August 12, 2026
Which AI model should you pick out of 47? The guide by use case and by budget
Flux, Seedream, Imagen, Kling, Seedance, Veo: Imaginode gives you access to 47 models with the same account and the same credits. Here's how to pick the right one in ten seconds, exact prices included, without burning through your plan.
Forty-seven models, one single Generate button
Open the model selector on an Image node in Imaginode and you're facing a list that induces vertigo. Flux in four variants, Imagen, Seedream, Recraft, GPT Image. Same story on the video side: Kling, Seedance, Veo, Grok, MiniMax, Wan, PixVerse. In total, 47 models accessible with the same account and the same credits.
That abundance is a blessing and a trap. A blessing because no model is good at everything, and being able to switch in two clicks without a new subscription is a genuine luxury. A trap because beginners almost always do the same thing: they pick the most expensive one thinking they're picking the best, or the first one on the list, and they're wrong in both cases.
This guide gives you a simple mental map. Not an exhaustive benchmark nobody will ever read, but a hierarchy by use case and by budget, with exact prices in credits. A useful reminder for what follows: 1 credit is worth about €0.01, and the cost is displayed on the Generate button before you click.
There is no best model, there is a best model per use case
First idea to unlearn: the single ranking. Image models are not more or less advanced versions of the same thing, they are specialists. One excels at photorealism, another at faithfulness to reference faces, a third at editing existing images. Asking "which one is the best" amounts to asking which is the better tool between a hammer and a screwdriver.
The right question comes down to two axes: what am I making, and what stage am I at. A composition draft and a final image for a client don't need the same model, and certainly not the same price. Between Flux Schnell at 1 credit and Flux 2 Pro at 7, the gap is one to seven. Over a hundred images, that's the difference between €1 and €7.
Stated opinion: 90% of creators only need four or five models they understand well. The rest of the list serves special cases. Knowing your four working models by heart beats skimming all 47 of them.
Image, tier 1: drafts at 1 or 2 credits
At the very bottom of the price ladder, Flux Schnell costs 1 credit, one cent per image. Its mission: roughing things out. Testing a composition, checking that an idea stands up, comparing three lighting moods. The quality is decent, nothing more, and that's exactly fine: at this price, you can generate twenty variations for €0.20 without a second thought.
Just above it, GPT Image Mini at 2 credits adds two serious assets: it can edit, and it accepts references. It's the cheapest model that can work with your own images, which makes it the ideal iteration tool whenever a specific character or product is in play.
The opposite mistake exists too: staying stuck on this tier. A Flux Schnell draft you like is not a final image, it's a validated intention. The next step is to redo it in quality with a model from the tier above, not to publish it as is.
Image, tier 2: the everyday tier at 3 credits
The heart of real-world usage happens at 3 credits, with the two best value-for-money models in the catalog: Flux 2 Klein and Imagen 4 Fast. For €0.03 an image, the output is already very publishable for a post, a blog thumbnail or an internal visual. This is the tier where a creator spends most of their working days.
How do you choose between the two? A matter of taste more than of level. The best approach is to settle it once and for all on your own subjects: same prompt in two nodes, one model each, 6 credits for the experiment. We detail this duel method a little further down; it's one of the most profitable moves on the whole canvas.
Budget landmark: with the Starter plan at €13 excl. VAT and its 900 monthly credits, the 3-credit tier means 300 images per month, ten a day. Enough to feed an Instagram account, a blog and a newsletter without ever glancing at the meter in fear.
Image, tier 3: the specialists at 5 credits
At 5 credits, two specialists that don't play the same role at all. Recraft V4.1 first, built for polished design: clean illustrations, graphic compositions, brand visuals. When the result needs to look like studio work rather than a photograph, that's the one to reach for.
Then Seedream 5 Lite, and here we have to be blunt: it's the champion of references and recurring characters, without a rival at this price. It accepts your images and reproduces a face with a fidelity that generalist models don't come near. If you work with the Reference node and @mentions, it's the one, period.
An anecdote lived by just about every user: generating a character ten times with a 6-credit generalist model while cursing at the face drift, 60 credits wasted, when two Seedream 5 Lite generations at 10 credits total would have settled the question. The right specialist is often cheaper than the wrong generalist.
