Which AI Model for Which Creative Job in 2026
Not a tool list. A routing map: eight creative jobs, the model to reach for on each, and the reason — with every capability claim and every price quoted from the vendor's own page on 24 September 2026. Where a vendor page would not give us a number, the claim is cut rather than softened, and the cut list is printed below.
How to read this
Pick the row that matches what you are making, not the model you have heard of. Most of these jobs fail for a different reason — a product set fails on consistency, a poster fails on glyphs, a sequence fails on cost per second, an export fails on a licence footnote — and no single model is strongest on all four.
Before you open a new account: check what your existing subscription already carries. Recraft's Basic tier lists Nano Banana, Seedream, GPT Image and Flux. Runway's plans list Kling 3.0, Nano Banana Pro, Seedance 2.5 and Topaz AI Upscale. Two of the eight jobs below may already be covered by something you pay for.
The routing map
| Job | Reach for | What decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Product-scene imagery | Seedream 4 | Takes a list of 1-10 images for single or multi-reference generation. |
| Typography and layout-heavy assets | Ideogram | Plus plan $20 per month ($15/month, $180 billed annually) with 1,000 credits/mo. |
| Brand-constrained assets on a fixed palette | Recraft | Free: $0, '3 generations per style per day', 'All images are public', 'No commercial use', 'Recraft models only'. |
| Label fixes and text repair on an image you already have | Nano Banana 2 / Nano Banana Pro | Documented modes include 'Image editing (text-and-image-to-image)' and 'Multi-turn image editing'. |
| Hero and cinematic single shots | Kling Image 3.0 | 'Kling Image 3.0 & 3.0 Omni — Cinematic narrative quality, series generation & batch optimization and direct 2K/4K output.' |
| Longer cinematic sequences | Runway (Gen-4.5) or Kling 3.0 | Runway Free: $0/month, 125 one-time credits, 5GB asset storage. |
| Lip-sync and in-scene audio | Kling 3.0 Omni, then HeyGen or ElevenLabs | Kling: 'Synchronized audio-video generation, intelligent storyboarding and element reference'. |
| Upscale and final export | Topaz | Topaz for Web - Image: $19 shown struck through, $12/mo under a 'Limited time offer' banner. |
Built one of these? This is the page people read while they are still deciding which model to route a job to.
Add it to the directory — a free listing publishes after review, and it is the same page ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google read when someone asks which model to use for a job. Want it live in minutes with a Verified badge instead? That option is on the form, one-time, no subscription.
Job by job
Product-scene imagery
Reach for: Seedream 4 — Seedream review
A product scene is rarely one image. It is the same bottle, box or device on six backgrounds, and the thing that breaks is the product drifting between frames. Seedream 4 is the one in this list whose own model form is built around that: you hand it references and ask for a set, rather than re-rolling a prompt and hoping the object survives.
- •Takes a list of 1-10 images for single or multi-reference generation.
- •Sequential image generation: 'auto' lets the model decide whether to generate multiple related images (e.g., story scenes, character variations)', up to 15 total images including inputs.
- •Output sizes 1K (1024px), 2K (2048px) or 4K (4096px), or custom dimensions from 1024 to 4096 pixels.
Also consider: Recraft Basic carries Seedream alongside Nano Banana, GPT Image and Flux on one subscription, so you can A/B the same product brief across four models without four accounts.
Typography and layout-heavy assets
Reach for: Ideogram — Ideogram review
Posters, ad units, thumbnails and packaging mocks fail on one axis: the words come out misspelled or mangled, and no amount of re-rolling fixes a model that cannot hold a glyph. Ideogram's plan sheet is also the only one here that sells character consistency as an unlimited line item rather than a credit cost, which is what a campaign of layouts actually consumes.
- •Plus plan $20 per month ($15/month, $180 billed annually) with 1,000 credits/mo.
- •Pro plan $60 per month ($42/month, $504 billed annually) with 3,500 credits/mo, adding Batch Generation and Quality export.
- •Team plan $30 per user/month ($20/user billed annually, minimum 2 users) with 1,500 credits/user/mo.
- •Plus and above include 'Unlimited slow credits' and 'Unlimited character consistency'; priority credit top-ups are $4.
