See what your studio actually spends each month on Midjourney, Firefly, Figma AI, Claude and GPT-5 — and which swaps would cut that bill by 40–70% without losing quality.
In 2026, the average working designer has six to ten AI subscriptions and APIs running in the background: a Midjourney plan for moodboards and references, Adobe Firefly inside Creative Cloud, a ChatGPT Pro or Claude seat for copy and naming sprints, Figma AI for variants and auto-layout suggestions, a Runway or Kling subscription for motion mocks, and pay-as-you-go image APIs for anything programmatic. None of those line items look big on their own. Stacked together, they replaced what used to be the stock-photography budget — and then doubled it.
The calculator below lets you drop in real numbers (images per month, characters of copy, video seconds, team seats) and instantly see total spend, cost per active project, and the cheapest equivalent stack. It's the same core AI Cost Calculator tuned with the defaults design studios actually hit.
Plug in expected moodboard renders (≈300 Midjourney images), naming runs (≈50k tokens on Claude), and logo direction studies. The calculator returns a per-project AI cost so you can fold it into your estimate or pass it through.
If you already pay for Creative Cloud, Firefly is "free" up to your credit cap. Enter your monthly image volume and the tool tells you the exact threshold at which adding Midjourney becomes worth it.
Heads of design at 3–10 person studios use it to ladder up every seat — Figma AI, Firefly, Midjourney Pro, Claude Team, Runway — and benchmark against an industry median per designer.
For brand voice docs, microcopy systems, or content design work, designers often run dozens of iterations through Claude or GPT-5. The calculator separates "exploration" tokens (cheap models) from "final" tokens (premium models) so quotes match reality.
Export the side-by-side comparison and use it as the one-pager for "why we should swap Midjourney for Firefly" (or vice versa). It's the artifact that ends the Slack thread.
Itemize AI generation the way print costs used to be itemized. Most clients are happy to see the number — it's far smaller than they assume, and it makes your studio look organized.
These are the median monthly figures we see across solo designers, small studios, and in-house brand teams. Use them as defaults before you plug in your own numbers.
| Tool | Solo | Studio (5) | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midjourney | $30 | $150 | Moodboards, references, hero imagery |
| Adobe Firefly (CC) | $0–20* | $100 | Commercial-safe generation, generative fill |
| Figma AI | $15 | $75 | Variants, auto-layout, naming layers |
| Claude Pro / Team | $20 | $125 | Copy, brand voice, concept writing |
| ChatGPT Plus | $20 | $100 | Ideation, naming, quick research |
| Runway / Kling | $15 | $45 | Motion mocks, video stills |
| API pay-as-you-go | $10–60 | $80–200 | Batch generations, automations |
| Median total | $110–180 | $675–895 | Across all AI line items |
*Firefly is bundled into most Creative Cloud plans up to a monthly generative credit cap.
A generic calculator asks for tokens. Designers don't think in tokens — they think in renders, variants, seconds of motion, and copy passes. The designer view of the calculator maps those inputs onto the right per-unit pricing for each provider, including the awkward ones (Firefly's generative credits, Midjourney's "fast hours," Runway's credit-based motion pricing). Underneath, it's the same engine as the general AI Cost Calculator — just with the dials set to the way design teams actually work.