid: private generation available | Free: public. Plus and above: private by default | Generations are account-based; the free restriction is licensing, not a public feed | Same as Freepik AI |
| Free option | 150 tokens/day, resets daily, no rollover | Weekly credits for accounts signed in with Google, Apple or Microsoft (amount can vary) | About 20 AI images/day, personal use only | Shared with Freepik AI free tier |
| Paid plans from | Essential $12/mo ($10 billed annually), 8,500 tokens/mo | Plus $20/mo ($15 billed annually), 2,400 credits/mo | Premium $20/mo ($14.50 billed annually), 240,000 credits/yr | No separate plan — included in Premium and above |
| Credit system | Tokens, priced by computing cost — no fixed tokens-per-image. Paid tokens roll over up to a 3-month bank; top-ups never expire but need an active subscription | Credits; monthly credits do not roll over. Extra credits $0.01 each, expire after 365 days | One credit pool for image, video, audio and upscaling. Annual plans get the year's credits up front, valid one year | Draws from the same pool: 90 credits per 2K Precision upscale |
| Higher tiers | Premium $30/mo ($24 annually) 25,000 tokens + unlimited relaxed generation on selected models; Ultimate $60/mo ($48 annually) 60,000 tokens | Pro $60/mo ($42 annually) 7,500 credits/mo; Team $30/user/mo ($20 annually) | Premium+ $45/mo ($33.75 annually) 600,000 credits/yr + unlimited on selected models; Pro from $110/mo ($82.50 annually) 1.5M credits/yr | Premium+ and above add the Topaz upscalers alongside Magnific's own |
| Trade-off to know | Token costs vary by model and settings, so cost per image is an estimate, never a fixed price | Monthly credits vanish if unused, and per-image credit costs have been revised several times in 2026 | Per-model credit costs span roughly 50–400 per image, and the vendor can change them without notice | The standalone upscaler subscription no longer exists — you are buying the whole suite whether you need it or not |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. Magnific shows prices in local currency and runs frequent promotions, so the figure on the live page may differ from the list prices used here. Plans and license terms change — always confirm the current price and terms on the vendor's site before you buy or publish commercially.
"Free" means three different things across these four tools, and the difference is exactly what decides whether a monetized post or a client deliverable is safe.
Leonardo's pricing FAQ grants free users a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use their creations commercially. But its Terms (§8.7) vest ownership of free-plan output in Leonardo itself, free generations are public for other users to copy and remix, and Leonardo keeps a perpetual license to use public content, including for training AI models. Fine for testing and personal projects; the wrong foundation for client work, logos or anything that needs to stay unreleased.
Ideogram is the most permissive here on paper: one set of terms covers every plan, Ideogram claims no ownership of your output and does not restrict commercial use. The catch is visibility, not rights: everything generated on the free plan is public. There is also a trap for the technically minded — Ideogram's downloadable open model weights are under a non-commercial license, the opposite of the hosted service's terms. The commercial terms above apply to images you generate on ideogram.ai, not to self-hosting the weights.
The free tier limits AI output to personal use and requires a visible "Designed by Magnific" credit at all times. A monetized channel, paid ad or client deliverable is outside that license — this is the one tool of the four where "free for commercial use" is simply not on offer. Any paid plan removes both restrictions: commercial AI license in, attribution out.
A commercial license is permission from the vendor; it is not a promise that the output is copyright-protected in your country, unique, or free of resemblance to existing work. Magnific states this most plainly: AI-generated content is excluded from its legal protection on every tier. If an image is headed for merchandise, packaging or a trademark filing, treat every tool here as a starting point and get the rights position checked properly.
Monthly prices hide the real comparison, because each tool meters differently. The table below prices the same workload — 300 finished images a month at standard-to-high settings — using only published prices and published per-image credit costs. It is arithmetic on vendor figures, not a benchmark, and where a vendor does not publish a fixed per-image cost (Leonardo), we say so.
