Ideogram

Ideogram is an AI image generator best known for rendering legible text inside images, which makes it a common pick for posters, logos, thumbnails and social graphics. Designers and marketers use it where other models garble lettering. There is a permanent free plan, but it runs on a slow queue and every image you make is public.

What the free plan gives you

Ideogram's own pricing page could not be loaded for this check, so the figures here come from third-party pricing guides published in 2026 and should be confirmed on the site. Those guides describe the free plan as a small weekly allowance of slow credits, generated through the slow queue with waits of roughly 30 to 60 seconds per image. You get access to the current model, the text-in-image feature and the community feed, with all outputs visible to other users.

Where the free plan stops

The two things that push people to pay are privacy and speed. Free images are public, so client work or unreleased designs cannot be kept confidential, and the slow queue makes iterating on a prompt tedious. Paid plans add priority credits and private generation. Third-party guides list a Basic plan at $8 per month with 400 priority credits, although at least one reports that Basic is no longer offered to new subscribers, with Plus at $20 per month ($15 on annual billing) for 1,000 credits and Pro at $60 per month ($42 annual) for 3,500 credits.

Who it suits

If you need an occasional image with clean text and do not mind it being public, the free plan is usable. Anyone producing images for clients, generating in volume, or needing private outputs should assume a paid plan from around $15 to $20 a month and verify the current plan list on ideogram.ai before subscribing.