Recraft AI: How to Make a Logo and Vector Illustrations in 2026

Section 01What Recraft is and what makes it different

Recraft is an AI tool for designers and for anyone who needs clean visuals for a business. Most image generators give you a raster: a grid of colored pixels at a fixed size. Blow that image up four times and you get blur and jagged edges. Recraft can give you a vector instead: an image made of lines and fills described by math. You can stretch it to the size of a building, change the color of any detail in two clicks, and open it in Figma like a regular layout.

For a logo, this solves the biggest headache. A mark generated in Midjourney or ChatGPT still has to go to a designer for tracing, or you can't print it on a business card, embroider it on a T-shirt, or put it on a sign. Recraft hands you an SVG right away, and that step disappears.

What's inside the service as of November 5, 2026:

• Recraft V4.1 models – the current main lineup, released May 14, 2026. There's a standard version, Pro at 2048 by 2048 pixels, a fast Flash version, and separate vector versions, Vector and Vector Pro. According to Recraft itself, V4 is the only model that produces production-quality editable SVG.
• Logo Maker – a separate logo builder, currently in beta. Name, description, style, four directions, a try-on with mockups, SVG download.
• V4 Styles – your own style from 1–10 of your images, with no model training. Upload three illustrations from your guide, and everything after that is drawn the same way.
• A canvas that holds all your images, palettes, and mockups. You can move things around, compare, and refine piece by piece.
• Tools: background removal and replacement, vectorizing an existing raster, upscaling, redrawing a selected area, extending the image beyond its edges, recoloring with a palette.
• Third-party models on paid plans: Nano Banana, Seedream, GPT Image, and Flux for images, plus Kling, Veo, and Seedance for video on Pro.
• Plugins and apps: Figma, Framer, add-ons for Google Docs and Slides, mobile apps for iPhone and Android.

Section 02Recraft for free: what you get and the catch

Recraft has a free plan, and you don't need a card for it. Credits on it are added every day. Recraft doesn't publish the exact number; the pricing page just says "Limited free credits." Here's what the free plan includes according to the official page recraft.ai/pricing (checked November 5, 2026):

• 3 generations per style per day;
• 3 uploads of your own images per day;
• up to 2 images per generation;
• basic editing tools, the style library, and creating your own style;
• Recraft's own models only, no Nano Banana, Flux, or the rest;
• vector output works too: you can try SVG for free.

Now the catch almost every review skips. On the free plan, all images are public: other users see them in the shared feed. Commercial use is not allowed. And the most unpleasant part: Recraft's terms of use (section 7.1, version of October 21, 2026) say that images from the free plan belong to Recraft, and you're only allowed personal, non-commercial use.

On paid plans it's the other way around: the images are yours, the commercial rights are yours, generations are private, and all of this stays in place even after you cancel (section 7.2 of the same terms). One restriction applies on every plan: you can't use Recraft images to train other AI models.

Section 03Recraft pricing and how credits work

Recraft's paid plans run on credits. That's the internal currency you spend on generations and tools. Below is the official pricing page, captured on November 5, 2026. By default it opens with yearly billing, so the screenshot shows prices with the 20% discount.

Pro also comes in bigger packages: 4,000, 8,000, and 16,000 credits for $40, $80, and $160 a month (or $32, $64, and $128 billed yearly). Prices don't include taxes. If you run out of credits before the month is over, paid plans let you top up: $2 for 200 credits, and purchased credits don't expire.

Now the key question: how many images those credits buy. Based on Recraft's official usage table (checked November 5, 2026):

For one person who makes a logo, a dozen icons, and a couple of post illustrations a week, Basic is more than enough. You need Pro if you want video in the same subscription or you generate in the hundreds, for example for marketplace product cards.

Section 04How to sign up for Recraft and pay

Getting started takes about five minutes. Here's the order that works without surprises.

Section 05A logo in Logo Maker, step by step

Logo Maker is the shortest path to a logo in Recraft. It lives at recraft.ai/logo, and there's a link to it in the left menu marked Beta. It's not in the mobile app yet, so work on a computer.

Section 06A logo on the canvas: more control

Logo Maker is convenient, but it makes a lot of decisions for you. If you want to control every detail, make the logo on the canvas. It's the same Recraft, except you choose the model and style and write the prompt yourself.

The canvas wins when you already have brand colors. Set them as a palette, and every version of the mark comes out in your colors right away. In Logo Maker you'd have to explain the same thing in words.

Section 07Illustrations and icons in one style

The main problem with DIY visuals is inconsistency. One image is watercolor, the next is flat, the third is a photo, and your blog looks like a yard sale. Recraft fixes this with three tools.

Ready-made styles

Recraft has a large style library: flat vector graphics, line icons, isometric, soft 3D, hand-drawn illustration, and dozens more. Pick a style once, and every image in the project follows it. For an icon series for a guide or website, this is the fastest route.