| Tool | The math | Effective cost per image |
|---|---|---|
| Ideogram | Extra credits are $0.01 each. At current published rates, a mid-tier (Balanced/Default) generation on the current model costs about 6 credits → $0.06. 300 images = 1,800 credits, which fits inside Plus (2,400/month): $15 billed annually ÷ 300 | ≈ $0.05–0.10 — top quality settings roughly double the credit cost; the API's flat $0.03 / $0.06 / $0.10 per image confirms the same range |
| Leonardo.Ai | Essential is $12 for 8,500 tokens → about $0.0014 per token. Leonardo does not publish a fixed tokens-per-image figure (cost follows computing load); third-party checks of the vendor's standard models put a standard generation at roughly 10–15 tokens | ≈ $0.01–0.02 (estimate) — the lowest on paper, but it moves with model, resolution and add-ons like refinement and upscaling. On Premium and above, unlimited relaxed generation on selected models breaks this math entirely, in your favour |
| Freepik AI / Magnific | Premium billed annually is $174 for 240,000 credits → $0.000725 per credit. A representative mid-range model (Nano Banana 2 at 1K/2K) costs 75 credits per image → $0.054. 300 images = 22,500 credits | ≈ $0.05–0.08 on standard models ($0.075 on monthly billing). Premium models at ~400 credits per image jump to roughly $0.29–0.40. Note the annual pool: there is no monthly wall, so a heavy month is absorbed by the year's credits |
| Magnific Upscaler | A 2K Precision upscale is listed at 90 credits. Same pool, same per-credit price as above | ≈ $0.07–0.09 per upscale — this is a finishing cost on top of generation, and it applies even on plans that advertise unlimited generation |
Credit costs per model and per-image credit rates were checked in November 2026 and are revised by the vendors — Ideogram changed its per-image credit rates more than once during 2026, and Magnific's documentation reserves the right to change credit costs without notice. Re-run this arithmetic on the live pricing pages before committing to a plan.
Leonardo (owned by Canva since 2024) is a multi-model image and video platform: its own Lucid and Phoenix models sit alongside third-party models, with a canvas editor, custom model training and upscaling in the same app. Everything is metered in tokens priced by computing cost. The free plan gives 150 tokens a day, resetting daily. Essential ($12/mo, $10/mo billed annually) provides 8,500 tokens a month and private generation; Premium ($30/mo, $24 annually) provides 25,000 tokens plus unlimited relaxed (slower, lower-priority) generation on a list of selected models; Ultimate ($60/mo, $48 annually) provides 60,000 tokens and extends relaxed generation to some video models. Paid tokens roll into a Rollover Bank capped at three months' worth, and top-up packs never expire — but they can only be used while you stay subscribed.
The licensing split is the sharpest of the four. On paid plans, the Terms (§8.3) vest ownership of your content in you on creation, and private content is not used for training without your written consent. On the free plan, ownership vests in Leonardo (§8.7), generations are public and remixable, and Leonardo's own commercial license back to you is described in its pricing FAQ rather than spelled out as an ownership right. If a client is paying for the image, that difference is the whole ballgame — and it is also why "AI image generator commercial use" searches so often end here.
Ideogram is a design-oriented generator whose published positioning centres on images that contain text — posters, logos, ad layouts, thumbnails and packaging concepts — alongside an editor with features like Magic Fill, background removal and upscaling on paid plans. Plus ($20/mo, $15/mo billed annually) includes 2,400 priority credits a month and private generation; Pro ($60/mo, $42 annually) includes 7,500 credits and batch generation; Team is $30 per user a month ($20 annually). The free tier runs on weekly credits for accounts signed in with Google, Apple or Microsoft — the vendor notes the amount can vary — and everything it makes is public. Monthly credits do not roll over; extra credits can be bought at $0.01 each and last 365 days.
On rights, Ideogram takes the opposite approach to Leonardo: a single set of terms for all plans states that Ideogram does not claim ownership of your output, does not restrict your using it for your own purposes including commercial ones, and assigns to you any rights it acquires in it. Two conditions deserve attention: you may not use outputs to train a competing model, and — separately — the downloadable open weights of its current model are non-commercial, so anyone planning to self-host for client work needs a different license entirely ($300/month self-serve tier and up).
What used to be Freepik's AI suite is now the core of Magnific: a generator offering 30+ models — third-party engines such as FLUX, Google Imagen, Nano Banana and GPT Image alongside the in-house Mystic line — plus video and audio tools, an editor, and the stock library the company was built on, all spending from one credit pool. Premium ($20/mo, $14.50/mo billed annually) carries 240,000 credits a year; Premium+ ($45/mo, $33.75 annually) carries 600,000 and adds unlimited generation on selected models; Pro tiers start at $110/mo ($82.50 annually) with 1.5 million credits. Annual plans receive the full year's credits up front, valid for a year with no monthly reset. The free tier allows roughly 20 AI images a day — for personal use only, with attribution.
