What is Ideogram 4.0?
Ideogram 4.0 is Ideogram's current flagship and its first model with downloadable weights. It was trained from scratch on structured JSON captions, so it reads a prompt as a list of elements, each with its own description, optional bounding box and colors, plus the exact words for any text. Plain prompts still work, because Ideogram's free magic-prompt service rewrites them as JSON first.
It runs in the Ideogram app, on the API and through Ideogram's MCP server, and Ideogram 3.0 is still offered beside it. The catch is the licence: the free weights are for research and personal projects, so paid work goes through the API or a self-hosting license.
What changed from Ideogram 3.0?
Open weights and JSON prompts with layout control, but fewer API options and twice the app credits per image.
- Weights
- 4.0 is the first model in Ideogram's main line with downloadable weights.
- Prompts
- 4.0 reads JSON with bounding boxes and per-element colors; 3.0 takes a plain prompt with style presets.
- API options
- The 4.0 endpoint has no negative prompt, style reference or character reference inputs; those stay on 3.0.
- Cost
- API prices match 3.0 at Turbo and Default, Quality is $0.10 against $0.09, and in the app a 4.0 image uses twice the credits.
Who is Ideogram 4.0 best for?
Ideogram 4.0 is best for designers and developers who need images with accurate text and exact layouts, such as posters, packaging and banners, from a model they can also run themselves.
Posters and ads with text
It renders signs, logos, captions and multi-line text straight from the prompt, and Ideogram's benchmarks put it ahead of much larger open models on text.
Exact layouts
JSON prompts take bounding boxes to place each subject or text block, plus up to 16 hex colors to set the palette.
Banners and unusual sizes
Any size from 256 to 2048 pixels a side works, with aspect ratios up to 6:1, so wide banners and phone wallpapers need no cropping.
Research and prototyping
The free weights can be fine-tuned and tested on your own GPU, and a paid license moves the same setup into production.
What's included with Ideogram 4.0?
JSON prompts with bounding boxes, color palettes and exact text elements, sizes up to 2048 pixels a side, plus transparent backgrounds and remixing on the API.
- JSON prompts
- Each element gets its own description, and a free magic-prompt service turns a plain prompt into JSON for you.
- Bounding boxes
- Place any object or block of text by coordinates, so the layout follows the brief instead of chance.
- Color palettes
- Up to 16 hex colors per image, and 5 per element, set the colors directly instead of through adjectives.
- Text elements
- A text element carries the exact words plus a separate style description, which is how it handles multi-line, multi-font type.
- Transparent backgrounds
- The API returns 4.0 images as cutouts, from $0.03 each at 1K or 2K Turbo to $0.42 at 8K Quality.
- Remix
- Send the API an existing image with a prompt and set how closely the result should keep the original.
- Fine-tuning
- The licence allows fine-tunes and modifications of the weights, and the nf4 version loads in Diffusers.
How much does Ideogram 4.0 cost?
Ideogram 4.0's open weights are free to download for non-commercial use; for commercial work Ideogram charges $0.03 to $0.10 an image on its API or $300 a month to self-host 10,000 images, and the Ideogram app has paid plans from $20 a month.
- 9.3B-parameter nf4 and fp8 weights on Hugging Face after accepting the license
- Research, testing, personal and charity use only
- The nf4 version fits on one 24 GB GPU
- Hosted by Ideogram, commercial use included
- Default limit of 10 requests in progress at once
- 1,000 priority credits a month; a 4.0 image uses 1 to 3 credits
- Unlimited slow credits and private generation
- Price shown for 10,000 self-hosted images a month; allowances go up to 100,000
- Commercial use of the public quantized weights
- No full-precision weights, support or access for third parties
Paying yearly for the self-serve license saves $720 at the 10,000-image level. More than 100,000 images a month, full-precision weights, customer-facing products or access for third parties need an Enterprise license, priced on request. In the Ideogram app, a 4.0 image costs 1 credit in Turbo, 2 in Balanced and 3 in Quality; the Free plan gives eligible accounts weekly slow credits, Pro costs $60 a month for 3,500 credits and Team $30 per user a month for 1,500 credits each (2 users minimum). Billed yearly, Plus is $15, Pro $42 and Team $20 per user a month. The inference code is Apache 2.0, and images with transparent backgrounds cost $0.03 to $0.42 each on the API depending on mode and size. Full pricing on ideogram.ai. We checked these prices on .
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Ideogram 4.0 pros and cons
It gives the most exact text and layout control of any open model, but it needs JSON prompts, runs slowly on your own GPU and its free weights are non-commercial.
