fal.ai alternative: image and video API prices compared

fal.ai is a good platform and for some models it is the cheaper one. This page puts the two price lists side by side for the models both of us sell, so you can decide per model instead of per vendor. Our prices are read from the billing table each time the page loads (last render: October 21, 2026). fal.ai prices are their published list prices, checked on October 18, 2026.

Short version: every Nano Banana tier in the table below costs less here (Nano Banana is $0.028 against $0.039). Kling 3.0 is cheaper on fal.ai in every tier we compared ($0.098 against $0.084 per second for Standard 720p without audio). If most of your spend is Kling video, stay on fal.ai for that and route images here. Both APIs are pay-as-you-go, so splitting traffic costs nothing extra.

Price comparison: same model, both platforms

fal.ai prices from their model pages (fal-ai/nano-banana, nano-banana-2, nano-banana-pro, kling-video/v3/standard and /pro text-to-video) on October 18, 2026. fal.ai bills Nano Banana 2 at 2K as 1.5× and 4K as 2× the base price, Nano Banana Pro 4K as 2×, and charges extra if web search is turned on. Our prices are before EU VAT, at the default 40% markup. Kling is billed per second of output on both platforms.

What the price lists do not show

• The price is in the model id. Resolution, clip length and audio are part of the id you call. If the request asks for a dearer tier than the id sells, for example 4K on a 1K id, the API answers 400 variant_mismatch before anything is charged. There are no hidden multipliers.
• Per-second video settles on real length. Per-second rows reserve the duration you ask for and settle on the length that comes back. Without a duration field we reserve 8 seconds.
• Spend caps per account. Set a daily and a monthly cap in settings. A call that would cross the cap is refused instead of billed.
• Prepaid credits that do not expire. 1 credit is $0.007 at the $10 Starter top-up (1,430 credits); the $50 and $200 packs add 5% and 12%. API spend over $50, $200, $1,000 and $5,000 in the last 30 days lowers the markup to 30%, 22%, 15% and 10%. No subscription and no free credits.
• EU invoicing. The seller is Prism Hooldus OÜ, an Estonian company (VAT EE102771509). Stripe Checkout adds VAT and takes your company VAT number, so the receipt works for EU bookkeeping.

Where fal.ai is the better pick

• Kling 3.0 at list price. On every Kling tier above, fal.ai lists a lower price than our default. Our markup drops with volume, and from $1,000 of API spend in 30 days Kling 3.0 Standard 720p comes to $0.0805 per second here.
• Your own models on GPUs. fal.ai rents serverless GPUs by the hour for custom weights. We sell hosted models only.
• 3D and speech. fal.ai lists 3D generation and text-to-speech models. Our catalog is image, video and music.

What you can call here

501 model variants on sale right now: 340 video, 129 image and 32 music, among them Google (Veo 3.1, Nano Banana), Kuaishou (Kling), ByteDance (Seedance), Alibaba (Wan), OpenAI (GPT Image), Black Forest Labs (Flux), Ideogram and Suno. Every variant has its own page with the price per call: browse the catalog.

Moving a call over

Image, video and music use the same two calls: create a task, then read the result. Send the model id from our catalog and the model's own input fields.

# Nano Banana: $0.028 per image
curl https://aimarcusimage.eu/api/v1/jobs/createTask \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-aig-..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "google-google-nano-banana-text-to-image",
    "input": {
      "prompt": "Flat lay of a leather notebook and a fountain pen on oak, morning light",
      "image_size": "1:1",
      "output_format": "png"
    }
  }'

# Kling 3.0 Standard 720p, 5 s without audio: $0.49
curl https://aimarcusimage.eu/api/v1/jobs/createTask \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-aig-..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "kling-kling-3-0-video-without-audio-720p",
    "input": {
      "prompt": "A paper boat drifting down a rain gutter, close-up, overcast light",
      "duration": "5",
      "aspect_ratio": "16:9",
      "mode": "std",
      "sound": false,
      "multi_shots": false
    }
  }'

Both return a taskId. Read the result with GET /api/v1/jobs/recordInfo?taskId=...; status polls do not count against the 20 requests per 10 seconds limit. Each response carries the charge in X-AI-Credits-Charged and your balance in X-AI-Credits-Balance. Full request shapes: API documentation.

Switching checklist

1. List the models you call on fal.ai and find each one in our catalog. Check the price on its model page.
2. Move the ones that are cheaper here first. Keep the rest where they are.
3. Create an API key, top up $10 and send one test call per model.
4. Set a daily spend cap before you switch production traffic.

FAQ

Is AI Generate cheaper than fal.ai?

For some models. Nano Banana costs $0.028 per image here and $0.039 on fal.ai. Kling 3.0 Standard 720p without audio costs $0.098 per second here and $0.084 on fal.ai. Compare per model; fal.ai prices on this page were checked on October 18, 2026.

Can I use fal.ai and AI Generate side by side?

Yes. Both are pay-as-you-go with no subscription, so you can send each model to whichever platform prices it lower.

How do I pay?

Prepaid credits through Stripe, from $10 for 1,430 credits. Credits do not expire, and there are no free credits or trials.

Does AI Generate offer LLM chat models?

Not at the moment. The API sells image, video and music generation; chat models are off sale.