The license is clean at paid level and strict at free level. Paid plans include a commercial license for AI-generated content with no attribution required. But the vendor is unusually explicit about the limits: it does not guarantee copyright ownership of AI output, and AI-generated content sits outside its legal protection, so infringement risk stays with you. Also keep the two licenses separate in your head — the merchandise license mentioned on higher tiers concerns stock assets; it is not a blanket merchandise guarantee for AI output.
Magnific began as a standalone AI upscaler, was acquired by Freepik in 2024, and in April 2026 gave its name to the whole company. The practical consequence for buyers: there is no upscaler-only subscription anymore. The Magnific upscalers — Precision, which sharpens and enlarges faithfully, and Creative, which adds detail guided by a prompt — are features inside the Magnific plans described above, drawing on the same credits, with the Topaz upscalers added on Premium+ and higher. A 2K Precision upscale is listed at 90 credits, which works out to roughly $0.07 on annual billing or $0.09 on monthly billing.
That bundling cuts both ways. If you already pay for Magnific generation or stock, a capable upscaler is effectively included, and per-image finishing costs are low and predictable. If all you want is upscaling, you are now buying a full creative suite to get it — and note that upscaling is never part of the "unlimited" generation allowances: every upscale spends credits, on every plan.
Ask what the image is for. Monetized or client work rules out Magnific's free tier entirely and Leonardo's free tier in practice. Ideogram's terms allow commercial use at every level, but free output is public — fine for published-first work, wrong for anything unreleased.
Steady monthly volume suits Ideogram's monthly credits or Leonardo's tokens. Bursty campaign work suits Magnific's annual pool. If you generate heavily and steadily on a few favourite models, Leonardo Premium's unlimited relaxed generation can beat every per-image price in this guide.
Per-image costs swing by model and quality setting — roughly $0.05 on a standard model can become $0.40 on a premium one inside the same subscription. Price the model you will actually use, at the quality you will actually ship, using the tables above as the template.
Check what survives cancellation: images you own stay yours, but Leonardo top-up tokens need an active subscription, Ideogram's monthly credits expire unused, and Magnific refunds only apply before you use anything. Generate your important work while the plan that gives you the right license is active.
It depends entirely on the tool. Ideogram's terms allow commercial use of output on every plan including free — but free generations are public. Leonardo grants free users a non-exclusive commercial license, yet Leonardo owns the output and it is public and remixable. Magnific (Freepik AI) does not allow it at all: free output is personal use only, with attribution. For anything a client pays for, the safe pattern across all four is to generate it on a paid plan.
On Leonardo's paid plans, the Terms vest the IP in you on creation; on its free plan, in Leonardo. Ideogram states it claims no ownership on any plan and assigns any rights it acquires to you. Magnific does not guarantee copyright ownership of AI output in any jurisdiction — no vendor can, because whether AI output is copyrightable at all is a question for your local law, not for a pricing page.
Rights and balances behave differently. Output you own (Leonardo paid, Ideogram) stays yours — no term we found revokes rights in already-created work when you cancel. Balances are less forgiving: Leonardo top-up tokens require an active subscription to use, Ideogram's monthly credits expire at the billing date and bought credits after 365 days, and Magnific's annual credits are a one-year pool. Spend-down plans that assume you can "use up credits after cancelling" generally fail.
The vendors' commercial licenses generally cover using output in products and marketing, but none of them guarantees the output is unique, trademarkable or copyright-protected, and Magnific explicitly excludes AI content from its legal protection. Its merchandise license, where offered, is about stock assets. For merchandise or resale as a core business, verify the current terms for that specific use — and expect platform rules on stock sites to add their own restrictions on AI content.
No. Since the April 2026 rebrand they are the same platform (magnific.com), with one set of plans and one credit pool covering generation, stock and the Magnific upscalers. Any page still selling or pricing a standalone Magnific upscaler subscription is describing a product that no longer exists.
All four tools here run in a browser with free tiers or trials to evaluate, and their paid entry points are Leonardo Essential at $10/mo billed annually, Magnific Premium at $14.50/mo billed annually and Ideogram Plus at $15/mo billed annually. The bigger differences for switchers are metering (tokens vs. monthly credits vs. an annual pool) and the license split between free and paid output, which is what the comparison table above is for. We have not priced Midjourney's own current plans in this guide — check its site for the other side of that comparison.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published pricing, terms and license documents — not from hands-on testing. We do not claim to have generated images with these tools, and we won't rank output quality we haven't measured. Where this guide makes a judgment (for example, which free plan is risky for client work), it is a reading of the published terms, shown next to the clauses it rests on.