Programmatic image generation

Scores as of 2026-10-19 (8 days old).

Depot Pick

Fal · 8.50/10 for this job (curated estimate, high confidence)

dx + capability catalog + pricePerf. Midjourney penalized on API dx.

Runner-up

OpenAI Media (Images/Audio) · 8.15/10

Scores higher than the pick on: Latency / reliability, Privacy / data retention, Maturity / track record.

When not to use the pick

Need Midjourney aesthetics and have API access; want OpenAI one-vendor stack; first-party FLUX.2/FLUX 3 terms — Black Forest Labs.

Lock-in / migration

The pick has lower stored lock-in risk than runner-up OpenAI Media (Images/Audio) (4 vs 7). Self-host fallback listed for this job: FLUX.1-schnell, Stable Diffusion XL base 1.0, ComfyUI.

Sourced price (usd_per_image)

Pick's lowest sourced SKU: Bytedance Seedream V4.5 $0.04 (usd_per_image) — source, as of 2026-10-19

Cheapest matching SKU: MiniMax image-01 $0.0035 — source, as of 2026-10-03, re-checked 2026-10-27. Not the pick; not quality-adjusted.

Price history: first seen 2026-10-03 · last changed no change recorded · history JSON

Free option

• Cloudflare Workers AI image models (free) — source, as of 2026-10-25
• ComfyUI (oss) — source, as of 2026-10-25
• FLUX.1-schnell (oss) — source, as of 2026-10-25

Failure modes to watch

• Runaway spend: Set a budget and a tool-call cap per task. Alert when spend jumps. Stop the run at the cap instead of summarizing a partial trace as success.

Reported outcomes (submitted reports only)

This job: loading… JSON · reports never change scores · seed/test records excluded

Depot Pick (Fal) on this job: loading… JSON · reports never change scores · seed/test records excluded

Same-job, same-unit comparisons: Fal vs Black Forest Labs · Fal vs MiniMax

Cite: Agent Provider Depot, Depot Pick for image-generation: fal, scores as of 2026-10-19. Agents: GET /api/decide?jtbd=image-generation