What Is Krea 3? Krea's Image Editing Model for Existing Photos

Krea 3 is Krea's image editing model: you box part of an existing image, say what changes, and Krea 3 redraws only that region. Krea says most edits come back in under 8 seconds at native 2K, and the API list price is $0.06 per 2K image.

Krea's FAQ says Krea 3 "spends its compute on the region you change, not on the whole image," which is how Krea explains the speed and price. Krea 2, the predecessor, is a text-to-image model with open weights, while Krea has not released Krea 3 weights.

What Krea 3 Is (and What It Isn't)

Krea's FAQ calls Krea 3 "Krea's new image editing model," built for production work such as product-consistent scene changes, object removal and variants at volume.

Krea says Krea 3 is "a new model trained for editing," so it starts from a photo you already have. Krea 3 can also generate from a text prompt. On Hacker News, co-founder Diego Rodriguez said text-to-image remains "first-class" but editing was prioritized. A Krea teammate said text-to-image tuning is not final.

Diego Rodriguez called the release an "open beta" on Hacker News, and the Krea pricing page lists "Krea 3 Beta" as of October 2026. Krea has published no Krea 3 weights, so outside Krea's app, API and partners, the only option is an enterprise plan. Krea's FAQ says that plan runs Krea 3 on your own GPUs in your cloud.

• Beta operational status: Listed as Krea 3 Beta on subscription tiers, with text-to-image tuning still in development
• Where it runs: the Krea app, the Krea API and Krea's API partners, plus enterprise plans on your own GPUs per Krea's FAQ, with no public weights
• Launch documentation: Detailed on the official Krea launch post published October 15, 2026

How to Edit an Image With Krea 3

To edit an image in Krea 3, you upload it, draw a box around the part to change, and type what should change inside the box.

In the instruction, you can refer to people, products, places or styles in your reference images by number ("image 1", "image 2"), so Krea 3 knows which product or face to carry into the edit. To match a brand color, name a hex code in the instruction, and Krea's product page shows Krea 3 matching that color on a product.

To try the flow for free, use the Krea Free plan. It gives 100 compute units a day, enough for about 5 Krea 3 images.

• 1. Open Krea 3 in the Krea app, or call it through the Krea API or one of the partners listed in Krea's launch post: fal, Replicate, OpenRouter, Together AI, Hedra or Nous Research.
• 2. Upload the image you want to edit.
• 3. Draw a box around the part you want to change, and type what Krea 3 should redraw inside it.
• 4. Attach up to 6 reference images, citing them in text instructions as image 1 or image 2 to transfer specific objects or styles.
• 5. To match a color on a product, name its hex code in the instruction.
• 6. Refine the result with follow-up instructions, since Krea 3 supports multi-turn edits, according to TestingCatalog.
• 7. Export the edited image, which comes out at native 2K resolution.

What Krea 3 Is Good At

Krea's FAQ says Krea 3 is best at "product scene changes, object removal and photo cleanup." Krea says Krea 3 "redraws inside" the box you draw "and leaves the rest," so a product outside the box is meant to stay as photographed.

One Krea example re-skins a billboard or packaging with another brand's product or logo, so one mockup can be reused for a different brand.

Other Krea examples swap a product in a street photo and composite a green-screen plate, so a product or subject can be placed in a new setting without a reshoot. Krea lists its use cases as e-commerce, marketing, architecture, product, fashion, gaming, film, photography and consumer.

• E-commerce colorways: name a hex code to match a color on a product, so one existing product photo can show another finish
• Ad localization: Krea shows a poster localized into Japanese, so one campaign image can be adapted per market
• Sketch to photo: Krea shows a sketch or illustration turned into a photo from the same viewpoint, so a concept can be shown as a photo before any shoot
• Relighting: Krea shows a plate relit for night, which avoids a second shoot for a night version
• Product bundles: Krea shows products from several images combined into one hero shot, so a bundle image does not need its own photo shoot

Krea 3 Speed and Output Limits

Krea's launch post says most Krea 3 edits come back in under 8 seconds, end to end, at native 2K. Krea says its fastest setup returns edits in about 4 to 5 seconds, and the launch post adds: "Krea 3 isn't real time yet."

Timing comparisons published by Krea vary across its own web properties. Krea's launch post gives median times per 2K edit from September 24 to October 1, 2026, queue included. Krea 3 came in under 8 seconds, Nano Banana 2 at 27 seconds, Nano Banana Pro at 33 seconds and GPT Image 2 at 90 seconds. Krea's product page instead shows a 12-image batch test, with Nano Banana Pro at 26.8 seconds and GPT Image 2.5 at 39.9 seconds. The product page puts Krea 3 at an "illustrative" 8 seconds.

Krea 3 outputs 2K natively. TestingCatalog and Glitchwire reported 4K output for print, but Krea's launch post does not mention 4K, so plan on 2K output until Krea confirms it. Hacker News users also asked whether Krea 2's creativity and intensity controls will return. Krea had not answered as of October 2026, so if you used those controls in Krea 2, test Krea 3 on the Free plan first.

• Native resolution: Renders 2K output natively; 4K output remains a press report unconfirmed by Krea's launch post
• Speed: most edits under 8 seconds end to end, queue included, per Krea's launch post
• Reference image inputs: Accepts up to 6 reference images per editing task per the launch post
• Rival timings: Krea's launch post and product page give different speed numbers for rival models, and both sets are Krea's own

Krea 3 API Price and Krea App Plans

Inference pricing for Krea 3 begins at $0.03 per 1K image and $0.06 per 2K image on the developer application programming interface (API). Krea says the launch price is not subsidized, and its FAQ adds: "We expect it to go down, not up."