Pros
- Users who learn its prompt format call its prompt adherence unmatched, with the most exact control over where things go of any open model they have tried.
- People making logos and signage say its text is well ahead of every other model they can run locally, in line with Ideogram's own benchmarks.
- Many users rate its image quality the best among open models, and some compare it to Nano Banana without the editing.
- The hosted API costs the same as Ideogram 3.0 at Turbo and Default speed, $0.03 and $0.06 an image, with commercial use included.
Cons
- It does its best work only with JSON prompts: plain prompts give weaker results, and users find laying out bounding boxes slow even with prompt builders.
- Local users often get a grey 'blocked by safety filter' image instead of a picture, mostly when the prompt is not in its JSON format.
- The free weights cannot be used for paid work, and commercial self-hosting starts at $300 a month.
- It is slow on your own GPU: users report a minute or two per image at full quality, where lighter open models take seconds.
What are the best Ideogram 4.0 alternatives?
Three tools on Recaply do Ideogram 4.0's job. Z-Image is open source, so you can run it on your own server.
Z-ImageOpen SourceChoose it when you need open weights you can use commercially at no cost; it is released under Apache 2.0 and its Turbo version runs in 16GB of VRAM.
Nano Banana ProFreeChoose it when you want a hosted model that also edits images you upload and renders up to 4K without JSON prompts; it costs $0.134 per 1K or 2K image on the Gemini API.
Recraft V4.1FreeChoose it when you need logos or icons as editable SVG files, which Ideogram 4.0 does not make; a V4.1 Vector image costs $0.08 on Recraft's API.
Questions about Ideogram 4.0
What is Ideogram 4.0?
Ideogram 4.0 is Ideogram's first open-weight image model: 9.3B parameters, built for posters, packaging and ads, with accurate in-image text and bounding-box control over where each element lands.
Who is Ideogram 4.0 for?
Ideogram 4.0 is best for designers and developers who need images with accurate text and exact layouts, such as posters, packaging and banners, from a model they can also run themselves.
Is Ideogram 4.0 free?
Yes. Ideogram 4.0 has a free Open weights plan: 9.3B-parameter nf4 and fp8 weights on Hugging Face after accepting the license.
How much does Ideogram 4.0 cost?
Ideogram 4.0's paid plans are Ideogram API at $0.03 / $0.06 / $0.10 per image, Turbo / Default / Quality, Plus (Ideogram app) at $20 per month and Self-Serve Commercial License at $300 per month.
Is there an open source alternative to Ideogram 4.0?
Yes. Z-Image is an open source tool that does the same job, so you can run your own.
What are the best Ideogram 4.0 alternatives?
The closest alternatives on Recaply are Z-Image, Nano Banana Pro and Recraft V4.1.
Where can I try Ideogram 4.0?
On its official website, github.com.
Can I use Ideogram 4.0 commercially?
Not with the free weights. Ideogram 4.0's open weights come under a non-commercial agreement that rules out using them for revenue-generating products. For commercial work, use the Ideogram API at $0.03 to $0.10 an image, or buy the self-serve license, $300 a month for 10,000 self-hosted images.
What hardware does Ideogram 4.0 need?
Ideogram says the nf4 version of Ideogram 4.0 fits on a single 24 GB GPU and runs on CUDA with Diffusers support; the fp8 version works on other hardware too. Prompts are structured JSON, and Ideogram's free magic-prompt service turns plain text into that format with an API key.
Do I have to write JSON prompts for Ideogram 4.0?
No, but JSON gets the most out of it. Ideogram 4.0 was trained only on JSON captions, so the Ideogram app, the API's text prompt option and the free magic-prompt service convert plain text into JSON before generating. Writing the JSON yourself gives the most control over layout, colors and text.
Are the Ideogram 4.0 weights the full model?
They are quantized. Ideogram publishes nf4 and fp8 versions of the 9.3B-parameter model on Hugging Face, and full-precision weights come only with an Enterprise license. The nf4 version needs an NVIDIA GPU, while the fp8 version runs on other hardware too.
Our verdict
Ideogram 4.0 is the open model to pick when the words and the layout have to be right.
Ideogram's benchmarks and its users agree it leads open models on in-image text and exact placement, and the hosted API costs the same as Ideogram 3.0 at most speeds.
- Skip it for
- Quick one-line prompting, or paid work on your own hardware unless the $300-a-month license fits your budget.
- Check first
- Run your real prompts through magic prompt or as JSON before you build a pipeline around it.
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