What Sightengine is
Sightengine is an image, video, and text API. AI image detection is on the free plan. AI video detection is on the paid plans, not the free plan, according to their comparison table.
Pricing we could verify
- Accessed 29 October 2026 at https://sightengine.com/pricing.
- Free: 2,000 operations a month, at most 500 a day, including AI image detection. Their table marks AI video detection as not included on Free. Their FAQ says the free plan has no time limit.
- Starter: $29/month for 10,000 operations, then $0.002 per extra operation. The plan includes AI image detection, AI video detection, and deepfake detection, with video up to 50 MB.
- The next listed plan is $99/month for 40,000 operations, with the same $0.002 overage.
Vendor prices change. The sentences above are what that page said on 29 October 2026, not a promise about today.
What we measured
On 27 October 2026 we scored four images the same way for every vendor. Three were labeled AI: a Google Gemini screenshot (canton-tower), a GPT image (zootopia), and a Flux image (camera-woman). The fourth (man-portrait) was unlabeled and only described as likely real, so it is not counted as a confirmed photograph. This is a spot check, not a ranking. Sightengine named the generator on 1 of 3 labeled AI images (GPT at 99%). It called the Google Gemini screenshot Wan at 76%, and the Flux image Stable Diffusion 82% / Flux 18%. On the unlabeled portrait it returned AI 3%.
deepfakecheck.io's own result on this set will be added after a re-test on the current production version. Hive named 3 of 3 on this set. A sample of four images cannot say which product is more accurate in general.
A separate pixel-model test, 477 images on 28 October 2026, is written up on the accuracy page. It is not this head-to-head, and it is not a full-system score.
DeepFakeCheck pricing
A new website visitor starts with 2 analyses (free_balance is inserted as 2). Anonymous successful free analyses are also capped at 2 per IP per UTC day. Paid packs are one-time: $2.99 for 50, $7.99 for 200, and $14.99 for 500. Paid analyses last 1 year. There is no subscription. One image, video, audio, or text check uses 1 analysis.
When to choose Sightengine
- You are integrating moderation and AI-image detection in one API, and the free developer tier is enough to prototype.
- You need video detection in that same API and can use a paid plan. The free plan’s own table does not include AI video detection.
When to choose DeepFakeCheck
- You have a single file and do not want an API subscription.
- A wrong generator label would be worse than no label. Sightengine’s family was wrong on two of the three labeled images here.