How Credits Work on Nano Banana: A Plain-English Guide

May 8, 2026
The complete, exact breakdown of the credit system β€” welcome credits, image pricing, video pricing per second, and worked examples for budgeting a project.
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Every generation on this platform β€” every image, every second of video β€” costs a fixed, published number of credits. There's no hidden multiplier and no surge pricing. Here's exactly how the math works.

You start with 100 free credits

Every new account is granted 100 welcome credits automatically on signup, no card required. That's enough to explore every tool on the platform β€” image and video β€” before deciding whether to buy more.

Image generation: 4 or 12 credits

Most image tools cost 4 credits per generation. That's the standard rate for the AI Image Generator, Image to Image, Inpainting, Remove Background and Style Transfer β€” all of which default to Nano Banana 2.

A smaller set of premium models cost 12 credits per generation: Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image) and GPT Image 1.5. These are the higher-fidelity, higher-compute-cost models β€” the ones with 4K output, studio-grade lighting control and industry-leading text rendering. The Nano Banana Pro and Upscale tools use this tier by default, since both are built around maximum output quality. See our Nano Banana explainer for what you actually get for the extra credits.

Video generation: 4 credits per second

Video pricing is simpler than it looks: 4 credits per second of output, regardless of which model you use. Kling, Veo 3.1, Sora 2 and Seedance are all priced identically per second β€” your budget depends on clip length, not model choice.

Worked out against the actual duration options available on this platform:

Clip lengthCredit cost
4 seconds16 credits
5 seconds20 credits
6 seconds24 credits
8 seconds32 credits
10 seconds40 credits
12 seconds48 credits
15 seconds60 credits

If you're deciding between models for a shot, this is one less variable to worry about β€” pick based on the look you need (see our model comparison), not the price, since the price is the same either way for a given duration.

What 100 welcome credits actually buys

A few concrete ways to spend a fresh account's starting balance:

  • 25 standard images (4 credits each) β€” plenty of room to iterate on a prompt before landing on a final version
  • 8 premium images (12 credits each) β€” enough to test Nano Banana Pro on a hero asset
  • Five 5-second video clips (20 credits each)
  • Two 12-second video clips (48 credits each) plus a handful of standard images with what's left over
  • Any mix β€” credits aren't locked to a tool, so a realistic first session might be a dozen image iterations followed by one or two video generations once the prompt is dialed in

When you run out

If a generation would cost more credits than you have, the platform blocks the request before it starts β€” you're never charged for a generation you can't afford, and you won't be left wondering why nothing happened. From there, buying more credits takes a few seconds from the pricing page.

Getting the most out of every credit

  • Iterate cheap, finish expensive. Nail your composition and prompt on the 4-credit standard tier before spending 12 credits on a premium model β€” the prompt that works well on Nano Banana 2 will generally work just as well, or better, on Nano Banana Pro.
  • Prototype video at the shortest duration first. A 4-second Veo 3.1 test costs 16 credits versus 32 for 8 seconds β€” confirm the camera move and style read correctly before committing to a longer, pricier clip.
  • Use Inpainting instead of full regeneration when only part of an image is wrong β€” same 4-credit cost, but you're not gambling the parts that already work. See our inpainting guide for how that works in practice.
How Credits Work on Nano Banana: A Plain-English Guide | Nano Banana