A Playground AI Alternative: Private by Default, Coins That Keep

We went to Playground's pricing page for this post expecting a plain price comparison, and got one. On their top plan, used in full, they are cheaper per picture than any package of ours, and this post says so in its second paragraph rather than its last. What took longer to find was in their terms, not on the pricing page: two rules that matter more to some people than the price does.

Everything about Playground below was read on their pricing page and in their terms of service (last updated 5 November 2025) on 30 September 2026. They price in US dollars and we sell in euros; we have not converted between them, because an exchange rate would add a number that moves every day. If their page says something different by the time you read this, their page is right.

How Playground charges, as of today

Monthly credits, on a plan. Free gives you up to 10 images every three hours, with 3 generations a month on their listed models. Pro is $15 a month billed monthly or $12 a month billed yearly, for 150 credits; Pro Plus is $45 or $36, for 1,000 credits and no cap on how many generations you make in a window. Their default model costs one credit a picture; their heaviest listed model costs 4. The page says the credits are refreshed monthly and does not say that unused ones roll over. Payment is by credit or debit card only.

How we charge

Fellowi Images has no plan. You buy coins in packages, and every picture in the image studio costs a fixed number of them: a Standard picture is 40 coins. The full list is on the product page, built from the code that charges, and the figures here come from that same code. Coins do not expire. A generation that fails on our side refunds its coins automatically. New accounts get 60 free coins once, not a rolling allowance. We take PayPal and crypto.

One picture, priced both ways

• Playground Pro, default model, credits used in full: $0.100 a picture billed monthly, $0.080 billed yearly.
• Playground Pro Plus, default model, credits used in full: $0.045 a picture billed monthly, $0.036 billed yearly.
• Fellowi Standard: €0.239 a picture at the Starter package rate, €0.123 at Creator, €0.098 at Scale.

Read plainly: on Pro, Playground lands in the range of our largest package, and on Pro Plus a picture costs less than it does at any package rate we have, so we are not going to argue with the arithmetic. Two different models make two different pictures, so read the lines as a comparison of how each side charges, not a claim about which picture is better. (Dollars and euros are not converted, but the gap on Pro Plus is too large for an exchange rate to close.)

The two clauses the price does not show

Public by default. Their terms say that, by default, your assets may be publicly viewable and remixable by others, and that you grant them a perpetual, worldwide, sublicensable licence to use your prompts and the images that come out, a licence that survives the end of the agreement. You keep the ownership they assign you; they keep the right to show and reuse what you made. That is a reasonable trade for a community platform, and a strange one for anyone generating something they would rather keep to themselves. Fellowi has no public gallery, no feed and no discovery page: what you generate is visible to your account and, for investigating failures and abuse, to the two owners (who can see what you generate).

Cancelling does not refund. Under their terms, cancelling stops the renewal but does not refund what you have already paid for the period. That is the normal rule for a subscription. It is also the reason a plan you use for two weeks costs the same as one you use for thirty days.

Where the arithmetic turns around

A plan is priced for the month you use it. If you make a hundred pictures for a launch in October and none in November, the November plan is the most expensive picture you never made. Coins bought in October are still in the wallet in December; the package costs more per picture than a used plan, and nothing more than that (an image generator without a subscription).

What Playground does better

• Price per picture on a used plan: level with our biggest package on Pro, clearly below all of ours on Pro Plus.
• Tools around the picture. A template library, image editing you can extend and resize, upscaling and background removal, and larger edited sizes on the top plan. We make the picture and stop there.
• A free tier that refills. Up to 10 images every three hours, where our free coins arrive once.
• Speed on paid plans. Their page lists faster generation on Pro and slower generation for free users at peak hours; we have no tiers of speed to offer.
• A community.If seeing and remixing other people's work is the reason you are there, the same default that costs you privacy is the feature.

What we do differently

• Private, with no gallery. Nobody browses what you make.
• No plan, no reset. Coins stay until you spend them.
• Commercial use from the first coin. Both sides let you use what you make commercially; ours places no restriction on it, free coins included (the commercial-use clause). Their page says you own the images. We do not make that promise, because machine-made images may not be protectable anywhere (who owns AI-generated images).
• Adult content for adults. Their terms rule out obscene content, among other things; we allow adult images for adults, within our own rules (choosing an AI character generator).
• Failures refunded automatically. The pages we read on their site do not say what happens to credits spent on a generation that fails.

And what we lack, in the same breath: no template library, no editor, no upscaler, no background removal, and finished files are kept for a limited time only (the window is on the product page), so download what you want to keep.

So which one

If pictures are a weekly habit, or you want templates, editing and a community around them, a Playground plan is the better tool and the better price, and we would say the same to a friend. If your pictures come in bursts, or you would rather nobody else could see them, credits that would be refreshed unused are the whole difference, and a private wallet that does not expire is the calmer habit. Open the image studio, see the price of the next picture before you press the button, and decide with the number in front of you.