Image, tier 4: the high end at 6 and 7 credits
At the top, four models for the images that really matter. Flux Pro 1.1 and Imagen 4, at 6 credits each, are the benchmarks of high-end photorealism: believable skin, materials and light. For a website header image or a client visual, the 3-credit gap with the everyday tier shows on screen.
Flux Kontext, also at 6 credits, is a case apart: it doesn't invent an image, it modifies yours. You hand it an existing image and an instruction like "replace the background with a beach", and it executes while preserving everything else. It's the tool for edits that are impossible to prompt from scratch.
Finally Flux 2 Pro, at 7 credits, offers the most advanced rendering in the catalog. Should you use it everywhere? No, and that's precisely the classic trap we'll detail further down. Save it for the final deliverable, the image printed large, the visual that will be seen a hundred thousand times. For everything else, the 3-credit tier does the job.
Video: the mid-range that does 80% of the work
Video changes the order of magnitude: we're no longer talking 1 to 7 credits but dozens per clip. The first reflex is therefore to identify the reliable mid-range. Kling 2.5 Turbo, around 26 credits for 5 seconds, is an excellent entry point: €0.26 per clip, clean motion, ideal for learning and iterating.
One step up, Seedance 2.0 Fast runs around 48 credits for 5 seconds in 720p. Fast, affordable, with particularly convincing motion, it's the workhorse of social media. It also accepts up to 9 reference images, which matters as soon as a character has to stay recognizably themselves.
Mandatory honesty: AI video fails about one generation in three or four, whatever the model. A finished clip therefore costs 30 to 40% more than the sticker price in practice. Budget for it from day one and you'll spare yourself the frustration. Technical failures, on the other hand, are automatically refunded in credits.
Video: audio, 4K and the very high end
Two families stand out through one rare ability: generating audio along with the picture. Veo 3.1 Lite and Fast do it, at a higher cost when audio is enabled, and so does Kling V3. For a short dialogue or a native sound ambience, that saves you an entire editing pass afterwards.
For resolution, the full Seedance 2.0 covers 480p, 720p, 1080p and 4K, the latter around 330 credits for 5 seconds, about €3.30. At the absolute top, Seedance 2.5: clips from 4 to 30 seconds, multiple references, the highest quality in the catalog. It's the model for projects where the video is the final product, not an iteration.
The rest of the video bench covers specific needs: Grok Imagine Video accepts durations from 1 to 15 seconds and 5 reference images, MiniMax H3 takes 9, Wan 2.7 and PixVerse round out the range. You don't have to know them all. Remember the trio: Kling 2.5 Turbo to iterate, Seedance 2.0 Fast to produce, Seedance 2.5 for premium work.
And what do we do with the text LLMs?
The Text node gives access to the large language models: GPT-5, Claude, Gemini, Kimi K2.5, DeepSeek, Qwen. On a visual creation canvas, their role is the engine room: writing and refining prompts, generating a six-shot ad script, spinning one tagline into five variants before generating anything at all.
They accept text coming from other nodes, and images to analyze. That second point is underused: plug a failed generation into a Text node and ask "what's wrong with this image compared to this brief?". An outside eye, at a cost of zero wasted image generations.
For prompt rewriting, the most profitable shortcut remains the magic wand built into the Image and Video nodes: 1 credit, and your rough prompt becomes a rich English prompt via Kimi, @mentions preserved. Save the Text node for real writing and structural work.
The method: iterate cheap, finish expensive
Here is the rule that saves the most money on Imaginode, and it's not close. Every image goes through two phases: research, where you fumble with the composition and the idea, and finishing, where you want the best possible rendering. The budget tragedy is doing the research with a finishing model.
In numbers: fifteen research iterations with Flux 2 Pro at 7 credits cost 105 credits, more than €1. The same fifteen tries with Flux Schnell at 1 credit: 15 credits. Then two final generations in Flux 2 Pro: 14 credits. Total, 29 credits instead of 105, for a strictly identical final result. Multiply that by twenty projects and you've just paid for a month of the Starter plan with the difference.
The canvas makes this method feel natural: each node keeps the history of its last 12 generations, so your exploration stays right in front of you. When one version stands out, you change the model in the same node's selector, you rerun, and you're done. No project to migrate, no prompt to copy over.
