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By the toolist.ai editors. Researched from Krea's own pages and hands-on tests published by others, not hands-on tested by toolist.ai. Updated October 15, 2026.

Krea review: pricing, features and what testers found

Krea is a browser studio, with an iOS app, that runs its own Krea 2 image models and dozens of other companies' image and video models, such as Nano Banana, GPT Image, Flux, Veo and Kling, on one balance of compute units, with a real-time canvas that redraws as you type or draw, an upscaler to 22K, image editing and LoRA training on your own images. Paid plans start at $9 a month for 5,000 units, which Krea counts as 555 Krea 2 Medium images, with a commercial license; every video model needs Pro at $35.

Our take

Krea suits designers and creators who want to steer images live and try many image and video models on one subscription: its Realtime canvas redraws as you type, draw or move shapes, and one balance of compute units covers Krea's own Krea 2 models plus dozens of models from Google, OpenAI, Black Forest Labs, ByteDance and others. Basic costs $9 a month ($5.25 billed yearly) for 5,000 units, which Krea's pricing table counts as 555 Krea 2 Medium images or about 64 Nano Banana Pro images, with a commercial license; Pro at $35 adds every video model, including Veo 3.1. On October 15, 2026, Krea 2 Large ranked 21st of 102 models on Artificial Analysis's blind-vote text-to-image board, behind Nano Banana Pro in 12th. Testers of earlier versions, before Krea 2 came out, found it fast but loose with prompts: Cybernews' Vėjūnė Rimašiūtė got a sharp, realistic portrait whose glass prism came out like an ice cube, and Daniel Nest of Why Try AI found the older Krea 1 natural-looking on some photos but often ignoring instructions. The catches are units that lapse every month on individual plans, refunds only if the workspace used under 650 units and fewer than 20 generations that month, and terms that give Krea a perpetual licence to what you upload and make; Trustpilot reviewers rate it 3.6 out of 5 from 167 reviews.

Based on Krea's published plans and the hands-on tests linked below, not on a test of our own.

Good for

  • Designers and art directors exploring a look, who would rather steer an image live than rewrite prompts
  • Creators who want many image and video models, an upscaler and LoRA training under one subscription instead of one per model
  • Teams of up to 50 who want one shared pool of units that rolls over, model access controls and terms that bar Krea from training on their work (Business, from $50 a month)

Watch out for

  • Plans are counted in compute units, and what they buy depends on the model and its settings: by Krea's table, Basic's 5,000 units make 555 Krea 2 Medium images, 2,500 Krea 2 Turbo, about 64 Nano Banana Pro or about 39 GPT Image 2.5 images. Krea's own figures for Nano Banana 2 disagree (the plan cards say 64 on Basic, the comparison table about 112 at 1K), and its help pages say complex prompts and quality settings can use more units than expected.
  • Units on Basic, Pro and Max do not roll over and lapse each month; extra compute packs of 2,000 to 50,000 units expire after 90 days, and the web shows their prices only after sign-in (the iOS app lists 10,000 units for $20). Business and Enterprise units roll over, though one answer in the pricing FAQ says unused units expire at the end of each billing cycle.
  • Refunds are offered automatically when you cancel only if the workspace used under 650 compute units and made fewer than 20 generations that month; otherwise the terms promise no refund of fees already paid, prorated or not. Plans renew automatically, and the terms renew them at the then-current non-promotional rate: the pricing page's own data applies the 40% yearly saving as a coupon on yearly prices of $84 for Basic, $336 for Pro and $672 for Max at 40,000 units (about 20% off), so check what a yearly renewal will cost.
  • The free plan has no commercial license and only a limited set of models: its card shows no video jobs, though Krea's comparison table lists about 2 LTX-2 videos a day on it. Basic adds selected video models, and Veo 3.1 and Seedance 2.5 need Pro.
  • Krea's standard terms (last updated May 20, 2024) give it a perpetual, sublicensable licence to use what you upload or generate in its business, including to promote the service, and let other users access and reuse it; a commitment not to train on your inputs and outputs comes only with the Business terms. Krea may change the terms of commercial use at any time, and IP indemnification is for Enterprise only.
  • Krea's pages disagree in places: a help page still lists paid plans from $10 with 20% off yearly, Basic at 4,000 units and Max at 54,000; the pricing page's default view on October 15, 2026 showed no Basic card and started at Pro for $35 (Basic at $9 shows on another version of the page and in the iOS app); and Max shows 60,000 units for $105 by default, though its slider starts at 40,000 for $70.
  • The pricing page runs time-limited offers, such as 14 days of unlimited Krea 3 Fast generations at 1K and 2K with an annual Pro or Max purchase on October 15, 2026 (not through the API or MCP), so check what is on offer the day you buy.

What Krea does

Price

Free plan: 100 compute units a day with no card, refilled daily: the real-time models and a limited set of image models (about 11 Krea 2 Medium or 50 Krea 2 Turbo images a day by Krea's own table), upscaling to 2K and no commercial license.

