# Ideogram API vs SurgePix API

> Ideogram scores 53.2 (D) to SurgePix's 36 (F) for image generation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-surgepix
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-surgepix.md (~4,750 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-02

Ideogram API scores 53.2 (D) on agent readiness against SurgePix API's 36 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. SurgePix API leads on maintenance & community. Both do image generation.

- Ideogram API: grade D, 53.2/100, rank #866 of 1266. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ideogram.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ideogram.json
- SurgePix API: grade F, 36/100, rank #1173 of 1266. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/surgepix.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/surgepix.json
- Best image generation for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/image-generation/index.md
- All 120 image comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/image-generation/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Ideogram API (D)

Good for: Images with text in them, such as posters, ads and packaging, and now for SVG logos, prints and illustrations.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 60 against 15
- Schema & documentation, 79 against 40
- Agent ergonomics, 66 against 53
- Transparency & trust, 49 against 28

Watch for: /generate and /remix were down for about 2 hours 40 minutes on 21 October, one of nine API incidents in 90 days

### SurgePix API (F)

Good for: An agent that needs finished marketing assets, such as posters, slide decks, Xiaohongshu carousels, logos and translated images, as one file from a short request.

Ahead on:
- Maintenance & community, 66 against 38

Watch for: Only background removal and upload are in the public API reference, with no OpenAPI file or llms.txt


## Why the edge

### Reliability: Ideogram API +45

- Ideogram API (60): Atlassian Statuspage at status.ideogram.ai with the API as its own component (20). In the 90 days to 24 October there are nine API incidents. The /generate and /remix endpoints were down from 10:38 to 13:21 UTC on 21 October (posted twice, as two incidents), about 2 hours 40 minutes, which is one major outage by our line (10, from 20 on 1 October). The others were under an hour, 3.1 and its variants for 47 minutes on 27 July, Reframe v3 for 23 minutes on 29 August, v3 for 43, 17, 18 and 10 minutes on 4, 23, 24 and 29 September, all models on the API and web app on 2 October (identified 13:14, resolved 13:36 UTC) and /generate and /remix for 21 minutes on 20 October. 10 in-flight requests by default per the API overview (15). The v2 reference documents 429 with a `reject_reason` (such as `inflight_limit` with `max_inflight_requests`) and a `Retry-After` header on polling, but no back-off guidance for generation calls and no idempotency key (5, from 0). No SLA (0). Ideogram Vector and the v2 endpoints carry no beta or preview label (10).
- SurgePix API (15): Read with the hosted lines. No status page was found on surgepix.ai or in the docs, and status.surgepix.ai doesn't resolve (0). With no history to read, the incident line takes the floor (5). No rate limits with numbers are documented. The terms say "non-human continuous or frequent query operations" lead to automatic account suspension, with no threshold given (0). No 429 or backoff guidance. The skill scripts poll every 2 seconds for up to 5 to 15 minutes, but that is client code, not a documented policy (0). No SLA, and the terms disclaim uninterrupted service (0). The API isn't labelled beta or preview, and API keys have been self-serve since 2 June 2026 per the changelog (10). 0+5+0+0+0+10 = 15.

### Schema & documentation: Ideogram API +39

- Ideogram API (79): OpenAPI 3.1 specs for API v2 and v1 at developer.ideogram.ai/openapi/ (25). llms.txt index per version, every page available as Markdown, and an MCP server for the docs themselves (10). Endpoint pages state what each does, little on when not to use one (12). Typed form fields with enums and limits, such as Vector's `quality` (low, medium, high), 18 aspect ratios and 1 to 8 images, but 54 of 66 v2 request bodies are multipart form data, and the overview's JSON example for Ideogram 4.5 disagrees with the spec, which lists only multipart for it (12). Code examples in eight languages per endpoint, and each v2 endpoint lists its error responses, with typed 402 and 429 bodies carrying a `reject_reason` enum; most other error bodies are untyped (13, from 10). Versioned API (v1 and v2, with a migration table) but no changelog (7).
- SurgePix API (40): No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract was found (0). surgepix.ai/llms.txt returns 404. The docs are HTML pages, but the 15 SKILL.md files in the MIT repository are Markdown written for agents, so half (5). The API reference states the purpose of each of its five operations and the async and session model. The SKILL.md files add trigger phrases and explicit do-not-use routing between skills, but 11 of the task endpoints the skills call appear only in their scripts, with no reference (10). Parameter tables give type and required for the documented operations, with no enums or limits, and the undocumented endpoints have no schema at all (7). JSON examples for every documented operation and an error table with 401, 404 and `error.file.sensitive_content` (10). A dated public changelog from 11 March 2026, but no version in the API path and no API-specific change notes (8). 0+5+10+7+10+8 = 40.

