# Black Forest Labs FLUX API vs Recraft API

> Black Forest Labs FLUX API has a score of 64.2 (B) against Recraft API's 53 (D). Both do image generate. The largest gap is security & auth, 35 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Black Forest Labs FLUX API has a score of 64.2 (B) against Recraft API's 53 (D). Both do image generate. The largest gap is security & auth, 35 points.

- Black Forest Labs FLUX API: grade B, 64.2/100, rank #186 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/black-forest-labs.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/black-forest-labs.json
- Recraft API: grade D, 53/100, rank #338 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/recraft.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/recraft.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Black Forest Labs FLUX API for schema & documentation (+24), agent ergonomics (+5), security & auth (+35), maintenance & community (+25), transparency & trust (+5).

Pick Recraft API for reliability (+5), payments & pricing (+10).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Black Forest Labs FLUX API | Recraft API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 65 | 70 | Recraft API +5 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 88 | 64 | Black Forest Labs FLUX API +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 67 | 62 | Black Forest Labs FLUX API +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 30 | Black Forest Labs FLUX API +35 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 30 | Recraft API +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 73 | 48 | Black Forest Labs FLUX API +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 61 | Black Forest Labs FLUX API +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **64.2 · B** | **53 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Black Forest Labs FLUX API | Recraft API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Black Forest Labs | Recraft |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.bfl.ai/v1` | `https://external.api.recraft.ai/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | 7 | 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 | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.black-forest-labs/flux-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-10 | none |
| Popularity | none | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Black Forest Labs FLUX API.** Per-image and per-megapixel prices published per model, from $0.014. Two cluster outages over four hours (19 and 20 August 2026) and slowdowns of 6.5 and 20 hours since.

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

## Before you call either

### Black Forest Labs FLUX API

1. Poll the `polling_url` from the submit response, never a hand-built URL
2. Download `result.sample` straight away. It's gone after 10 minutes
3. Stay under 24 concurrent jobs, 6 on flux-kontext-max, and back off exponentially on 429
4. Treat 402 as out of credit, not as a retryable error
5. Use api.eu.bfl.ai or api.us.bfl.ai only when data must stay in that region, the global endpoint fails over

### Recraft API

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

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