AI photo editing
Best AI image editor in 2026: 4 models, 5 everyday edits, measured
Four AI image editors, five prompt edits. All of them changed the price on a chalkboard correctly. The cheapest left the rest of the photo almost untouched.
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AI image models
The best AI image generators in 2026: 8 models, the same 4 prompts
Most AI image apps run one of eight models. We gave all eight the same four prompts. Six wrote a chalkboard sign exactly right; the cheapest cost half a cent.
AI video models
The 7 best AI video generators in 2026, tested on one rainy street
We sent one street-musician prompt to seven AI video models. One cut to close-ups, one invented a street sign, and the cheapest clip cost under eight cents.
Image to video
Best image to video AI in 2026: one photo through 5 models
One photo of a woman in the rain, five image to video models. All five kept her face. One lowered the umbrella as asked, and one put the photo in black bars.
Seedance 2.5 API
Cheapest Seedance 2.5 API: every platform priced per second
Seedance 2.5 costs about $0.231 a second at 720p at ByteDance's rate, and five platforms sell it there. fal.ai charges $0.473. Full tables, 4K and real bills.
Video API pricing
fal.ai alternatives: the same models, priced side by side
We priced Seedance, Kling, Veo, FLUX and more on fal.ai and six alternatives from published rates. Some cost half as much; fal wins on two promoted models.
kie.ai pricing
kie.ai alternatives: 4 platforms compared on price and models
kie.ai is cheap, but not on every model. A 5-second Seedance 2.0 clip it lists at $1.025 cost us $0.7619 elsewhere, and its public price list has no Midjourney.
Midjourney
The best Midjourney alternatives in 2026, tested on Midjourney-style prompts
Midjourney has no free plan and no official API. Four alternatives got three Midjourney-style prompts; one of them added a cat and printed a magazine page.
Replicate pricing
Replicate alternatives: 5 platforms compared on cost and fit
Which Replicate alternative fits depends on how you use Replicate. We compare five on billing, custom models and GPU prices, with a Kling 4.0 bill we measured.
Runware pricing
Runware alternatives: when to stay and when to switch
Runware is hard to beat on FLUX and GPU time. On Nano Banana Pro it charges $0.138 at 1K and $0.244 at 4K; four images we rendered elsewhere cost $0.075 total.
Sora 2
Sora alternatives after the shutdown: 4 models tested on a Sora-style shot
OpenAI closed the Sora app in April and the API in September 2026. We gave four models a Sora-style shot with one spoken line. Here is what each of them said.
WaveSpeedAI pricing
WaveSpeed AI alternatives: how its prices compare with the model maker's
WaveSpeedAI charges Google's price for Nano Banana Pro but 70% over OpenAI's for GPT Image 2.5. Three images it lists at $0.54 cost $0.0645 in total on TokLab.
API pricing
GPT Image 2.5 API pricing: what one image costs at each quality
GPT Image 2.5 bills image output at $30 per million tokens. Measured on real renders, a 1024×1024 image runs from about $0.006 at low to $0.21 at max on OpenAI.
Flare
GPT Image 2.5 Flare vs Sunburst: what 23 renders told us
We ran GPT Image 2.5 Flare and Sunburst on the same prompts. Token counts matched at each level we compared, Sunburst was slower on one route, output was close.