Ideogram

Ideogram is an AI image generator built for graphic design and text inside images. It is free with 30 credits a week, Plus costs $20 a month, and its newest model, Ideogram 4.5, focuses on precise multi-step editing.

Ideogram is an AI image generator aimed at graphic design (posters, logos, packaging, social posts) and best known for putting readable text into images; its newest model is Ideogram 4.5, built for precise editing, and it is free with 30 credits a week, or $20 a month for Plus (as of Nov 6, 2026). In Jun 2026 it also released Ideogram 4.0 as open weights, under a non-commercial license.

Use Ideogram when the words in the image matter: a title on a poster, a label on a product shot, a T-shirt slogan, or layouts you want to set with a color palette and boxes. Use something else when you want a painterly look with little effort (Midjourney), the highest blind-vote scores (GPT Image, which also handles text well and is free in ChatGPT), vectors and brand kits (Recraft), or a model you may use commercially on your own hardware (Flux Klein or Stable Diffusion). More in Best AI Image Generator.

A pink and orange image of a bird beside the words Think it, Make it, Own it and the Ideogram logo Ideogram

Quick facts

Maker	Ideogram
Get it	ideogram.ai (web), iOS app, API, MCP
Price	Free (30 credits a week); Plus $20 a month (as of Nov 6, 2026)
Latest models	Ideogram 4.5 (editing, native 2K) and Ideogram 4.0 (Jun 3, 2026)
Other models in the app	GPT Image, Nano Banana, Seedance and Kling for video, on credits
Best for	Text in images, posters, logos, layouts, product photo edits
Open weights	Ideogram 4.0 only, non-commercial license

Plans and prices

Plan	Price	Credits	What else
Free	$0	30 a week	Everything you make is public; only Google, Apple or Microsoft sign-ins get the credits
Plus	$20 a month, or $15 a month yearly ($180)	2,400 a month	Private images, unlimited slow generations, all image and video models
Pro	$60 a month, or $42 a month yearly ($504)	7,500 a month	Batch generation, the largest queue
Team	$30 per user a month, or $20 yearly	3,600 per user	Two users or more, central billing

Sources: Available plans and Ideogram pricing, as of Nov 6, 2026. Extra credits cost 1 cent each. Monthly credits do not roll over. When paid credits run out, Ideogram's own models keep working in a slower queue, but partner models, edits, reference images and upscales still need credits.

API. Ideogram 4.5 has a fixed price per image whatever the resolution: $0.03 at low quality, $0.06 at medium and $0.10 at high, or $0.22 at high with reference images or for a Precise Edit, as of Nov 6, 2026.

Features

Text in images. Ideogram's models are trained to treat text as its own element: Ideogram 4.0 takes a structured JSON prompt in which each piece of text has its literal wording and a separate description of its style, so multi-line, multi-font layouts come out as written. Ideogram reports 0.97 English OCR accuracy for 4.0 on the X-Omni benchmark, its own measurement.

Layout and color control. The same JSON format lets you place any element with a bounding box and fix up to 16 hex colors per image, which suits brand work where a logo or headline must sit in a set place.

0:14 Precise editing. Ideogram 4.5 is built for many rounds of edits without the drift and artifacts that, in Ideogram's own side-by-side, build up in rivals. Its Precise Edit changes part of an image and leaves the rest untouched, and Zoom Editing works on large originals (Ideogram shows a 24-megapixel photo) without shrinking them.

Other tools. Transparent-background models, a background remover, custom models trained on your images, Remix, Describe, batch generation, and a Video app that runs ByteDance's Seedance, Kling and MiniMax models for clips of up to 30 seconds.

Open weights. Ideogram 4.0 is a 9.3 billion parameter model whose weights and code are on Hugging Face and GitHub; the nf4 version fits on one 24 GB graphics card. Its license is named Ideogram 4 Non-Commercial, so business use goes through the paid app or API.

Ideogram vs the alternatives

On the Arena text-to-image leaderboard (updated Nov 2, 2026, read Nov 6), Ideogram 4.0 (Quality) scored 1199, about 22nd; OpenAI's GPT-Image-2.5 Sunburst led with 1427. On the image edit board, Ideogram 4.5 scored 1347, about 24th. Arena votes general preference, not text accuracy alone. In Ideogram's own blind test of 4,366 graphic-designer votes, published with 4.0, GPT Image 2 came first and Ideogram 4.0 second.

GPT Image: higher Arena scores and strong text, free in ChatGPT; Ideogram also offers it inside its app.
Nano Banana: Google's editing model, free in Gemini; Google's model card lists small text as a weakness.
Recraft: vector output (SVG) and brand styles, for logos and icons.
Adobe Firefly: for teams already in Photoshop and Illustrator.
Midjourney: more artistic results, weaker as a typesetting tool.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ideogram free? Yes. Ideogram's free plan gives 30 credits a week to accounts that sign in with Google, Apple or Microsoft, but every free image is public; paid plans start at $20 a month (or $15 a month billed yearly).

What is the best AI for text in images? Ideogram is built for it, and OpenAI's GPT Image models are also strong at text and led the Arena text-to-image board in Nov 2026; Ideogram adds layout tools such as bounding boxes and color palettes.

What is the latest Ideogram model? As of Nov 6, 2026, Ideogram 4.5 is the flagship, aimed at precise editing at native 2K, and Ideogram 4.0 (Jun 3, 2026) is the open-weight text-to-image model.

Is Ideogram 4.0 open source? Ideogram 4.0's weights and code are public, but under the Ideogram 4 Non-Commercial license, so commercial use needs the Ideogram app or API.

Are Ideogram images private? On the free plan, no: every image is public in Ideogram's gallery. Plus, Pro and Team keep new images private until you publish them.