Usage of gpt-image-1 is priced per token, with separate pricing for text and image tokens:

Text input tokens (prompt text): $5 per 1M tokens Image input tokens (input images): $10 per 1M tokens Image output tokens (generated images): $40 per 1M tokens

In practice, this translates to roughly $0.02, $0.07, and $0.19 per generated image for low, medium, and high-quality square images, respectively.

that's a bit pricy for a startup.

Isn't there also a cost per image? The pricing page shows $0.25 for a high quality 1536x1024 image. 25 cents per image is ... steep lol