### Maintenance & community: SurgePix API +28

- Ideogram API (38): Ideogram 4.5 is in API v2 and was the subject of Ideogram's blog post of 14 October 2026, 10 days ago, and Ideogram Vector 1.0 is in the API on 24 October, so the last change is within 30 days (30, from 10). For models we look at churn and notice. API v2 arrived with v1 left running and a v1 to v2 table, and Ideogram 3.0 stays on for inpainting and reframe, but there's no notice policy or dated deprecation (5). No public changelog, support channel not tested (3). No official SDK (PyPI's `ideogram` belongs to an unrelated project), and the official MCP server isn't in the MCP registry, where only third-party Ideogram servers appear (0). No packages to assess (0).
- SurgePix API (66): The last dated change is GPT-Image-2.5 on 23 October 2026, 10 days before the check (30). Changelog entries on 15, 22 and 23 October, 16, 9 and 2 September 2026, more than three in 90 days (20). For a closed service, a dated changelog, a Discord server and a contact email. We didn't open Discord or the GitHub issues, so answering isn't confirmed (8). No official SDK. The skills are maintained client scripts with tags from v1.0.0 (4 June 2026) to v1.5.0 (2 September 2026), a judgement call (5). The repository's CI checks SKILL.md front matter only, with no tests, and the skills aren't published as a package (3). 30+20+8+5+3 = 66.

### Transparency & trust: Ideogram API +21

- Ideogram API (49): Closed API under a Developer API Agreement last revised on 14 August 2024, unchanged on 24 October. Ideogram 4.0 weights are public under a non-commercial licence, which doesn't change the API terms (15). The agreement says Ideogram won't train on API inputs or outputs unless they're flagged under the usage policies, but states no retention period, and clause 4.3 also gives Ideogram the right to use 'in any manner all User data received by the Company via the Ideogram API'. Kept at 12 as on 1 October; a reviewer may read 4.3 as a disagreement and score lower (12). The agreement promises commercially reasonable efforts to give prior notice of changes that need developer work and makes fee changes effective 14 days after posting, and we found no dated deprecation notices (5). No subprocessor list or data locations found; the privacy policy was last revised on 15 January 2025 (0).
- SurgePix API (28): The editorial half. A closed service whose terms name no company or address. They restrict any commercial use of what the service produces without SurgePix's permission, and contain clauses from an unrelated product (a "big data" query platform and "non-resume content"). The skills are MIT. Unclear terms, with a little credit for the open skills (5). The privacy policy is dated both 10 June 2026 and 1 July 2022, describes WeChat and phone registration and "domestic servers", and gives no retention periods. The API reference says uploads go to Tencent Cloud storage in Seoul as public URLs. No DPA. The statements don't agree (5). No deprecation policy or notices, and the terms let changes take effect on publication without notice (0). Tencent Cloud Object Storage in ap-seoul is named in the API reference, and Alipay and WeChat Pay in the privacy policy. No subprocessor list or stated data location (4). 5+5+0+4 = 14.

### Agent ergonomics: Ideogram API +13

- Ideogram API (66): Responses carry image or SVG URLs, not bytes, with a count control (20). Resolution, aspect ratio, quality and image count controls, and a simple, detailed or auto mode for vectorising (15). 402 and 429 carry a `reject_reason` enum (`insufficient_funds`, `daily_limit`, `inflight_limit` and others) and `max_inflight_requests`, alongside 422 for unsafe prompts and an `is_image_safe` flag per image (17, from 14). No idempotency key. Async runs with signed webhooks or a shared polling endpoint avoid holding calls open, and `dry_run` validates and prices a request without generating or billing (6). Only the prompt is required, but there's no official SDK and Ideogram 4.5 and Vector requests are multipart (8).
- SurgePix API (53): Every task returns one download URL, or one ZIP for an image set, and status responses are a few fields, so little enters context (18). Nothing to paginate. `noWait` chooses sync or async, and the skills pass size, aspect ratio, count and language, but none of these are in the public reference (10). Errors come back as a JSON `code` and `msg`, with 401 and 404 documented and an NSFW error on upload, but a failure can arrive as HTTP 200 with a non-zero `code` and failed task states carry no documented reason (12). Upload deduplicates by MD5 and returns the existing URL. Tasks have no idempotency key, and a retried task is a new task that spends credits again (5). Few required parameters (`fileUrl` for background removal). No official SDK, only the Node scripts inside the skills (8). 18+10+12+5+8 = 53.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Ideogram API | SurgePix API | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 60 | 15 | Ideogram API +45 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 40 | Ideogram API +39 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 66 | 53 | Ideogram API +13 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 43 | 41 | Ideogram API +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 38 | 66 | SurgePix API +28 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 49 | 28 | Ideogram API +21 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **53.2 · D** | **36 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Ideogram API | SurgePix API |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Ideogram | SurgePix |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.ideogram.ai/v2` | `https://api.surgepix.ai/api` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Proprietary hosted service under the Surgepix User Agreement, which names no company and restricts commercial use without SurgePix's permission. The agent skills repository is MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-23 |
| Terms last updated | 2024-08-14 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-01-15 | 2026-06-10 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Ideogram API

- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: new evidence
- +3.1 on 24 October 2026: reliability, product
- -0.3 on 8 October 2026: checklist

### SurgePix API

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Ideogram API.** Text rendering and layout control are the model's focus, and Ideogram Vector 1.0 adds SVG output from a prompt or an image at $0.10 to $0.32 each. API v2 documents 429 reasons and dry-run price quotes. A /generate and /remix outage of about 2 hours 40 minutes on 21 October is the longest in 90 days.

