Leonardo.ai

What is Leonardo.ai?

What Leonardo.ai is good at

Leonardo.ai is an AI image generator built for game artists, designers and marketers who want control over style. Beyond plain text-to-image, it lets you train custom models on your own reference images and work with several base models in one interface. That makes it a better pick than Midjourney if you need consistent characters or a house style, and a worse one if you want the simplest path to attractive results from a short prompt.

Ownership and company

Leonardo started in Australia in 2022 and was acquired by Canva in 2024. In practice that means the tool is tied to a larger design company, and some Canva-style integrations are likely to keep appearing. Check the current pricing page rather than old reviews, since plan names and allowances have changed more than once.

The free plan and the token system

Leonardo works on tokens. Third-party trackers report the free plan gives about 150 tokens a day and that unused free tokens do not roll over, while paid plans store tokens in a bank. I could not load Leonardo's own pricing page for this review, so treat those numbers as reported, not confirmed, and verify them on leonardo.ai/pricing.

Pricing, with a caveat

Aggregators report paid tiers at $12, $30 and $60 per month, formerly called Apprentice, Artisan and Maestro. Some sources say the plans were renamed Essential, Premium and Ultimate in February 2026. An earlier deal listing we track shows the Apprentice plan at $120 a year paid annually instead of $144 monthly, which is about 17% off.

The risk with token-based tools is that costly models, upscales and video burn tokens quickly. A plan that sounds generous for stills can run out fast if you experiment with video or high-resolution output.

The Black Friday pattern

In 2025, a deal roundup reported 20% off paid plans, with the Apprentice plan at $96 per year. We have no verified dates for that sale. Expect a similar yearly-plan discount around late November, but not a bigger one.

Who should skip it

Skip Leonardo if you want the most polished stylized output from minimal prompting; Midjourney often wins there. Skip it if you need a firm guarantee on commercial rights without reading the terms for your plan.

Decision rule: use the free daily tokens for a week. Pay only if you need custom-trained models or consistent characters, and choose annual billing near Black Friday.

Key features

• Text-to-image with multiple base models
• Custom model training on your own images
• Daily free token allowance (reported)
• Image upscaling and editing tools
• Token-based paid plans
• Team plans and API (reported)

Use cases

• Game concept art
• Consistent character sheets
• Marketing visuals
• Style-matched product mockups

Leonardo.ai pricing

As of October 2026, third-party trackers report paid plans at about $12, $30 and $60 per month with 8,500, 25,000 and 60,000 tokens respectively. Leonardo's own pricing page could not be loaded for verification, so confirm at leonardo.ai/pricing. Annual billing is reported to be cheaper, with up to 20% off advertised.