Cloudinary vs ImageKit Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Cloudinary | ImageKit | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $99/mo | $9/mo |
| Number of plans | 4 | 4 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | — | — |
| Pricing model | hybrid | usage-based |
Free
- Upload widget, API, and search
- Remote fetch, auto-backup, and revision tracking
- Image and video transformations
- Video transcoding and adaptive streaming
- High performance delivery through a CDN
- Support — forums, tickets, and email
- Access to free add-ons
- Access to MCP servers
Plus
Popular- Backup to your own S3 bucket
- Auto-tagging based search
- Access to free and paid add-ons
- Expedited support
- Allowlist/Blocklist asset access
- Role-based multi-user administration
Advanced
- Custom domain (CNAME) support
- Optional HTTPS SSL Certificate
- Authentication Options
Enterprise
- Backup to your own S3 bucket
- Auto-tagging based search
- Access to free and paid add-ons
- Expedited support
- Allowlist/Blocklist asset access
- Video Bandwidth Boost 2:1
- Role-based multi-user administration
Forever free
- Access to all media optimizations, transformations and streaming features with monthly limits
- Limited AI-powered operations every month
- Limited Creative Automation exports every month
- Integrated media library storage
- Community Support
Lite
- Overage allowed for bandwidth and storage
- Higher upload and processing limits
- Email support
Pro
- Overage allowed for all core items like bandwidth, storage, AI-transformations, and more
- Custom domain name like images.example.com
- Advanced search, sharing and collabroation in DAM
- Unlimited AI-powered operations every month
- Unlimited Creative Automation exports every month
- Automatic AVIF optimization available on-demand
- Even higher upload and processing limits
- One-time 30-minute implementation consultation with our team
Enterprise
- Single Sign-On (SSO) & multi-account setup
- Advanced Security with IP, geo, and referrer-based allow or block lists
- URL Endpoint functions for custom URL rewriting
- Path policies in DAM for governance
- Origin shield for external origins
- Custom CDN integration
- Dedicated customer success manager
- Dedicated integration support
- Custom processing limits
- Phone and Slack support with custom SLAs
Cloudinary vs ImageKit FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- ImageKit is the cheaper option, starting at $9/mo vs $99/mo for Cloudinary.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Cloudinary uses hybrid pricing, while ImageKit goes with usage-based. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Cloudinary: Cloudinary sits at the premium end of the media management space — it's pricier than rolling your own S3-plus-imgix stack, but it's positioning itself as the full-service option that saves engineering time versus piecing together storage, CDN, and transformation tooling yourself. They're chasing teams that'll pay for reliability and breadth of features over raw cost savings.
Still deciding? See the best Cloudinary alternatives or the best ImageKit alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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