What Is Leonardo.Ai? What the Free Plan Makes Public, and When to Pay or Skip It

FSR BRIEFING PACKET: What Is Leonardo.Ai? What the Free Plan Makes Public, and When to Pay or Skip It
Publisher: Future Stack Reviews (FSR). Article: https://future-stack-reviews.com/what-is-leonardo-ai/
Format: Starter Guide. Evidence depth: Tier C, from Leonardo.Ai's public pricing page, Terms of Service, policies, Help Center and blog, plus a Canva Help page. For this guide FSR did not sign in to Leonardo.Ai, generate an image or buy a plan.
Last read: October 7, 2026 (Asia/Tokyo); figures as displayed that day, signed out, on a device in Japan.
FSR used AI assistants, including Anthropic's Claude and an OpenAI assistant, to retrieve the pages and to research and draft the article.

WHAT IT IS
An AI platform for generating, editing and upscaling images and for making video. Its Privacy Policy calls the company "a Canva brand." The article covers still images on the Free plan and the paid individual (Solo) plans.

FREE PLAN
- $0, with 150 tokens a day. Tokens are usage credits, not images: cost depends on the model and settings, and unused free tokens don't carry over to the next day.
- Help says you will see the token cost before you generate, generally on the button.
- Leonardo's blog and Help describe the path: sign up with single sign-on or email, type a prompt (Leonardo picks a model, which you can change), check the cost shown, generate, and download the image from your Library. FSR has not run it.
- One example from Help: Nano Banana (Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash Image), a model free users can use, currently costs 40 tokens an image. FSR's arithmetic: 150 / 40 = 3.75, so three such images a day with 30 tokens left, if nothing else uses tokens. Go by the cost shown, not this example.
- The Privacy Policy says Free-plan content is "publicly available by default": other users can view it, and it can show up in search results.
- Help says deleting generated images requires a paid plan. Deleting may not remove every copy: the Privacy Policy says copies may remain in cached and archived pages or where other users saved them.
- The Privacy Policy says Leonardo may analyze content to train its models, and that content generated privately on a paid plan won't be used for that.
- Help's example has a user copying another public image's prompt, and Help extends Leonardo's rights in public images to the prompts and images you input. FSR's advice: put nothing in a prompt or an upload on Free that you couldn't publish.

PAID SOLO PLANS
- Monthly billing: Essential $12, Premium $30, Ultimate $60 a month, each marked "ex. tax." Under "Pay Yearly" the cards show $10, $24 and $48 a month and no yearly total. A dollar sign, no currency code. FSR did not open checkout, so the amount charged is unconfirmed.
- A paid plan adds, among other things, Private Mode, deletion of generated images (Help doesn't name the plan), ownership under the Terms, and 8,500, 25,000 or 60,000 tokens a month by plan; unused tokens go to a Rollover Bank that holds up to three months' worth.
- On a paid plan, the Private Mode toggle, not the payment, decides whether an image is public. The plan cards show "Creations access" as "Private" on paid plans, but Help's steps are to subscribe, then turn the toggle ON, and generations made with it OFF are public. Help says a paid user can mark a public image private later.
- Help says there is currently no free trial of consumer plans and suggests buying a plan to try it, then canceling. Canceling is not a refund: plans renew automatically, a cancellation takes effect when the period ends, and the Refund Policy, which lists faults and non-delivery of tokens among its grounds, says Leonardo can refuse a refund for a change of mind.
- FSR's inference: expect to pay for one billing period of the plan that includes what you need before you know whether it fits; on monthly billing that starts at $12 before tax for Essential, as displayed.

