Media Studio: how the free images work (and what pollen is)
Media Studio gives you 12 free AI images a day with nothing to set up. Want more, or the premium models? That's where Pollinations and its pollen credits come in. Here's what it actually costs and who pays for what.
Media Studio is the newest tab in your dashboard. You describe an image, pick the platforms you're posting to, and hit Generate. You get correctly-sized art for Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and the rest, and any image in your library can become a scheduled post in two clicks. The studio also generates short video and audio, including voiceovers, but images are where most authors start, and images are what the daily included allowance covers. That's what this post is about.
The question authors actually ask is what it costs. This post answers that.
The short version
You get 12 images a day at no cost, with nothing to set up. Pick any model in the "Included" group and generate.
If you want more than 12, or you want the premium models, you bring your own Pollinations key and pay their per-image price directly. Most models cost between one and three cents per image.
We never bill you for image generation. Your Pollinations spending goes to Pollinations, on your own account, with your own budget controls.
Who is Pollinations?
Pollinations is an AI media platform that fronts dozens of image, video, and audio models behind one account: Flux, GPT Image, Seedream, Ideogram, NanoBanana, and more. Instead of juggling five AI subscriptions to try five image models, one Pollinations balance covers all of them.
Their currency is called pollen. One pollen is roughly one US dollar, and you buy it pay-as-you-go. There is no subscription and no monthly minimum. A $5 top-up covers hundreds of images on the mid-range models.
What "included" actually means
There is no such thing as truly free AI image generation. Every image costs someone a fraction of a cent in computing power. We think you should know who that someone is.
For the models in Media Studio's "Included" group, it's us. Your first 12 images each day run on Author Automations' own Pollinations account. That's why the included group has a daily cap and sticks to the fast, efficient models: the cap keeps our costs predictable while still giving you a real allowance every day. Twelve images is a full campaign batch. One image in six platform sizes, twice over.
When you'd want your own key
Three reasons authors add their own Pollinations key:
1. More than 12 images a day. Your own key has no daily cap from us. Your pollen balance is the only limit.
2. The premium models. GPT Image Mini, NanoBanana 2, Seedream, and Ideogram render text better, keep characters consistent across images, and handle fine detail that the fast models smear. You'll see each model's price right in the dropdown before you generate. Most run $0.01 to $0.03 per image.
3. Reference images. The models that can look at your book cover or a character portrait while generating, so the art stays on-brand, are all in the premium group.
Setting it up
Four steps, about five minutes:
- Go to pollinations.ai and sign in with your GitHub account. Creating one is free.
- Open enter.pollinations.ai/keys and copy your API key.
- Add pollen to your balance. $5 is a sensible start. At a cent or three per image, it lasts a long time.
- In Author Automations, open Settings → AI Providers, paste the key into the Pollinations field, and save. We check the key live and show a green badge when it works.
From then on, the premium models light up in the Media Studio dropdown with their per-image prices. Everything you generate on them is billed to your pollen balance, which you can check any time in your Pollinations dashboard.
The fine print
Your key is encrypted the moment you save it, same as every other key you store with us.
Generation runs only when you press Generate or Regenerate. We never spend your pollen on anything you didn't ask for.
If your pollen runs out, the generation fails with a clear message and a link to top up. Nothing queues up charges behind your back.
Already using Magnific, fal.ai, or Gemini for images? Those still work exactly as before. Media Studio lists them in the model dropdown alongside the Pollinations options.
Why we built it this way
We could have marked up image generation and billed you for it. We chose not to be in the business of reselling compute. With your own key you always pay the actual price, you can see every charge on your own dashboard, and you can walk away any time. Your Pollinations account belongs to you, not to us.
The 12 daily included images exist so you can find out what Media Studio does for your marketing before you set up anything at all. That's the whole idea.
