Leonardo AI: how the image and video tool works, and what it costs

Leonardo AI is a popular tool where you write a description (a "prompt") and get an image back. It is used for illustrations, game design and marketing, among other things. The tool can also animate images into short video clips.

Images: the Phoenix model

Leonardo's own foundation model is called Phoenix. According to Leonardo's description, it is good at following your text closely and can write legible text inside the image, which many image generators struggle with. You can also create variations of an image and use the ControlNet tool, which lets you control things like body pose and edges in the subject.

Video: Motion

In 2023, Leonardo launched the Motion tool, which turns a generated image into a short video clip of a few seconds. It was built on Stable Video Diffusion. According to guides, later versions can create clips of up to 10 seconds in high resolution from an image or text, with camera moves such as panning, zoom and tilt. You can also create video with Motion 2.0 and Google's Veo 3 model.

Prices

The prices below are in dollars and come from third-party overviews, so check Leonardo's own site for current figures.

- Free: 150 fast tokens a day. Images are public by default, and there are no commercial rights. - Apprentice, $12 a month: 8,500 tokens, private images and commercial use. - Artisan, $30 a month: 25,000 tokens and a faster queue. - Maestro, $60 a month: 60,000 tokens and the highest priority. - Team plans cost $72 and $144 a month.

Tokens are the currency you spend every time you create an image or a video. Video typically costs more tokens than images.

What does it mean for you?

If you just want to try it, the free plan goes a long way. But if the images will be used at work, it is worth noting that commercial rights and private images only come with the paid subscriptions.