PlanBilled monthlyBilled yearly, per monthIncludesPrice per image
Free free free 100 compute units a day, refilled daily, no card: about 11 Krea 2 Medium, 50 Krea 2 Turbo or 900 real-time images a day by Krea's table; real-time models and a limited set of image models, upscaling to 2K, LoRA training up to 50 images, one image job at a time; no commercial license and no Nodes –
Basic $9 $5.25 5,000 compute units a month: 555 Krea 2 Medium images, 2,500 Krea 2 Turbo, about 64 Nano Banana Pro (1K) or about 20 Seedance 2.0 videos by Krea's table; all image, 3D and lipsync models, selected video models (no Veo 3.1 or Seedance 2.5), upscaling to 22K, LoRA training up to 50 images, Krea Nodes and a commercial license; 4 image and 2 video jobs at once; $5.25 a month billed yearly (the card rounds it to $5 and says 40% off; it is about 42% below the monthly price) $0.016
Pro $35 $21 20,000 compute units a month: 2,222 Krea 2 Medium images, about 257 Nano Banana Pro (1K) or about 83 Seedance 2.0 videos by Krea's table; all video models including Veo 3.1, App Builder, Nodes Agent, early access to new features and bulk discounts on compute packs; 8 image and 4 video jobs at once; $21 a month billed yearly $0.016
Max $70 $42 From 40,000 compute units a month for $70 ($42 billed yearly): 4,444 Krea 2 Medium images or about 514 Nano Banana Pro (1K) by Krea's table. The card shows 60,000 units for $105 ($63) by default; 80,000 cost $135 ($81) and 100,000 $165 ($99). Adds unlimited relaxed generations on supported in-house image models after units run out, LoRA training up to 2,000 images, unlimited image jobs and 8 video jobs at once $0.016
Business $50 $40 A shared unit pool for up to 50 members, priced by units, not seats: from 20,000 units a month for $50 ($40 billed yearly), 2,222 Krea 2 Medium images by Krea's table, up to 1.5 million units for $2,850 ($2,280); the card shows 80,000 units for $200 ($160) by default. Business terms with a no-training commitment, roles and permissions, model access controls, private Node Apps, unlimited relaxed generations, LoRA training up to 2,000 images, units that roll over $0.023
Enterprise not listed not listed Contact sales: custom seats and compute packages, SAML single sign-on, per-member spend limits, priority support with an SLA, Slack Connect, custom terms and IP indemnification for generated content –

Price per image is our calculation: the monthly-billing price divided by what the plan includes, assuming you use all of it. It is not a measured cost.

Prices last checked: 2026-10-16 on Krea's pricing page. Full breakdown: Krea pricing.

Price history

No price change since we first recorded these prices on October 15, 2026. We re-check them every week and list each change here.

What hands-on testers found

We have not tested Krea ourselves. These are the published tests we found that used it hands-on, newest first; follow the links for the full reviews.

Artificial Analysis Image Arena · October 15, 2026

What they tested: Blind preference votes between text-to-image models, read on the day we checked.

  • Krea 2 Large ranked 21st of the 102 models on the board (Elo 1033), Krea 2 Medium Turbo 32nd (Elo 1018) and Krea 2 Medium 38th (Elo 1013).
  • Nano Banana Pro, which Krea also runs, ranked 12th (Elo 1114), and GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst led the board (Elo 1218).
  • FLUX.1 Krea [dev], the open-weight version of Krea 1 listed under Black Forest Labs, ranked 94th (Elo 828).

Their score: Krea 2 Large ranks 21 of 102

Cybernews · Vėjūnė Rimašiūtė · updated November 18, 2025

What they tested: Krea among the AI art generators she ran the same two prompts through, a candid golden-hour portrait of a person holding a glass prism and a fantasy valley with floating islands, two moons and a rope bridge; she picked a photorealistic style at 16:9 and added a reference image. She does not say which plan or model she used; the plans she listed then started at $8 a month. The review was last updated in November 2025, before Krea 2 came out in May 2026, so it covers an older version of Krea.

  • It generated quickly, and the portrait was crisp, realistically lit and detailed.
  • It did not fully follow the prompt: the glass prism looked more like an ice cube.
  • Size, style and reference options were easy to apply; she found it best suited to content creators and marketers, though its advanced functions take some learning.

Their score: Ranked 4th

Why Try AI · Daniel Nest · June 26, 2025

What they tested: Krea 1, Krea's first in-house image model, two weeks after its launch, against GPT-4o, Imagen 4 and Seedream 3.0 on 10 prompts, four horizontal images per prompt from text alone. An older model than Krea 2, still offered on Krea.

  • Krea 1 looked convincingly natural on a few photos, such as long-exposure car trails and a portrait of an elderly man, and the Raw setting helps for that look.
  • It often ignored actions and style cues in prompts, and barely managed a short 'Swiss Made' engraving in four tries.
  • Generation was very fast with a live preview, and he called the platform a strong all-in-one package even for people who do not take to Krea 1.

What users say

Test result

toolist.ai has not run its own test of Krea; the findings above come from the published tests linked. See how we research and test.

Best image tools · Krea pricing

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Sources