**SurgePix API.** A small, readable API with async tasks and MIT skill scripts that cover posters, decks, edits and translation. Only background removal is documented, the terms name no company and restrict commercial use and automated querying, and uploaded files become public URLs.

## Before you call either

### Ideogram API

1. Send multipart form data to the Ideogram 4.5 and Vector endpoints; the spec lists JSON bodies for only 12 of 66 v2 endpoints
2. Poll `GET /v2/generations/{generation_id}` for SVG results, or pass `webhook_url` and verify the Ed25519 signature
3. Read `reject_reason` on 402 and 429. On `inflight_limit` wait for running jobs; on a polling 429 wait for `Retry-After`
4. Send `dry_run=true` with the exact request to get its price before a paid call
5. Treat 422 as an unsafe prompt to rewrite, check `is_image_safe`, and download results straight away, the links expire

### SurgePix API

1. Send the key as the raw `authorization` header value, with no `Bearer` prefix
2. Don't upload confidential files. The upload flow returns a public URL for every file
3. Check `code` in the JSON body as well as the HTTP status, since failures come back as a non-zero `code` with a `msg`
4. Poll `GET /tasks/{taskId}` within 24 hours, after which the task returns 404
5. Get written permission before using outputs commercially, since the terms restrict commercial use

## Tutorials

- [Make a short launch poster with Ideogram](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tutorials/ideogram/), for Ideogram API

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Ideogram API or SurgePix API?

Ideogram API scores 53.2 (D) on agent readiness against SurgePix API's 36 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. SurgePix API leads on maintenance & community.

### Do Ideogram API and SurgePix API need an API key?

Ideogram API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. SurgePix API needs an API key.

### Can an agent call Ideogram API and SurgePix API without installing anything?

Yes. Ideogram API has a hosted endpoint at https://api.ideogram.ai/v2 and SurgePix API at https://api.surgepix.ai/api.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-surgepix.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-surgepix.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "ideogram", "b": "surgepix"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare ideogram surgepix`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ideogram.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/surgepix.json

## Other comparisons with Ideogram API or SurgePix API

- [Adobe Firefly API vs Ideogram API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adobe-firefly-vs-ideogram.md)
- [Adobe Firefly API vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adobe-firefly-vs-surgepix.md)
- [ArtCraft vs Ideogram API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/artcraft-vs-ideogram.md)
- [ArtCraft vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/artcraft-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Black Forest Labs FLUX API vs Ideogram API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/black-forest-labs-vs-ideogram.md)
- [Black Forest Labs FLUX API vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/black-forest-labs-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Bria API vs Ideogram API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bria-vs-ideogram.md)
- [Bria API vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bria-vs-surgepix.md)
- [fal image models vs Ideogram API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fal-image-vs-ideogram.md)
- [fal image models vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/fal-image-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Google Imagen vs Ideogram API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-imagen-vs-ideogram.md)
- [Google Imagen vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-imagen-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Ideogram API vs Iris-3B](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-iris-3b.md)
- [Ideogram API vs Leonardo.Ai API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-leonardo-ai.md)
- [Ideogram API vs OpenAI Image API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-openai-image-api.md)
- [Ideogram API vs Qwen-Image 2.1 (Model Studio)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-qwen-image-2-1.md)
- [Ideogram API vs Recraft API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-recraft.md)
- [Ideogram API vs Replicate image models](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-replicate-image.md)
- [Ideogram API vs Seedream on BytePlus ModelArk](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-seedream-on-byteplus-modelark.md)
- [Ideogram API vs Stability AI Image API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ideogram-vs-stability-ai-image.md)
- [Iris-3B vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/iris-3b-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Leonardo.Ai API vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/leonardo-ai-vs-surgepix.md)
- [OpenAI Image API vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-image-api-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Qwen-Image 2.1 (Model Studio) vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/qwen-image-2-1-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Recraft API vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/recraft-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Replicate image models vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/replicate-image-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Seedream on BytePlus ModelArk vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/seedream-on-byteplus-modelark-vs-surgepix.md)
- [Stability AI Image API vs SurgePix API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/stability-ai-image-vs-surgepix.md)

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