Also consider: Recraft is the cheaper way in if your layout work is brand-constrained: Basic is $10/month billed annually ($120) and it is the tier that unlocks custom color palettes and commercial rights.
Brand-constrained assets on a fixed palette
Reach for: Recraft — Recraft review
The constraint in brand work is not quality, it is repeatability inside a palette and a style someone signed off on. Recraft is priced around that, and its free tier is explicit about the trap most makers walk into: it is not licensed for the work you are about to ship.
- •Free: $0, '3 generations per style per day', 'All images are public', 'No commercial use', 'Recraft models only'.
- •Basic: $10 per month billed annually $120, 1,000 credits/month — the tier that adds 'Commercial rights and private generations', custom color palettes, Magic wand, Creative upscale and Extract prompt.
- •Pro: $16 per month billed annually $192, 2,000 credits/month — adds video generation and priority image generation.
- •Teams: $18 per month per seat billed annually $211, with shared custom styles and SSO.
Also consider: Ideogram Team if the constraint is a recurring character or spokesperson rather than a palette.
Label fixes and text repair on an image you already have
Reach for: Nano Banana 2 / Nano Banana Pro — Nano Banana 2 review
This is an editing job, not a generation job, and it is where most pipelines quietly fall back to Photoshop. Google's image models are documented for exactly this shape — multi-turn editing, a large reference budget, and the ability to ground a render in a search result when the label has to say something true rather than something plausible.
- •Documented modes include 'Image editing (text-and-image-to-image)' and 'Multi-turn image editing'.
- •'Use up to 14 reference images'.
- •'Grounding with Google Search' and 'Grounding with Google Search for images (3.1 Flash)'.
- •'Generate images up to 4K resolution', plus 'Video-to-image generation (3.1 Flash and 3.1 Flash Lite)' and batch generation.
Also consider: Runway Max if you want Nano Banana Pro on a flat subscription instead of API billing — its plan sheet prices 9,500 monthly credits as '475 Nano Banana Pro images (2K)'.
Hero and cinematic single shots
Reach for: Kling Image 3.0 — Kling AI review
A hero shot has to survive being placed at full bleed, which means the export resolution is part of the creative decision and not a post-step. Kling's image line is sold on direct high-resolution output, and because the same subscription covers its video models you are not re-licensing anything when the hero still becomes a hero clip.
- •'Kling Image 3.0 & 3.0 Omni — Cinematic narrative quality, series generation & batch optimization and direct 2K/4K output.'
- •Entry tier: $10/month, discounted to $6.99 for a first month, then $8.80/month, 660 credits/month.
- •$37/month tier, $25.99 first month then $32.56/month, 3,000 credits/month.
- •$92/month tier ($80.96 after the first-month offer, 8,000 credits) and $180/month tier ($159.99, 26,000 credits).
- •All listed tiers include 1080p video generation, image upscaling, brand watermark removal, video extension and 'Generated content is for commercial use'.
Also consider: Seedream 4 at 4K when the hero has to match a product set you already generated.
Longer cinematic sequences
Reach for: Runway (Gen-4.5) or Kling 3.0 — Runway review
Sequence work is bought in seconds, not in images, and the only honest way to compare plans is to convert credits into runtime. Runway is the rare vendor that publishes that conversion on the pricing page itself, so you can size a plan against a storyboard before paying. Kling is the alternative when you want the shot list and the audio handled in the same generation.
- •Runway Free: $0/month, 125 one-time credits, 5GB asset storage.
- •Runway Standard: $15/month ($12 billed annually), '625 credits monthly = 52s of Gen-4.5, 104s of Gen-4 Turbo, or 78 Gen-4 Images (1080p)', no watermarks, 4K upscaling.
- •Runway Pro: $35/month ($28 billed annually), 2,250 credits = 187s of Gen-4.5, plus unlimited 4K video upscaling, Runway MCP and 1 custom voice clone.
- •Runway Max: $95/month ($76 billed annually), 9,500 credits = 791s of Gen-4.5, with credits rolling over one month.
- •Kling: 'Kling 3.0 & 3.0 Omni — Synchronized audio-video generation, intelligent storyboarding and element reference'.
Also consider: FLUX 3 Video if you would rather not hold a subscription at all — Black Forest Labs bills per video second with no seat fees.
