Leonardo AI vs Playground AI

L

Leonardo AI

AI image and video generator with a real-time canvas, custom model training, team plans and an API. Free plan of 150 tokens a day; Essential is $12 a month ($10 billed yearly).

Strengths

• The Free plan gives 150 fast tokens a day
• Paid plans keep unused monthly tokens in a rollover bank that holds up to three months' worth
• Paid plans have private generations, and the Terms of Service say private content is not used to train AI models without written consent
• Text-to-video, image-to-video, in-painting, out-painting, a real-time canvas, custom model training and Blueprints workflows are listed in the vendor's own material
• Team plans list SOC 2 Type I and Type II accreditation and private team generations

Limitations

• Free plan creations are public, and the Terms of Service say the Free plan's outputs vest in Leonardo, which grants the user a non-exclusive commercial licence. A vendor blog says Free plans include commercial use, so read the Terms
• Free daily tokens do not accumulate and expire at the daily reset
• Different features cost different token amounts. For example, Alchemy V2 costs 16 tokens an image, Full 3D Texture Generation costs 30 and the Upscaler costs 5
• Per the Terms of Service, public content on paid plans gives Leonardo a broad licence, including for AI training, unless you generate privately

P

Playground AI

AI design studio for logos, merch and social posts with several image models. Free plan; Pro starts at $12 a month billed annually ($15 monthly).

Who it is for

Playground says it is for everyone, including people with no design experience, and its pages target creators making logos, merch, stickers and social posts. It also has a use-case page for Cricut crafters and print-on-demand sellers, and says it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cricut.

Strengths

• The pricing page lists a Free plan with 3 credits a month, unlimited design files and no credit card needed to start, per the home page.
• The pricing page lists several image models, including Muse Image, Nano Banana, Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image and Seedream, with credits shared across all of them.
• Paid plans list SVG export, premium templates, upscaling and background removal; the Cricut page says layered SVGs open in Cricut Design Space.
• The pricing page states that all plans, including Free, have worldwide, royalty-free commercial use, and that users own the images they create, subject to Playground's terms.
• Pro lists AI editing and generation up to 2K (2048x2048) and Pro Plus up to 4K (3840x2160).
• The pricing page says cancellation, payment method changes and receipts are handled in a Billing Portal reached from the avatar menu.

Limitations

• Credits reset monthly and are shared across models: Free has 3, Pro 150 and Pro Plus 1,000. Nano Banana Pro costs 4 credits per generation and is not included on Free, capped at 10 images a month on Pro and 250 on Pro Plus.
• Free allows 2 downloads a day, with no SVG export, premium templates, upscaling or background removal, and generation can be slower at peak hours with waiting periods after limits.
• The terms say subscriptions renew automatically and that canceling does not give a refund or credit for amounts already billed; they also say assets may be publicly viewable and remixable by default and grant Playground a license to use inputs and assets to run and improve the service. The terms page text mentions an older model license, so it may not be current.