Five AI image generator with API access compared: Cost, speed and quality ranked - London Business News | Londonlovesbusiness.com
Briefly

"Before we crowned any winners, we first defined what "best" means for a UK business that ships images at scale. We spoke with product managers, reviewed API docs, and measured real response times. Four factors topped the list. First comes image quality. If the picture looks off, nothing else matters. We judged sharpness, prompt accuracy, and those tricky edge cases such as hands, sign text, and fine product details."
"Next is cost efficiency. Whether credits, tokens, or GPU-seconds, we converted every billing model to an estimated price per 512-pixel image, then modelled a batch of 10,000 assets to see who stays affordable. Speed ranks third. Your workflow stalls if each call crawls, so we timed average latency from request to finished JPEG and looked for figures a human user would call "instant." Finally, integration and features. We checked how quickly a developer can get "hello, world" running, plus extras like image-to-image, upscaling,"
"AI-generated images now headline billboards, fill product catalogues, and slip into everyday slide decks-a leap from party trick to mainstream business tool. UK teams want specifics: Which API delivers brand-grade polish, how fast can it crank thousands of variants, and what does that agility cost when finance reviews the bill? This guide answers by benchmarking five platforms-Leonardo, OpenAI DALL·E 3, Stability AI SDXL, Adobe Firefly, and Prodia-against quality, cost, speed, and dev-friendliness so you can pick the right stack."
Five image-generation APIs were benchmarked: Leonardo, OpenAI DALL·E 3, Stability AI SDXL, Adobe Firefly, and Prodia. Evaluations prioritized four factors: image quality, cost efficiency, speed, and integration/features. Image quality assessment focused on sharpness, prompt accuracy, and handling of edge cases like hands, sign text, and fine product details. Cost models were normalized to an estimated price per 512-pixel image and projected across a 10,000-asset batch. Latency was measured from request to finished JPEG to capture real-world responsiveness. Developer experience was judged by time-to-first-call and availability of features such as image-to-image, upscaling, and private fine-tuning. Composite scores used weights of 40/25/20/15.
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