Panel Haus How much does it cost to make a comic with AI?
One ink makes one HD panel, a page is about four panels, and a full 12 page comic is 48 to 60 panels. On a plan that is roughly $5 to $6 a comic; topped up, $6 to $7.50. A short six page comic is about half that. Here is where the numbers come from.
· Panel Haus
A full 12 page comic is 48 to 60 panels, and on Panel Haus one ink makes one HD panel, so that is 48 to 60 ink. On a monthly plan a panel is 10 cents, which makes the comic about $5 to $6. Topped up at 12.5 cents a panel it is $6 to $7.50. A short six page comic is about half of either.
That is the whole answer. The rest of this explains where the number comes from, so you can check it rather than take it on faith.
Updated September 2026: the ink prices changed and this post was rewritten around panels. The old version quoted pack prices that no longer exist.
What ink is
Ink is the credit you spend when you ask the app to generate something. Generating an image costs ink. Writing a story costs ink. Removing a background or cleaning up an image costs ink.
Everything else does not. Laying out panels, writing dialogue, lettering, choosing fonts, arranging pages, exporting a PNG or a PDF: none of that touches your balance. That matters more than it sounds, because most of the time you spend on a comic is spent on those things.
Where the per-comic number comes from
Count panels, then multiply.
| Panels | Ink at HD | On a plan (10c) | Topped up (12.5c) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A strip | 4 | 4 | $0.40 | $0.50 |
| A six page comic | 24 to 30 | 24 to 30 | $2.40 to $3 | $3 to $3.75 |
| A full 12 page comic | 48 to 60 | 48 to 60 | $4.80 to $6 | $6 to $7.50 |
Those rates are the ones at the time of writing; the live ones are on the pricing page, which is generated from the same numbers the checkout uses. The plan rate is the cheaper of the two because plan ink is replaced every month, while ink you top up with is yours until you spend it.
One ink is one panel on the standard model at HD. The Pro model costs 2 ink a panel and 4K costs 4, so a comic drawn entirely in 4K costs four times the figures above. What does one ink buy? has the full exchange rate.
Why it is a range and not a number
Because a comic is not a fixed thing. The spread comes from three decisions you make while working:
- How many panels. A six panel page and a two panel page do not cost the same.
- Which model. The standard model is 1 ink a panel. The Pro model is 2, and 4 at 4K. On a first draft the standard one is usually the right call.
- How many retries. This is the real variable. A panel you get on the first attempt costs a fraction of one you regenerate six times.
That third one is where people are surprised. The cost of an AI comic is mostly the cost of the images you threw away.
How to spend less
The advice that actually works is not about settings.
Draft at HD, finish in Pro. Rough the whole comic out on the standard model first, at low effort, ugly. Once the story works, regenerate only the panels that will be seen closely. Most people do the opposite: they perfect panel one, then discover the story does not need it.
Define your characters once. A character saved to your World Vault is described consistently every time you use it, so you stop paying for the retries where the AI reinvented someone's face. This is the single biggest saving available, and it is covered in How do you keep an AI character consistent?.
Reuse backgrounds. The same room from a different angle is usually a crop and a nudge, not a new generation.
What it costs to start
A free account gets enough ink to make something real before deciding whether to pay for anything. That is deliberate. You cannot tell whether a creative tool suits you by reading about it.
For current plan prices and what each one includes, see Pricing. We keep the numbers there rather than repeating them here, so there is only one page to be wrong.
The honest comparison
Commissioning a single illustrated page from an artist starts around $80 to $150 and takes days. A comic here costs five or six dollars and takes an evening.
Those are not the same product and we would not pretend otherwise. An artist brings judgement you cannot buy for $6. What changed is that the floor moved: making a comic used to require either years of drawing practice or a budget. Now it requires an idea and an evening.