HiAPI

HiAPI's unified API is a real time-saver for developers who need to swap between GPT-Image, Flux, Seedance, Nano Banana, and others without rewriting integration code. The persistent artifact links eliminate the need to build your own storage layer—outputs are returned as durable URLs automatically. We'd reach for this when building a production app that must reliably generate images and videos without managing separate provider auth, billing, and storage. The model-specific pricing is transparent: each model lists per-task costs upfront (e.g., $0.02 for gpt-image-2-beta, $0.05 for flux-1.1-pro, up to $0.823 for Seedance 1080p video). No confusing token math. The agent-friendly MCP and llms.txt features are thoughtful: you can paste the prompt into Claude or Cursor and have the agent understand how to call HiAPI. Where it bites: HiAPI is not for non-developers. There's no UI for casual image generation beyond a basic playground. The wallet-based pricing requires a minimum $5 top-up with no free tier beyond a $1 trial credit. Compared to alternatives like Fal.ai, which offers serverless GPU and a broader model catalog, HiAPI's advantage is the persistent storage and agent hooks. For teams already building with MCP, this is compelling. The lack of audio models today (listed as 'on roadmap') means audio-only projects should look elsewhere. In practice, the persistent storage costs a small fraction per artifact—negligible for most use cases.