Navigating the pricing plans

You want to use Mage Space, but want value for money.

Let’s be very clear up front. I'm not here to sell you on Mage Space AI services as the be-all and end-all of AI services. You are going to be better off doing your research and finding the right AI for you.
And when you finished scouring the internet and finally come back to Mage, then you're going to be consider the big question. To pay or not pay?
Mage Space gives you 300 gems (their weird credit system) as a freebie when you sign up. But beyond doing some very basic evaluations, it's not very much at all and you will need to ask if you should part with your coin or not.

To pay or not to pay?

Before you ask "how much" and head for the wallet, understand the pricing structure which isn't straightforward. For starters, it's important to know that you will need both a decent plan and also gems.
Package Plans
You get the basic "Free" package as a default, which gives you very limited access and what you can do is limited. Obviously this is mean to allow you be able to create (at best) a few images and maybe a short video on low resolution.
Which plan you get really depends on what you're planning on doing and how many creations you are wanting to make. For someone serious about making a lot of sequences, and who isn't a crack prompt-master, I would recommend the Pro Plus package. Reasons being:
  • Gives you unlimited video creations with the premium "fruit/berry" type model which are a lot better than what Pro plan offers. I'll elaborate in a separate article.
  • It comes with 3500 gems, which will burn pretty quickly.
  • You'll never generate 10 items at once, but it's there if you need it.

Like a novice, I personally started off with the Basic, then upgraded to the Pro, and then when frustrated with the limitations gave in and went to Pro Plus. As I won't be making this into a day-job, I likely won't go the Max package, but some of you might find it useful.

Paid Service - How it works

Gems
As mentioned, the monthly gem allowance won't get you very far. Inevitably you will need to also purchase gems, but how much will depends on your usage and how good you are at prompting.
Considering that a typical Mango 2/3 image would cost 60 and 68 gems respectively. But it's the price to do it in fast mode, which isn't necessarily required. Slow mode is slow, but it does the same job just with a higher delay.

To do videos is where you will start spending a lot of gems, as a quick guidance, a Kiwi model video on 720p resolution for 10 seconds will cost 1100 gems, and a Blueberry model video on 1008p resolution for 15 seconds will cost 2000 gems. It all depends on:

  • Model - The video "brain" which will translate your prompt into something visual
  • Resolution - How high a pixel resolution you want it in. I personally wouldn't go lower than 720p as it starts to look grainy.
  • Video Duration - How long you want the video to go on for.
  • Speed - Fast or slow mode. You should always go slow unless you are in a rush.
Click here to get 5000 free gems when you sign up
As recommended, I stated to get the Pro Plus and left the gem package up to you.

Now here's why I advise so:

1) You get to create images in the Mango models (probably best of them all right now) and others completely for free in slow mode, as many as you want and for as long as you can tolerate the wait.

2) You can create unlimited videos as well for up to 4 to 5 seconds, depending on the model chosen. Why is this important? If you are novice and perfectionist like I am, you will want to sneak peek at your video BEFORE spending your precious gems on them. Yes, these will take a while on slow mode but it will be worth it in case its completely not what you want.

3) You aren't good at prompts and can't predict what the AI will produce (it can be very volatile!), so the more free attempts at generating images and videos the better. You will be producing and perfecting images and videos well into the AM. It is that addictive.

Now here's the gotcha! But in a good way.