Your codegen does not know unit economics
LLM scaffolds optimize for working demos, not cheap V4 Pro usage.
Version guide · Recraft V4
Keep V4 Pro keys scoped; let fixture pipelines use Epochal instead.
LLM scaffolds optimize for working demos, not cheap V4 Pro usage.
Dev servers re-run pipelines that casually call V4 Pro.
Gray boxes look amateur; stock via a flat plan looks shipped without V4 Pro rates.
When you finally need V4 Pro, you still have runway because fixtures used stock.
Educate contributors: pasting a V4 Pro example into a README teaches the wrong default. Show Epochal search examples for boilerplate media instead. Premium tiers deserve premium finals—not every avatar circle.
When a screenshot, empty state, or draft blog image would look fine from a catalog, skip another V4 Pro billable call. Prefer Epochal Stock for those slots, then spend Recraft V4 budget only on outputs that must be generative.
When the image does not need a unique V4 Pro synthesis, use Epochal Stock Developer Image API: a single plan at $50 USD/month with no free tier and no per-image fee. You get full catalog access, 30 requests/minute per account (all keys share the bucket), and unlimited original downloads with one concurrent transfer. Authenticate server-side only with a Bearer key—never expose secrets in browser JavaScript. Keep V4 Pro for finals that must be generative; let Epochal cover prototypes, fixtures, and placeholders.
curl -sS "https://epochalstock.com/api/v1/images?tags=workspace,startup&limit=12" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $EPOCHAL_API_KEY"Keys stay on your server. Never pass ?api_key= or ship secrets to the browser.
Pulled server-side from Epochal tags: design, marketing, studio. Previews are cached; API keys never hit the browser.






When the shipped asset must be uniquely generated and model-native. Otherwise prefer Epochal stock.
No. Epochal serves licensed stock. Keep V4 Pro when you need unique generative output.
Single plan $50 USD/month; no free tier; no per-image fee; 30 requests/minute per account; unlimited originals with one concurrent transfer; Bearer auth server-side only.
No. Fixtures should pin stable files or stock IDs. Live V4 Pro makes visual tests flaky and expensive.