Lip-sync and in-scene audio
Reach for: Kling 3.0 Omni, then HeyGen or ElevenLabs — HeyGen review
There are two different jobs hiding under 'talking video'. If the audio belongs to the scene — a character speaking inside a generated shot — you want a model that generates picture and sound together, because bolting a voice track onto a silent render is where lip-sync dies. If the deliverable is a presenter to camera, an avatar product is cheaper and more controllable than any video model.
- •Kling: 'Synchronized audio-video generation, intelligent storyboarding and element reference'.
- •FLUX 3 Video: 'Audio is included at no extra charge', clips up to 20 seconds.
- •HeyGen: Free $0/mo; Creator $29/mo; Pro $49/mo ('export in stunning 4K video quality'); Business $149/mo with additional seats at $20/seat/month.
- •ElevenLabs: Free $0 with 10k credits/month; Starter $6/mo; Creator $22/mo (first month 50% off at $11); Pro $99/mo with 121k credits; Scale $299/mo with 3 seats; Business $990/mo.
Also consider: ElevenLabs on its own when the picture is already finished and only the voice is missing — the Free tier's 10k monthly credits is enough to decide whether a voice fits.
Upscale and final export
Reach for: Topaz — Topaz Labs review
The last step is the one that decides whether generated work can be printed, placed at full bleed or cut into a 4K timeline. Topaz is still the default here, but the thing to check before you budget is that the old perpetual-licence framing is gone from the pricing page: what is sold today is subscriptions, and two of the tiers carry a revenue-based commercial-use limit that will catch agencies out.
- •Topaz for Web - Image: $19 shown struck through, $12/mo under a 'Limited time offer' banner.
- •Topaz for Web - Video: $29 struck through, $19/mo.
- •Topaz Studio: $399/yr — 'All the apps' (Topaz Video, Topaz Photo, Topaz Gigapixel, Topaz for Mobile, Bloom, Topaz for Web), unlimited local rendering, unlimited cloud image rendering, 300 monthly video cloud credits that 'expire at the end of each month and do not roll over', 32MP cloud export limit.
- •Commercial use on those tiers is footnoted as 'Personal and commercial use for orgs under $1M USD annual revenue'; Topaz Studio Pro is the tier listing 'Full commercial use', 600 monthly video cloud credits, a 100MP cloud export limit and seat management.
Also consider: Runway Pro bundles 'Unlimited 4K video upscaling' and lists Topaz AI Upscale among its included models, which can be cheaper than a second subscription if you are already on Runway.
What we cut, and why
Every model named above was checked against its own vendor page on 24 September 2026. Where a page would not give us the number, we left the claim out instead of softening it into "around" or "from". Here is the full cut list, so you can see the shape of what is missing rather than assuming an omission is a verdict.
The per-unit prices on the model pages are rendered client-side and did not resolve to a number we could quote from the page itself. Rather than repeat a figure from memory, this guide routes those models through surfaces whose prices are printed as text — Recraft, Runway and Kling.
bfl.ai/pricing puts FLUX.2 image rates behind a client-side tab that did not render. The FLUX video rates below did render, so those are quoted and the image rates are not.
docs.midjourney.com returned HTTP 403 to our fetch on the verification date. No price, no mention — Midjourney is absent from this guide rather than guessed at.
It is not on the pricing page. It appeared in our own catalog until a sweep caught it. If you are working from an older comparison that quotes it, that comparison is stale.
ideogram.ai/pricing lists Plus, Pro, Team and Enterprise. No free card was present on the page when we read it, so this guide does not promise one.
A working two-subscription pipeline
If you want the shortest route from this map to a bill you can actually approve: the eight jobs collapse onto two subscriptions plus one pay-as-you-go account. Recraft Basic at $10/month billed annually covers the stills lane and carries Seedream, Nano Banana, GPT Image and Flux behind one login with commercial rights. Runway Standard at $15/month ($12 billed annually) covers the motion lane at 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 a month, with 4K upscaling and no watermarks, and it already lists Kling 3.0 and Nano Banana Pro among its models.
The pay-as-you-go account is the escape hatch for the month a sequence runs long: Black Forest Labs bills FLUX 3 Video per second with no subscription and no seat fee — $0.06/s in draft, $0.17/s at HD — so a burst of motion work does not force a permanent plan upgrade. Add Ideogram only when typography is the thing that keeps failing, and Topaz only when the export spec exceeds what Runway's bundled upscale gives you.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why route by job instead of picking one best model?
