Credit pricing · read 2026-10-16
Their credit is cheap.
Until the month ends.
We went and priced the same generation on Higgsfield, OpenArt and ElevenLabs against what the model’s own API charges. The honest result: at full utilisation, two of the three sell it at or below provider cost. The catch is the word full — their subscription credits reset every month and don’t roll over, so the real price of a credit is the plan rate divided by how much of it you spend. Ours is at cost on a plan and 10% flat on a top-up — and the credits wait for you.
| Platform | One generation | Provider’s price | Theirs, all credits spent | Theirs, half spent | Salk, on plan credits | Salk, on a top-up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HiggsfieldPro, per month | Kling 3.0 Standard · 8s · 720p · silent | $0.67 | $0.76+13.8% | $1.53+127.5% | $0.67at cost | $0.74+10% |
| OpenArtPro, per month | Nano Banana Pro · one 1K image | $0.13 | $0.09−30.3% | $0.19+39.3% | $0.13at cost | $0.14+10% |
| ElevenLabsCreator, per month | 1,000 characters · v3 or v2 Multilingual | $0.08 | $0.18+127.3% | $0.36+354.5% | $0.08at cost | $0.09+10% |
“Half spent” is not a worst case — it is a month where you skipped a week. Neither Higgsfield nor OpenArt carries an unused subscription credit into the next cycle, so that half is paid for and gone. The two Salk columns don’t have a utilisation variant: plan credits carry 60 days and top-ups never expire, so the rate you see is the rate you get.
What a credit costs here
A credit is spent at one cent of what the provider bills us — there is no markup at the point of use, on any model. All of our margin is the flat 10% fee on a recharge, which is this table and nothing else.
| How you buy | Price | Credits | Per credit | vs provider cost | Unused credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creator plan, monthly | $49.00 | 4,900 | $0.0100 | at cost | Carries 60 days; every renewal rolls the whole balance forward. |
| Studio plan, monthly | $149.00 | 14,900 | $0.0100 | at cost | Carries 60 days; every renewal rolls the whole balance forward. |
| Top-up, any amount | $110.00 | 10,000 | $0.0110 | +10.0% | Never expires. |
Higgsfield
Their pricing pageVideo and image models by subscription credit, plus a pay-as-you-go API.
- The generation
- Kling 3.0 Standard · 8s · 720p · silent
- 16 of their credits
- Provider’s own price
- $0.67
- Kling lists v3 Standard silent at $0.084/s — and so does Higgsfield’s own API.
- The same run, on Salk
- $0.67 / $0.74
- 67 credits — at cost on a plan, +10% on a top-up.
| Plan | Credits / mo | Per credit | 100% spent | 70% spent | 50% spent | 30% spent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $9 Basicper month | 120 | $0.0750 | $1.20+78.6% | $1.71+155.1% | $2.40+257.1% | $4.00+495.2% |
| $43 Protheir pickper month | 900 | $0.0478 | $0.76+13.8% | $1.09+62.5% | $1.53+127.5% | $2.55+279.2% |
| $23 Proper month, billed annually | 900 | $0.0256 | $0.41−39.2% | $0.58−13.1% | $0.82+21.7% | $1.36+102.8% |
What happens to credits you don’t spend
Subscription credits reset every billing cycle and do not roll over — unused credits expire at renewal. Bought credits (Credit Pack, Auto-Refill, Boost) expire 90 days from purchase.
Also worth knowing
- A Credit Pack cannot be bought without an active subscription.
- Unlimited models and plan free-generations apply only on higgsfield.ai — generations through MCP, CLI, Canvas or Supercomputer always deduct credits.
- Batch size N is charged N times.
- Prices exclude VAT and local taxes.
How we know the credit cost: Higgsfield prices this clip at 16 credits on the website, in its own API-vs-subscription comparison.
OpenArt
Their pricing page100+ image, video and audio models on one monthly credit pool.
- The generation
- Nano Banana Pro · one 1K image
- 40 of their credits
- Provider’s own price
- $0.13
- Google lists gemini-3-pro-image at $0.134 per 1K/2K image.
