Leonardo.Ai
Tool · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Leonardo.Ai is an image generation service. The way rights to your work are arranged here is unusual, and it needs stating precisely, because one toggle decides whether the work stays yours.
Who is here
The help centre gives no audience figures.
Getting started
A free tier exists, and on it you can make images and use them commercially. But free generation has a property worth knowing in advance — it is in the rules section below.
How to grow
Partly applicable: work made on the free tier lands in the service's public feed, where other users see it. That is not promotion of your work — it is a condition of use.
The road to monetisation
Commercial use is allowed to everyone, including the free tier. Any user may download their generation and put it to work.
The difference between tiers is not the right to sell, but whether the work stays yours alone.
Tools and automation
The help centre lists a section on programmatic access.
Limits and rules
Here is the substance, and the distinction runs along a single toggle.
Private generation is available on paid subscriptions only. Verbatim: «Private image generation is a feature only available to paid members».
With private generation, rights stay fully with the author. Verbatim: «when generating privately using a paid subscription, users retain full ownership, copyright, and all other intellectual property rights to their images».
For public images, rights go both to the service and to other people. Verbatim: «Leonardo.Ai and its successors retain worldwide perpetual rights to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute images and text prompts you input into the services». On top of that, other users receive a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to access those assets and work with them through the service.
So for a free user every generation is public: any other person may take the work, remix it, upscale it, use it as a guide. The service may use it to provide, maintain, promote and improve its services.
Private images are excluded from this. Verbatim: «if you toggle your images to private, they won't be visible to other users or Leonardo.Ai and they will not be subject to use by Leonardo.Ai for advertising or improvement purposes».
Note the order: an image made public and later switched to private stops being available to others — but for the time it was public, it was available.
Who it suits
Leonardo.Ai suits someone who understands what is being bought here: a paid subscription buys not only volume but privacy, and with it exclusivity of rights.
The free tier suits experiments and work where it does not matter that others will see and repeat the result. For a brand sketch that must stay yours, it does not suit by design.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
Pricing
private generation is available ONLY on a paid subscription: «Private image generation is a feature only available to paid members»
A consequence for the free plan: all generations go into the common feed and are available to others for copying and reworking. The article was updated on 18 February 2026
source, checked 2026-08-11
Legal
rights to what is made depend on whether the generation is private: «when generating privately using a paid subscription, users retain full ownership, copyright, and all other intellectual property rights to their images»
Full rights are named only for private generation on a paid subscription. The article was updated on 15 February 2026
source, checked 2026-08-11
for public images the service retains worldwide perpetual rights: «Leonardo.Ai and its successors retain worldwide perpetual rights to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute images and text prompts you input into the services»; on top of that other users receive a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to access those assets
The rights pass not only to the service but also to other people: a stranger may take your public work and rework it with the service's tools
source, checked 2026-08-11
commercial use is allowed on the free plan too: a free user may download their generation and put it to work
The difference between plans is not in the right to sell but in whether the work stays yours alone: on the free plan it is public
source, checked 2026-08-11
private images are not used by the service: «if you toggle your images to private, they won't be visible to other users or Leonardo.Ai and they will not be subject to use by Leonardo.Ai for advertising or improvement purposes»
The converse consequence is stated in the same place: the service may use public images for support, promotion and improvement of its services
source, checked 2026-08-11
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