Car Image API pricing
Plans sized by images and vehicles
Each plan covers a number of images and different vehicles a month, and paid plans carry the commercial license. An image counts once, rendered cold or served from the CDN, in any view and paint color. Start with 100 free images, no card.
A vehicle is one make, model and year. Every view and paint color of it counts as the same vehicle, and a vehicle you already showed this month never counts again, so a live product is never cut off mid-month.
Extra images are $1 per 100 on any plan, as packs from $1 or auto-reload, and they never expire. For steady volume a plan costs far less: 25,000 images are $29 a month on Pro and $250 as extra images.
Buy extra imagesCalculator
Which plan do you need?
A plan caps two things: the images you serve and the different vehicles they show. A marketplace with 10,000 listings at one image each needs Business for its vehicles, even though Pro includes more images.
Side by side
What each plan covers
The same renders, catalog and API on every plan. Yearly billing is ten months for twelve; cancel from the dashboard and the plan runs to the end of the period you paid for.
| Free | Pro | Business | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Images included | 100 once | 25,000 a month | 150,000 a month | Negotiated |
| Different vehicles a month | 100 | 2,500 | 15,000 | No cap |
| Extra images | $1 per 100 | $1 per 100 | $1 per 100 | Negotiated |
| License | Evaluation and personal projects | Commercial; delivered renders keep it | Commercial; delivered renders keep it | Commercial, plus export by agreement |
| Keep renders on your own CDN | For evaluation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Bulk export or catalog copy | — | — | — | By agreement |
What counts
What counts as an image
The API, the dashboard and your invoices call the unit a credit: one image is one credit. A plan's images are used first and reset each month; extra images never expire.
- 1 imageEvery image delivered counts once, rendered cold or served from the CDN, in a preset or a custom paint color.
- 1 imageA signed URL counts once, when it is created, however many times it is opened before it expires.
- 100 imagesA 3D model (GLB, USDZ, FBX, a thumbnail and a browser build) counts as 100 images ($1.00) when you order it, and never again for that vehicle in that color. Status, downloads, webhooks, publishing and every load of a published model are free; a failed model is refunded.
- free304 Not Modified (ETag match) — free.
- freeFailed renders (5xx) — refunded automatically.
- freeVIN decoding, vehicle lookups by id, search, resolve, options, account and feedback endpoints — free.
- freePlayground previews — free while you explore.
For engineers
Technical limits
Rate limits, render capacity and keys per plan. Cached images always serve; the render share only paces new renders, and it resets at midnight UTC.
| Free | Pro | Business | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requests a minute per key | 120 | 120 | 600 | 1,200 |
| Requests a minute per account | 240 | 600 | 2,000 | 5,000 |
| Share of daily render capacity | 2% | 10% | 25% | 50% |
| API keys | 10 | 10 | 25 | 100 |
Enterprise
The whole catalog, your terms
Negotiated volume with no vehicle cap, reserved render capacity, invoicing and an SLA. If your product needs the catalog delivered as a set rather than rendered as you go, a bulk export under a written agreement puts it in your own storage. Tell us what you are building, or email support@carimage.dev.
Compare
Versus a typical car image subscription
We win on price, catalog and agent tooling; the typical subscription still offers a slightly larger maximum size.
| Feature | Car Image API | Typical car image API |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pro $29/mo for 25,000 images, extra at $1 per 100; Business $99/mo for 150,000 | $49/mo for 25,000, hard cap |
| 25,000 images | $29 a month | $49 a month |
| Free tier | 100 credits, full quality, no watermark | 5,000 / month, watermarked WebP |
| Cold vs. CDN hit | Same price: 1 credit | Counts against the monthly quota |
| Camera angles | 8 (front, rear, both profiles and all four ¾ corners) | 8 |
| Paint colors | Any hex, plus 15 named presets — same 1 credit either way | A fixed palette |
| Max size | 1024 px | 1200 px |
| Formats | PNG, WebP, JPG — transparent background | WebP |
| Catalog | 42,294 models · 1,608 makes · cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses · open source | Cars, closed catalog |
| Agent tooling | MCP (remote + local), CLI, OpenAPI 3.1, llms.txt, Claude Code, ChatGPT actions | JavaScript loader |
| Browser embeds | Signed URLs, TTL up to 7 days, billed once at creation | HMAC signed URLs |
| VIN decoding | Free: full or partial VINs to year, make, model, trim and a catalog vehicle id | Not included |
| 3D models | GLB, USDZ and FBX of any vehicle in any paint, $1 per model, built from the same renders | Not included |
FAQ
Billing questions
Start free. Upgrade when it ships.
- 100 free images
- No card required
- Plans from $29 a month