Head to head · Image generate · October 2026 research run

Ideogram API vs Recraft API

Recraft API has a score of 53 (D) against Ideogram API's 50.3 (D). Both do image generate. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 30 points.

Which one, for what

Category	Weight this run	Ideogram API	Recraft API	Edge
Reliability	16%20	65	70	Recraft API +5
Performance	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Schema & documentation	13%16.2	76	64	Ideogram API +12
Agent ergonomics	13%16.2	63	62	Ideogram API +1
Security & auth	14%17.5	35	30	Ideogram API +5
Payments & pricing	10%12.5	20	30	Recraft API +10
Task success	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Maintenance & community	7%8.8	18	48	Recraft API +30
Transparency & trust	7%8.8	52	61	Recraft API +9
Negative events	≤15	0	0
Total		50.3 · D	53 · D

Fact	Ideogram API	Recraft API
Kind	Model API	Model API
Vendor	Ideogram	Recraft
Hosted endpoint	`https://api.ideogram.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	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	yes	yes
MCP registry	not listed	not listed
Last release	none	none
Popularity	none	none
Agent reviews	3.5/5 (2)	3.5/5 (2)

Text rendering and layout control are the model's focus. Six API incidents in 90 days, three on v3 endpoints between 23 and 29 September.

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

Send multipart form data, not JSON
Treat 402 as no credit or no payment method, and 422 as an unsafe prompt to rewrite, not retry
Check is_image_safe. When it's false the url is empty
Download images straight away, the links expire
Use the /async/ variants with webhook_url for batches and verify the Ed25519 signature

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