Your own style from your images

Since August 2026, Recraft has V4 Styles: you upload one to ten of your own images, and the model picks up their look without lengthy training. Precise mode stays closer to the samples, Flexible gives more freedom. If you already have a few illustrations you like, or brand images from a designer, upload them and get new ones in the same style.

How to put together a sample set so the style comes out clean:

• use 3–6 images in one look, without mixing photos and drawings;
• give them different subjects: a person, an object, a scene – that way the model learns the style itself and doesn't latch onto one subject;
• remove images with text and watermarks;
• use only your own images or ones you have the rights to.

Palettes

Set 3–5 brand colors in a palette, and Recraft will draw with those colors only. On paid plans you can save your own palettes and recolor finished images. That way, in one evening you get a series of covers where everything matches: colors, line weight, look.

Icons for your site and guide

For icons, pick a vector model and a line or flat icon style. Keep prompts short, one object per icon: icon of a calendar with a check mark, icon of a cup of tea, icon of a speech bubble with a heart. A short prompt and a single style give you an even set you won't be embarrassed to put on your site next to a designer's work.

Section 08Text on images

This is where beginners most often get frustrated, so let's be honest about it. Recraft's newer models are good with text: for V4 and V4.1, Recraft promises "readable text" in short and medium phrases. Readable isn't the same as perfect, though, and a logo with one wrong letter is worse than a logo with no letters at all.

How to get clean lettering:

• Put every word in quotation marks in the prompt: the text "Quiet Harbor". Without quotes, the model treats the word as a description and may rewrite it.
• Keep it short. One to three words come out reliably. A full tagline under the logo is better added by hand.
• Check every letter at full size. AI likes to double a letter, drop one, or turn an "rn" into an "m."
• Mark plus typeset lettering is the most reliable option: generate the mark without text and set the name in Figma, Canva, or right in Recraft's vector editor. That way you control the letters and pick a font you actually like.
• Post covers are best generated without text, with empty space for a headline. Add the headline afterward; I explain how to do it fast in my article about the AI banner maker.

For multilingual brands: Recraft doesn't officially guarantee non-Latin scripts such as Cyrillic in generated lettering, so for those, set the text with a font after generation.

Section 09Mockups, backgrounds, upscaling, and export

Besides generation, Recraft packs a set of tools you used to need two or three other services for.

Download formats: PNG, JPG, TIFF, PDF, SVG, and Lottie for animation. Vector images export to SVG and PDF. Raster files go up to 5,800 pixels on a side. Standard models generate about 1024 by 1024 pixels, Pro versions 2048 by 2048; for anything bigger, use upscaling.

A separate bonus if you work in Figma: Recraft has a plugin, so illustrations are generated right inside your layout. For a landing page or a presentation, that saves dozens of tab switches.

Section 10Claude writes your Recraft prompts

The hardest part of a logo is coming up with the idea for the mark and describing it so the AI gets it. This is where Claude helps: you tell it about your business, it suggests concepts and writes ready prompts for Recraft. You can sign up at claude.ai.

A prompt you can copy and adapt:

What worked well: every idea is explained through what it means for the client, every prompt has specific HEX colors, a color count, and text placement, and the text-free mark gets checked for small sizes right away. What I'd fix before running it in Recraft: the second idea is "palms" and "bay" at once, a tricky double image that may not read on the first try, so keep it as a backup. And the lettering style is better set by choosing a logo style in Recraft itself, leaving only the quoted text in the prompt.

Two more prompts for Claude that come in handy:

• An icon series: "I'm making a 12-section guide on nutrition for busy moms, here are the section titles. For each one, suggest one simple object as a symbol and write a short English prompt for a Recraft icon, 5–8 words each, all in one style."
• Post illustrations: "Here are 10 topics for my posts this month. Write a shared style part of the Recraft prompt, flat illustration, my colors are such-and-such, and for each topic a short scene with no text and empty space at the top for a headline."

Why I pick Claude for tasks like these is covered in detail in my Claude vs ChatGPT comparison.

Section 11Ideas for different niches

So Recraft doesn't end up as a one-evening toy, tie it to tasks you have right now.

AI design is also a way to make money in its own right. My client Konstantin Spirin built a whole business line around it: he set up a lead magnet funnel, ran search ads, warmed up his audience through a Telegram channel, and ran a course launch on making money with AI design that made about $10K. If you work with designer clients, take a look at my roundup of AI tools for designers and photographers.

Section 12If something goes wrong

Section 13Recraft, Midjourney, Nano Banana, and Krea: which to choose

Recraft doesn't replace every other AI tool; each one has its own strength. A quick cheat sheet:

My setup for brand packaging: logo, palette, and icons in Recraft, photos of you in different looks in Nano Banana, bold ad covers in Midjourney or in Nano Banana inside the same Recraft on a paid plan. One Recraft Basic subscription covers both vector and access to third-party models, so it's usually enough to start.

Section 14The whole path in a minute