- The same run, on Salk
- $0.13 / $0.14
- 13 credits — at cost on a plan, +10% on a top-up.
| Plan | Credits / mo | Per credit | 100% spent | 70% spent | 50% spent | 30% spent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $14 Starterper month | 4,000 | $0.0035 | $0.14+4.5% | $0.20+49.3% | $0.28+109.0% | $0.47+248.3% |
| $34 Plusper month | 12,000 | $0.0028 | $0.11−15.4% | $0.16+20.8% | $0.23+69.2% | $0.38+181.9% |
| $56 Protheir pickper month | 24,000 | $0.0023 | $0.09−30.3% | $0.13−0.5% | $0.19+39.3% | $0.31+132.2% |
| $240 Wonderper month | 106,000 | $0.0023 | $0.09−32.4% | $0.13−3.4% | $0.18+35.2% | $0.30+125.3% |
What happens to credits you don’t spend
Monthly subscription credits reset and do not roll over. Only the paid Extra Credit add-on carries over — and only Plus and above can buy it.
Also worth knowing
- Commercial-use rights start at Plus — the $14 Starter tier cannot legally be used for client ads.
- The $15 / 5,000-credit add-on ($0.0030 a credit) needs a Plus subscription or higher.
- Their own plan copy implies 1 credit per image and ~80 credits per video, measured on their cheapest models; premium video costs multiples of that.
How we know the credit cost: OpenArt publishes no credit table — the cost is shown in-app at generate time. 40 credits is the widely reported figure and is the one number on this page we could not confirm from OpenArt itself.
ElevenLabs
Their pricing pageThe voice model itself — so this row is their subscription against their own API price.
- The generation
- 1,000 characters · v3 or v2 Multilingual
- 1,000 of their credits
- Provider’s own price
- $0.08
- ElevenLabs’ own pay-as-you-go API rate is $0.08 per 1,000 characters.
- The same run, on Salk
- $0.08 / $0.09
- 8 credits — at cost on a plan, +10% on a top-up.
| Plan | Credits / mo | Per credit | 100% spent | 70% spent | 50% spent | 30% spent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $6 Starterper month | 30,000 | $0.0002 | $0.20+150.0% | $0.29+257.1% | $0.40+400.0% | $0.67+733.3% |
| $22 Creatortheir pickper month | 121,000 | $0.0002 | $0.18+127.3% | $0.26+224.7% | $0.36+354.5% | $0.61+657.6% |
| $99 Proper month | 600,000 | $0.0002 | $0.17+106.3% | $0.24+194.6% | $0.33+312.5% | $0.55+587.5% |
| $299 Scaleper month | 1,800,000 | $0.0002 | $0.17+107.6% | $0.24+196.6% | $0.33+315.3% | $0.55+592.1% |
| $990 Businessper month | 6,000,000 | $0.0002 | $0.17+106.3% | $0.24+194.6% | $0.33+312.5% | $0.55+587.5% |
What happens to credits you don’t spend
Plan credits reset monthly. The markup here does not need an expiry argument — it is visible at 100% utilisation.
Also worth knowing
- Voice Changer and Voice Isolator run +37% to +67% over the same API rate; auto-dubbing without a watermark, +50% to +82%.
- Eleven Music is close to the API rate (+9% on Creator), and Dubbing Studio is below it — the markup is concentrated in speech.
- Speech to Text bills 330 credits a minute against a $0.22/hour API rate, which is ~15× and reads like a stale credit rate rather than a deliberate price.
How we know the credit cost: Officially 1 credit per character on the full-quality models; 0.5 on Flash and Turbo, which lands at the same ratio.
How we worked this out
Credits into dollars
A plan’s price divided by the credits it grants gives the list rate per credit. Multiply by the credits a generation costs and you have what the buyer paid for it. Divide by the share of the allowance actually spent before it expires and you have what it really cost — the columns across each table.
The provider’s price
Taken from the model maker’s own published API rate — Kling at $0.084 a second, Google at $0.134 an image, ElevenLabs at $0.08 per thousand characters. That is the cost basis a markup is measured against, and it is the number a Salk credit is spent at.
Where we’re quoting rather than deriving
Neither Higgsfield nor OpenArt publishes a per-model credit table — the cost appears in the app at generate time. Each credit figure on this page carries the source it came from, and where we couldn’t confirm one from the vendor directly, it says so.
What moves
These were read on 2026-10-16, with launch promotions live on all three. Promotional pricing is most of the gap on the annual tiers, and it expires. Taxes are excluded everywhere, by their terms and ours.
No expiry cliff to plan around
$49 of plan credits buys $49 of generations, and carries 60 days — every renewal rolls the whole balance forward. A top-up is any amount you like plus the flat 10%, and never expires. That is the entire pricing model.
Top-up reference rate: $0.0110 a credit.