What it is
Leonardo.Ai is an image and video generation platform founded in Sydney in December 2022 and bought by Canva in 2024. It runs its own models, Phoenix and the Lucid Origin and Lucid Realism family, alongside third-party models such as Veo, Kling and GPT Image, and wraps them in tools for image guidance, character consistency, canvas editing, upscaling and short video.
The app runs on tokens. Free accounts get 150 a day that do not carry over. Paid plans, now named Essential, Premium and Ultimate, include 8,500, 25,000 and 60,000 fast tokens a month, and unused tokens roll into a bank capped at three months' allowance. Premium adds relaxed image generation on selected in-house and open models once tokens run out; Ultimate extends that to video. Relaxed mode does not cover third-party models.
The API is a separate account and bill. Leonardo is moving API customers from monthly plans to pay-as-you-go dollar balances with automatic top-ups.
Our review
Leonardo's case rests on control and on breadth. One account reaches its own Lucid and Phoenix models plus Veo, Kling and GPT Image, with image and pose guidance, character references and inpainting on top. Midjourney gives you one house style and fewer levers; Leonardo lets a game artist pin a character and iterate across dozens of variations without leaving the app.
The ownership terms matter more than the price. Leonardo's help centre says any image that is not private grants Leonardo a worldwide, perpetual licence to use, modify and distribute it, and that licence covers your prompts too. Free accounts cannot generate privately at all, and on paid plans private mode is a toggle you have to switch on. Only private generations on a paid plan leave you with full ownership. A studio working on unreleased characters should treat that toggle as part of onboarding.
The token economy is more generous than it looks at first and more complicated than it should be. Rollover banks hold up to three months of unused allowance, top-up packs never expire, and relaxed mode lets Premium and Ultimate users keep generating at low priority once tokens are gone. Relaxed mode only covers selected in-house and open models, though, so heavy users of Veo or Kling inside Leonardo still pay per generation. Concurrency is tight on the lower plans: Essential runs two jobs at a time with a queue of five, Ultimate six with a queue of 20.
Pricing transparency has slipped. Leonardo's own help centre shows the price only in the checkout pop-up, and the API is moving to pay-as-you-go balances whose per-model rates live in a calculator inside the app. Developers get a default concurrency of 10 and sync requests that time out at about 27 seconds. For a product owned by Canva, which sells clarity to small businesses, the buying experience is oddly opaque.
Where it earns its place
A two-person indie game studio designing a cast of 12 characters
Keep each character consistent across concept sheets and promo art
Use character references and image guidance on Lucid models, with private mode on so the designs are not public or licensed to Leonardo. Ultimate's 60,000 monthly tokens plus relaxed image generation covers long iteration sessions; Veo or Kling clips for trailers still spend tokens.
A developer adding image generation to a greeting-card app
Generate illustrations on demand from user prompts
Create an API account, fund a pay-as-you-go balance with auto top-up, and call async generation; sync calls time out at about 27 seconds. Default concurrency is 10 jobs, with more by custom plan. Per-image cost depends on model and settings and is only shown in the in-app pricing calculator.
A marketing coordinator at a 30-person retailer already on Canva
Produce product lifestyle shots without a photographer
Essential's 8,500 tokens a month suits a few hundred images on in-house models; two concurrent jobs is the bottleneck on launch days. Leave private mode on for unreleased products, since public images are licensed to Leonardo.
Before you commit
- Setup
- Sign up and generate in the browser within minutes; paid features, private mode and higher concurrency need a subscription chosen from the in-app Plans page.
- Integrations
- Separate REST API with models, image, video, 3D, upscale and background-removal endpoints; pricing calculator in the app; Teams plans add a shared token pool.
- Data and privacy
- Non-private images and prompts are licensed to Leonardo worldwide and in perpetuity and can be used to improve the service; private images on paid plans are not used for that and stay fully owned by the user. Retention periods are not published.
- Cost at scale
- Not computable from public figures: app prices appear only at checkout, and API per-model rates only in the in-app calculator. Volume API buyers are steered to custom deals.
- Limits
- Concurrency 2/3/6 and queues 5/10/20 on Essential, Premium and Ultimate; Teams plans cannot buy top-ups; API default concurrency 10; sync API calls time out at about 27 seconds.
What's good
- Own models plus Veo, Kling and GPT Image in one account
- 150 free tokens a day
- Unused tokens roll over, up to three months' allowance
- Relaxed generation on Premium (images) and Ultimate (images and video)
- Full ownership of private generations on paid plans
What's not
- Free-plan images and prompts are public and licensed to Leonardo
- Private mode is opt-in even on paid plans
- Relaxed mode excludes third-party models
- Essential allows only two concurrent generations
- Dollar prices and API per-model rates hard to find publicly
Best for
Game artists, illustrators and hobbyists who want many models and fine control in one app, and will remember to switch on private mode.
Alternatives
Leonardo.Ai: common questions
- Is Leonardo.Ai worth it?
- Leonardo gives tinkerers more knobs per pound than Midjourney, but on the free plan and with private mode off, every image and prompt is licensed back to Leonardo for good. We rate it 4.0 out of 5.
- How much does Leonardo.Ai cost?
- Free: 150 tokens/day, public images only. Essential 8,500, Premium 25,000, Ultimate 60,000 fast tokens/month; Teams plans with a shared pool. Web dollar prices are shown at checkout and were not retrievable from the public page; the US App Store lists Essential at $15.99, Premium $39.99 and Ultimate $79.99 a month in-app ($159.99, $384.99 and $749.99 a year). API billed separately, pay-as-you-go.
- What are the downsides of Leonardo.Ai?
- Free-plan images and prompts are public and licensed to Leonardo; private mode is opt-in even on paid plans; relaxed mode excludes third-party models; essential allows only two concurrent generations; dollar prices and API per-model rates hard to find publicly.
- Who is Leonardo.Ai best for?
- Game artists, illustrators and hobbyists who want many models and fine control in one app, and will remember to switch on private mode.
- How much does Leonardo.Ai cost for a team or in production?
- Not computable from public figures: app prices appear only at checkout, and API per-model rates only in the in-app calculator. Volume API buyers are steered to custom deals.
- Is Leonardo.Ai safe for company data?
- Non-private images and prompts are licensed to Leonardo worldwide and in perpetuity and can be used to improve the service; private images on paid plans are not used for that and stay fully owned by the user. Retention periods are not published.
- What are the best Leonardo.Ai alternatives?
- The closest alternatives we have reviewed are Midjourney, Krea, Magnific (formerly Freepik AI) and Ideogram.
Answers checked Oct 23, 2026.
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