Krea's own per-image table, without image references, lists Krea 3 at $0.06, Nano Banana Pro at $0.135 and GPT Image 2 at $0.22. For 100,000 edits a month, Krea puts the totals at $6,000, $13,500 and $22,000. The Krea 3 pricing guide and the Nano Banana 2.1 API pricing guide go further.

In the Krea app, the Krea pricing page lists four paid monthly plans, plus a Free plan and custom-priced Enterprise. The Basic tier costs $9 monthly or $5 to $5.25 monthly billed annually for 5,000 units, generating roughly 277 Krea 3 images. Pro provides 20,000 units for $35 monthly ($21 billed annually), yielding approximately 1,111 images. Max delivers 60,000 units for $105 monthly ($63 billed annually), or about 2,222 images. Business costs $200 monthly ($160 billed annually) for 80,000 units.

As listed, Krea's page shows a "Save 40%" yearly claim while Business is 20% off, so check the actual discount on the Krea pricing page before paying for a year. Compute units expire monthly on Basic, Pro, and Max plans, while Business and Enterprise tiers allow unit rollovers. Paid plans include a commercial license for "marketing, advertising, products, and client work." The Free plan's terms are unclear on Krea's page, so confirm on the Krea pricing page before using Free-plan images commercially.

• Developer API: $0.03 per 1K image and $0.06 per 2K image, as listed without image references (Krea does not publish whether references change the price)
• Free tier: 100 daily compute units yielding about 5 Krea 3 Beta images per day with single-image concurrency
• Annual promotion: Unlimited fast generations at 1K and 2K for 14 days on qualifying annual Pro and Max purchases
• Subscription management: Krea publishes no direct cancellation steps on its pricing page; cancel inside account settings or via customer support

Krea 3 Open Weights and LoRA Status

Model weights for Krea 3 remain closed and unreleased as of October 2026, restricting deployment to hosted endpoints and enterprise private clouds. Krea 3 is available in the Krea app, which has 30 million+ users per Krea's launch post. Krea's API launch partners are fal, Hedra, Together AI, Nous Research, OpenRouter and Replicate. TestingCatalog and Glitchwire also list Baseten.

Enterprise agreements allow organizations to deploy Krea 3 inside their own cloud environments on their own graphics processing units (GPUs). Krea's Enterprise plan also lists SAML single sign-on (SSO), SLA support, and IP indemnification "when usage follows the agreement terms". If your legal or IT review requires those terms, ask Krea about Enterprise on the Krea pricing page before buying a monthly plan.

The press reports and Krea's co-founder disagree on LoRA fine-tuning. TestingCatalog and Glitchwire report that Krea calls Krea 3 the first editing model you can fine-tune with LoRAs (low-rank adaptations) on a product, person or style. On Hacker News, co-founder Diego Rodriguez said the team is "thinking about" LoRA fine-tuning and open weights. Until Krea documents LoRA training, do not plan a project around it.

Krea 2 differs on weights. In late June 2026, Krea published open weights for Krea 2 Raw and Krea 2 Turbo under the Krea 2 Community License. The Hugging Face model card documents the release, and VentureBeat reported it. Krea 2 is a text-to-image model of about 12 billion parameters, while Krea 3 is built for editing and has no public weights. The Krea 3 vs Krea 2 comparison covers the differences.

• Weight status: Closed weights with no public checkpoint downloads available
• LoRA status: TestingCatalog and Glitchwire report LoRA fine-tuning, but co-founder Diego Rodriguez said on Hacker News it is being considered
• Enterprise self-hosting: Krea's FAQ says enterprise plans can run Krea 3 on your own GPUs in your cloud
• Krea 2 contrast: open weights for Krea 2 Raw and Krea 2 Turbo, while Krea 3 has no public weights

Krea 3 Benchmarks So Far

Krea's launch post names no benchmark score for Krea 3. On Hacker News, Diego Rodriguez wrote "Benchmarks still being worked on," and Krea has promised a technical report.

Technology publication Glitchwire reported that Krea 3 scored 4.81 out of 5 on CPI-Bench, an image editing evaluation suite developed by Alibaba Group. In Glitchwire's reporting, this result placed Krea 3 second within an Ultra model tier, trailing OpenAI's GPT Image 2.5. The score is not on Krea's launch post.

Krea's product page emphasizes an internal pixel precision evaluation. The test assesses what percentage of pixels outside the defined bounding box remain untouched after editing. Krea runs the precision test with one attempt per model, so treat it as a single demonstration until an independent test repeats it.

• Krea technical report: promised by Krea, not yet published as of October 2026
• CPI-Bench scoring: Glitchwire reported a 4.81 out of 5 score, placing Krea 3 behind GPT Image 2.5
• Pixel precision test: Krea's product page measures the share of pixels outside the edit area left unchanged, with one attempt per model
• Independent benchmarks: none published as of October 2026

Who Should Try Krea 3 Now

Teams that edit product and marketing photos at volume should try Krea 3 first. At Krea's list price, 100,000 2K edits cost $6,000 a month on the API, and the Pro plan covers about 1,111 Krea 3 images a month for $35.

Wait on Krea 3 if you need open weights, proven text-to-image results, or independent quality tests before approving a model. For other options, see the Flux guide and the best AI photo editor apps roundup.

Three events would change this pick: a Krea technical report, an independent benchmark, or an open-weights release. Until then, the Free plan's allowance of about 5 Krea 3 images a day is enough to test a few catalog photos before paying.

• Best suited for: E-commerce visual teams, marketing agencies, and commercial studios editing existing photography at scale
• Next step: open Krea 3 in the Krea app, edit a few catalog photos on the Free plan, and compare faces and the pixels outside the box with the originals