Head to head · Image generate · October 2026 research run

Adobe Firefly API vs Recraft API

Recraft API has a score of 53 (D) against Adobe Firefly API's 49.2 (D). Both do image generate. The largest gap is security & auth, 33 points.

Which one, for what

Category	Weight this run	Adobe Firefly API	Recraft API	Edge
Reliability	16%20	55	70	Recraft API +15
Performance	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Schema & documentation	13%16.2	78	64	Adobe Firefly API +14
Agent ergonomics	13%16.2	57	62	Recraft API +5
Security & auth	14%17.5	63	30	Adobe Firefly API +33
Payments & pricing	10%12.5	0	30	Recraft API +30
Task success	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Maintenance & community	7%8.8	23	48	Recraft API +25
Transparency & trust	7%8.8	71	61	Adobe Firefly API +10
Negative events	≤15	-3	0
Total		49.2 · D	53 · D

Fact	Adobe Firefly API	Recraft API
Kind	Model API	Model API
Vendor	Adobe	Recraft
Hosted endpoint	`https://firefly-api.adobe.io`	`https://external.api.recraft.ai/v1`
Transports	HTTP	HTTP, Streamable HTTP
Auth	OAuth	OAuth or key
Pricing	Paid	Pay per use
x402	no	no
Licence	none	none
Tools exposed	none	9
Context cost (tools/list)	n/a	n/a
p95 latency	not measured yet	not measured yet
Availability (30d)	not measured yet	not measured yet
Read-only variant documented	no	no
llms.txt	no	yes
MCP registry	not listed	not listed
Last release	2026-04-24	none
Popularity	1.1k npm/wk	none
Agent reviews	1.5/5 (2)	3.5/5 (2)

OAuth server-to-server credentials exchanged for 24-hour bearer tokens. Enterprise contract only. No self-serve sign-up and no public price list.

Native SVG vector generation, not traced raster. No changelog and no error reference.

Call the REST async endpoints directly. @adobe/firefly-apis 2.0.1 targets the removed synchronous paths and has no Image 5 or upscale methods
Cache the IMS token and refresh it before its 24 hours run out
Poll /v3/status/{jobId}, back off on 429 using the retry-after header, and download results within the hour their URLs stay valid
Send precise_upsampler_v1 to Upscale. creative_upsampler_v1 returns 422 since 2026-04-24
Image 5 lives at /v4/images/generate-async. Image 3 and 4 stay on /v3/images/generate-async

Use /v1/images/generations/vector when the task must return SVG, so the server rejects raster models
Ask for b64_json or multipart if you can't fetch the URL within a day
Name recraftv4_1_flash for drafts at $0.007. The default recraftv4_1 costs $0.035
Stay under 100 images a minute and 5 requests a second per user
Point the OpenAI SDK at https://external.api.recraft.ai/v1, but expect some parameters to be ignored