Google released Nano Banana 2.1 on October 6, and it is now the model behind every image you make here unless you pick another. It renders the light, texture and mood Nano Banana 2 was known for, and it costs Google's customers half as much per image to produce. We are passing that straight on: images now cost nearly half the credits they did last week, and your plan stretches almost twice as far.
What it costs now
| Per image | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Generate or edit at 1K | 100 credits | 55 credits |
| Generate or edit at 2K | 150 credits | 80 credits |
| Generate or edit at 4K | 220 credits | 165 credits |
| Cutout at 1K / 2K / 4K | 200 / 300 / 440 | 125 / 175 / 330 |
| Body-part mask | 150 credits | 85 credits |
On the $20 Pro plan that is about 150 images a month at 2K instead of 80, and about 218 at 1K instead of 120. 4K images use more of the model's output, so the saving there is a quarter rather than a half: 72 a month instead of 54. Every plan moves the same way, and the free trial now covers about 37 images at 2K instead of 20.
How it moves on from Nano Banana 2
- About half the price per image on Google's side at 1K and 2K, and a quarter less at 4K. That is where the lower credits come from.
- The same strengths: natural light, believable texture and mood, at 1K, 2K and 4K.
- Up to fourteen reference images per generation, and a reference costs almost nothing to send.
- Precise edits. In our first side-by-side tests, asked to remove seven specific things from a busy photo, it removed exactly those seven and left everything else in place.
- Clean cutout mattes, loose hair and bag straps included, which is what our background remover is built on.
- It reads video as well as pictures, which opens up the section after next.
Same prompt, both models
We gave both models the same single sentence: a model in a tailored camel coat walking down a rainy city street at dusk. Each filled in the wet pavement, the shop light and the depth of field on its own. The quality is on par; the difference is that Nano Banana 2.1 makes it for about half the cost, so it costs you about half the credits.
Nano Banana 2 · 150 credits at 2K
Nano Banana 2.1 · 80 credits at 2K
A first look: video in, image out
Nano Banana 2.1 can watch a video and make an image from it. It does not edit the clip; it understands what happens in it and creates a still. We gave it five seconds of an animated character and asked for a cinematic poster of the most striking moment, as a photograph.
The clip it watched
The image it made
It kept who the character is, turned animation into photography, and chose a moment with more energy than the frame it started from. This is not in the app yet. We are bringing it to the clip pages next, so a moment in any video can become a poster, a thumbnail or a product shot in one step.
Nothing to change on your side
- Nano Banana 2.1 is already the default. Every prompt, template and saved recipe uses it from today.
- Images you made with Nano Banana 2 keep saying so in their details.
- Scripts and AI agents that ask for Nano Banana 2 by name, through the API or MCP, are answered by Nano Banana 2.1 automatically.
