the license for flux models is $1,000/mo, hardly an obstacle to any serious commercial usage

Per 100k image. And it is additionally $0.01 per image. Considering H100 is $1.5 per hour and you can get 1 image per 5s, we are talking about bare-metal cost of ~$0.002 per image + $0.01 license cost.

The pricing seems reasonable for a SOTA class model that needs to be commercially viable or it dies.

Yeah, not trying to argue either way other than saying contrary to the parent comment, licensing cost is a significant component of the cost equation.