The duel: duplicate a node to compare two models
Online comparisons will never replace a test on your own subjects. A model that shines on scenery can disappoint on your product packshots. Hence the move worth knowing: duplicate an Image node, keep exactly the same prompt, and assign a different model to each copy. Two clicks on the canvas, and the duel is ready to run.
Launch both generations and compare them side by side on the canvas, with a cold eye. Flux 2 Klein versus Imagen 4 Fast on your illustration style: 6 credits for the experiment. Flux Pro 1.1 versus Imagen 4 on your portraits: 12 credits. That's the price of a certainty that will then steer hundreds of generations.
Run this test once per recurring content type, note the winner on a sticky note right on the canvas, and never look back. Permanent indecision costs more than the duel: whoever replays the match at every image pays double, in credits and in time.
Trap number 1: paying 7 credits for a draft
It's the most widespread mistake, and the most understandable one: since Flux 2 Pro has the best rendering, why not do everything with it. Except the first ten generations of any idea almost all end up in the bin, whatever the model. Throwing them away at 7 credits apiece rather than 1 means paying seven times the price for the exact same learning.
The monthly math hurts. An active creator who explores 300 images a month on a premium model burns 2,100 credits, almost an entire Creator plan at €42 excl. VAT. The same exploration on Flux Schnell: 300 credits, leaving 2,800 credits of the plan for finishing work and video.
The guardrail is already in the interface: the exact cost is displayed on the Generate button before every click. Get in the habit of reading it. If the number is above 5 and you're not in a finishing phase, it's probably the wrong model for that particular click.
Trap number 2: a model without references for a character
Second trap, and a sneakier one: generating a recurring character with a model that doesn't accept reference images. Without references, every generation restarts from random noise and the model remembers nothing: the face changes with every image, however precise the prompt. No model escapes this rule, not even at 7 credits.
The interface warns you in its own way: if the references port doesn't appear on the node, the selected model doesn't support them. It's not a setting to unlock, it's a limit of the model. The reflex: switch to Seedream 5 Lite at 5 credits on the image side, the recurring-character specialist, or GPT Image Mini at 2 credits to iterate.
On the video side, check the maximums before choosing: 9 reference images on Seedance 2.0 and 2.0 Fast, more on 2.5, 9 on MiniMax H3, 5 on Grok Imagine Video, 3 on Kling V3 as on Veo 3.1 Fast. The subject deserves a full article of its own, "consistent AI characters", which details the entire Reference node method.
The selector already whispers the answer
Good news to wrap things up: you don't have to memorize this guide. Imaginode's model selector displays a piece of advice under each model, right in the list: what it's good for, when to prefer it. At the moment of choosing, the bulk of this hierarchy is therefore already in front of your eyes, in the right place.
Add the two safety nets we've already come across: the cost displayed on the Generate button before you click, and the automatic refund of technical failures. The worst realistic scenario is having paid a few cents for a disappointing image. There have been far more expensive educations.
On the overall budget, the orders of magnitude: Starter at €13 excl. VAT for 900 credits, Creator at €42 for 3,100, Studio at €145 for 10,500, and top-ups from 1,000 credits for €15 up to 10,000 for €135. The code SIMPLE15 takes 15% off. With the iterate-cheap method, a Starter plan already covers a steady publishing rhythm.
BalanceYour next fifteen minutes
Let's condense all of this into a roadmap. Pick your working pair: an iteration model at 1 or 2 credits, a finishing model between 3 and 7 depending on your standards. Set up a duel on your most frequent subject to decide between Flux 2 Klein and Imagen 4 Fast. And engrave the two-phase rule: search cheap, finish expensive.
On the video side, start with Kling 2.5 Turbo at 26 credits for 5 seconds to find your footing, move to Seedance 2.0 Fast when the result matters, and keep Seedance 2.5 for the big occasions. Plan for one failed generation out of three or four in the budget; that's the reality of the medium in 2026.
One lever remains that no model choice can replace: the quality of the prompt itself. A structured prompt on a 3-credit model beats a lazy prompt on a 7-credit model. That happens to be the subject of the article "writing a prompt that works", the logical sequel to this one.