Because the failure modes are job-specific and they do not correlate. A model that renders a gorgeous cinematic frame can misspell a four-letter word on a label; a model that nails typography may hold a product's geometry poorly across a six-image set. 'Best' is only answerable once you say what breaks first for you. The practical consequence is that most working pipelines in 2026 hold two or three models, not one — and the interesting question is which subscription already carries the second one. Recraft Basic carries Nano Banana, Seedream, GPT Image and Flux; Runway carries Kling 3.0, Nano Banana Pro, Seedance 2.5 and Topaz AI Upscale. Check those before opening a new account.
Which model should I use for product photos?
Start with Seedream 4 if the job is a set rather than a single frame. Its API form takes 1 to 10 reference images for multi-reference generation and has a sequential mode that will produce up to 15 related images in one go, which is the shape of a product-scene brief: one object, many contexts, consistency across all of them. Output runs to 4K (4096px). If you would rather not touch an API, Recraft's Basic tier at $10/month billed annually carries Seedream alongside Nano Banana, GPT Image and Flux — the cheapest way to run the same brief through four models and let the result decide.
What is the best AI model for text inside an image?
Split the question. For generating a layout with correct words in it, Ideogram is the one that sells the relevant guarantees on its own plan sheet — Plus at $20/month ($15/month billed annually) includes unlimited character consistency and unlimited slow credits, so iterating on a poster does not burn priority credits. For repairing or changing words in an image you already have, use Google's Nano Banana models instead: their documentation covers multi-turn image editing, up to 14 reference images, and grounding with Google Search, which matters when the label has to be factually right and not merely legible.
How much does a longer AI video sequence actually cost?
Convert credits into seconds before you compare anything, because vendors do not price in the same unit. Runway publishes the conversion on its own pricing page: 625 credits on Standard ($15/month, $12 billed annually) is 52 seconds of Gen-4.5; 2,250 credits on Pro ($35/$28) is 187 seconds; 9,500 credits on Max ($95/$76) is 791 seconds. Black Forest Labs sells the same thing per second with no subscription at all — FLUX 3 Video is $0.17/s at HD rising to $0.80/s at UHD, with a Draft mode at $0.06/s for exploration and audio included at no extra charge. A 30-second HD sequence at draft quality is under $2 before you commit to a plan.
Do I need a separate tool for lip-sync?
Only if the speaker is a presenter rather than a character in the scene. If the voice belongs inside a generated shot, generate picture and sound together — Kling 3.0 Omni is sold on 'synchronized audio-video generation', and FLUX 3 Video includes audio at no extra charge on clips up to 20 seconds. If the deliverable is a person talking to camera over a script, an avatar product is cheaper and far more controllable: HeyGen runs $0 free, $29/mo Creator, $49/mo Pro with 4K export, $149/mo Business. If the picture is finished and only the voice is missing, ElevenLabs starts free with 10k credits a month.
Is Topaz still a one-time purchase?
No. topazlabs.com/pricing sells subscriptions: Topaz for Web - Image at $12/mo under a limited-time offer against a $19 list price, Topaz for Web - Video at $19/mo against $29, and Topaz Studio at $399/yr for all the apps with unlimited local rendering and 300 monthly video cloud credits that do not roll over. The detail that catches agencies is the commercial-use footnote — those tiers read 'Personal and commercial use for orgs under $1M USD annual revenue', and full commercial use sits on Studio Pro. If you are already paying for Runway Pro, note that it lists unlimited 4K video upscaling and includes Topaz AI Upscale among its models.
Why are some well-known models missing from this guide?
Because we could not quote them from their own vendor page on the day of writing, and the rule for this guide is that an unquotable claim gets cut rather than softened. Midjourney's docs returned HTTP 403 to our fetch. FLUX.2's per-image rates sit behind a client-side tab that did not render. Per-image API prices for several models load as client-side JavaScript. Every one of those is a fine model; none of them is worth publishing a price for that we did not read. The cut list is printed in full further up this page so you can see exactly what was left out and why.
Read the model reviews behind this map
Each row above links to a full review with pricing, limits and the failure modes that do not show up in a demo reel.
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