# Know your visual AI cost before you run the code

> Published 2026-08-14 · https://www.promptzone.com/jordanhale_dev/know-your-visual-ai-cost-before-you-run-the-code-hfo

Token-based billing makes visual AI costs unpredictable: you only find out after the request runs. An alternative pattern: pick a model and settings, see the exact credit cost before sending, then generate through one endpoint.

For image generation it is a simple POST to /v1/images/generations. For video, async tasks: POST to /v1/async/videos/generations, then poll the task endpoint until the result is ready. One Bearer key and one credit balance cover stills and video, so there is no per-model token math.

Disclosure: I built Pixapi (https://pixapi.ai) around this pattern - credits shown before each request, with current comparison examples about 20-49% below official list on supported routes. Docs: https://pixapi.ai/docs