OWNERSHIP AND COMMERCIAL USE
- Under the Terms, as between you and Leonardo, content you create on a paid plan is yours, subject to complying with the Terms and to what the law permits; Free-plan output is Leonardo's. That allocates rights between you and Leonardo; it doesn't say whether copyright protects an AI-generated image where you live. Outputs may not be unique, and, subject to consumer law, there is no warranty that they infringe no one's rights.
- Commercial use on Free: Leonardo's pricing FAQ, Help Center and a November 2025 blog post say yes, with caveats; the FAQ describes a non-exclusive license, and the blog says another person could use the same design because the images are public. FSR found no clause in the full Terms that expressly grants or prohibits commercial use of Free-plan output, and doesn't resolve the difference.
- Content that is public on a paid plan gives Leonardo a license the Terms call irrevocable and perpetual, covering AI training and any commercial purpose; one Help article instead ties it to the time the images are set to public.
- Any plan: you warrant that you have the rights and permissions Leonardo needs to use what you submit; impersonating a real person, or portraying a person falsely in a misleading or defamatory way, is prohibited. A sign-up address tied to an employer or other organization means you warrant authority to bind it, and its admin may come to control the account.

CANCELING, AND CANVA BUSINESS
- Help says a canceled plan stays active until the next renewal date, then changes to Free, with any unused tokens expiring then. Rollover Bank tokens are canceled if you cancel.
- Back on Free, Help says the rights in what you generated privately while paying don't change.
- Canva Business: Canva's Help says the included Leonardo Essential access ends on October 11, 2026 (23:59 UTC) for subscribers who signed up before September 9, 2026 (23:59 UTC), and that subscriptions started on or after September 1 don't include it, which leaves sign-ups from September 1 to 9 unclear. Canva says images already created remain yours and are unaffected, and that the Free plan stays available; FSR found no Canva exception to its public-by-default rule.

NOT STATED IN THE PAGES THE ARTICLE CITES
- Whether Private Mode starts ON or OFF.
- How outside model providers keep or use your inputs (the pricing FAQ says some models run on outside providers' servers).
- Whether an image you upload on Free is itself shown (Help doesn't say).
- A standard image download's file format, and whether still images carry a watermark.
- Whether privately made images stay private once you are back on Free, whether a paid plan's delete and visibility tools reach images made on Free, and whether upgrading changes who owns them.

FSR VERDICT
Decide by the image, not the tool.
- Test on Free: the subject can be public and stay public, and no one needs to own the image or hold it exclusively. Read the commercial-use point above before any commercial use; a test shows nothing about private generation, paid features, ownership or exclusivity.
- Pay for a Solo plan: the job needs something only a paid plan gives (private generation, deletion, ownership under the Terms, more tokens or another paid feature). If privacy matters, check that Private Mode is ON before your first paid generation, and don't count on a refund for a change of mind.
- Keep your current tool: you have confirmed it meets the job's needs (accurate text, dimensions, privacy, file format and rights). FSR tested no tool for this guide, so it can't say Leonardo.Ai would do better or worse.
- Wait or skip: you need something the pages cited don't state and you can't check first (how outside providers handle inputs, the Private Mode default), or a guarantee the Terms don't give (a unique or non-infringing image). This overrides the other routes.

MAIN SOURCES (the article cites more)
- Pricing: https://leonardo.ai/pricing
- Terms of Service: https://leonardo.ai/terms-of-service
- Privacy Policy: https://leonardo.ai/privacy-policy
- Refund Policy: https://leonardo.ai/refund-policy
- Help Center FAQ: https://intercom.help/leonardo-ai/en/articles/7051613-frequently-asked-questions
- Canva Help: https://www.canva.com/help/leonardo-entitlement-update/

LIMITS
Prices, plans and terms change; verify on the official pages before you act. FSR used no Leonardo.Ai plan for this guide, so nothing here measures image quality, speed or cost, or shows what a particular account can do. Nothing here is legal advice. Where this packet and the live pages disagree, the live pages win.

Help me decide whether to use Leonardo.Ai for one work image. Open the article linked above if you can; if you can't, say so and work from this briefing. Ask what the image is for, whether it can be public, whose material or which people appear in it, whether I must be able to delete it, whether I or a client must own it or keep it exclusive, which email I would sign up with, what file format and dimensions I need, and which tool I use now. Do not ask me to paste client material, account details or confidential data.