review
Leonardo.Ai Review: Proprietary Models, Owned by Canva
Leonardo builds its own image and video models rather than only reselling others'. Pricing confirmed from $0 to $60/mo, and support gets unusually good reviews.
Leonardo.Ai is a creative platform covering image, video and 3D, owned by Canva since a roughly $300 million acquisition in 2024. Unlike most platforms in this category, it leans proprietary rather than purely reselling other labs' models: its core image models (Phoenix, Lucid Origin, Lucid Realism) and its video model (Motion 2.0) are built in-house, with third-party models like Hailuo and Wan available for relaxed or unlimited generation on select plans.
What it costs
Confirmed directly from Leonardo's own pricing page:
| Plan | Price/mo | Tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 150/day, public creations only |
| Essential | $12 | 8,500/mo + 25,500 bank |
| Premium | $30 | 25,000/mo + 75,000 bank, unlimited relaxed-speed on select models |
| Ultimate | $60 | 60,000/mo + 180,000 bank |
Team plans start at $72/mo for 3 seats. Annual billing is discounted up to 20%. The API is separately billed pay-as-you-go with non-expiring credits.
Free tier
150 tokens per day, recurring, with a 150-token bank on top. The catch: free-tier generations are public by default, private generation requires a paid plan. Third-party sources claim free-tier images carry a watermark; we could not confirm that detail on Leonardo's own site, so treat it as unverified until you check at signup.
What we found when we looked past the pricing page
Reviews are more positive here than most platforms we have looked at in this category, and the most consistently praised element is unusual for the industry: customer support. The recurring complaints are content moderation (flagged as a top frustration by several reviewers) and confusion over how tokens get consumed on certain generations. Quality issues on specific prompt types, full-body shots in particular, also come up.
What we have not tested ourselves
We have not run our own benchmark battery through Leonardo's proprietary models (Phoenix, Motion 2.0) or through its third-party model access. Everything we have measured on this site so far was generated through Magnific.
Should you use it
If you want in-house models built and maintained by one team rather than a patchwork of resold access, and support quality matters to you (a category where Krea and ImagineArt both scored worse in reviewer complaints), Leonardo is a stronger pick in this category than most. If content moderation limits matter for your use case, check them against your specific needs before subscribing.
See our full platform comparison for the rest of the field.
Sources: Leonardo.Ai, Business Wire, Trustpilot.
Related: Leonardo.Ai
Priya Shenoy: Tracks what AI video actually costs across the platforms that resell access to the same handful of models. Treats a pricing page as a claim, not a fact, until someone checks it.