What it costs to have Google's AI generate images via API

Companies and developers who want to generate AI images in large volumes can connect directly to Google's Gemini API. There, the image models go by the name Nano Banana. An API is the access point where a program sends a request directly to Google's AI and gets an image back. The price depends on which model you choose and how large the image needs to be.

Several models to choose from

According to Google's documentation, the family includes Nano Banana (gemini-2.5-flash-image), Nano Banana 2, Nano Banana 2 Lite, Nano Banana 2.1 and Nano Banana Pro. Google calls the original Nano Banana an older model and recommends switching to Nano Banana 2 Lite.

Nano Banana 2 Lite can only generate images in 1K, meaning about 1024x1024 pixels. Nano Banana 2, 2.1 and Pro support 1K, 2K and 4K.

Standard tier pricing

Google charges $30 per million tokens for image output, and a 1K image uses 1,120 tokens. Tokens are the small units that AI models count in. According to Google's pricing page, the approximate prices per image are:

- Nano Banana 2 Lite: about $0.034 for 1K. - Nano Banana 2.1: about $0.034 for 1K, $0.050 for 2K and $0.113 for 4K. - Nano Banana 2: about $0.067 for 1K, $0.101 for 2K and $0.151 for 4K.

An independent pricing guide from MyArchitectAI states that the original Nano Banana costs $0.039 per image and that Nano Banana 2 Lite costs $0.0336. According to the guide, that is Google's lowest price per image. The guide's publisher sells a competing image service itself.

Batch processing can halve the bill

If the images aren't needed right away, you can use batch processing, where many requests are bundled and run together. According to Google, this gives a price about 50 percent lower than standard. The guide lists $0.0195 per image in batch for the original model and $0.0168 for Nano Banana 2 Lite.

Alternatives and caveats

The guide also mentions other services: MyArchitectAI at $0.01-0.03 per call, Flux 2 at $0.014-0.07 per megapixel and Grok Imagine at $0.02-0.05 per image. According to the guide, all images from Google's API get an invisible SynthID watermark.

The figures from Google's pricing page are approximate prices, so you should check them on Google's own page before working out a budget. The price of Nano Banana Pro cannot be determined with certainty from the material reviewed.