RANKED BY US • CHECKED AGAINST THE NUMBERS

Text → Image Leaderboard

Our picks come first, in the order we would recommend them, with the benchmark, the price, the licence, the builds and the news beside each one. Everything after them is ranked by its independent score.

Our picks · see every board

Image generation

Pictures from a prompt. Few builds name an image model, so this board leans on the arena, where people vote between two images blind.

01 GPT-Image-2
The highest arena score on this board. OpenAI's newer GPT Image 2.5 scores higher still, and is not ranked here yet.
- 1172 Elo arena #1 of 14
02 Nano Banana 2.1
Close behind GPT Image 2 on the arena at a fraction of the price per image, and the only model on this board named in a build we track.
- 1159 Elo arena #2 of 14
- 1 build names Nano Banana
03 Grok Imagine Image 2.0
Level with Nano Banana 2.1 on the arena, and built for dense layouts, small lettering and edits from several reference images.
- 1155 Elo arena #3 of 14

04 MAI-Image-2.6Microsoft's preview image model, third on the editing board
- 1149 Elo arena #4 of 14
05 Recraft V4Design and brand image generation with vector support
- 984 Elo arena #13 of 14
06 Ideogram 4.5Ideogram's edit model: change one thing, copy the rest of the pixels exactly
- 1014 Elo arena #10 of 14
07 FLUX.2 [max]Black Forest Labs' top-tier image generation model
- 1020 Elo arena #9 of 14
08 FLUX.2 [dev]Open-weight FLUX.2 for research and commercial use
- Not scored yet
- Open weights

Scores: Artificial Analysis AA-Image-T2I v2.0 (2026-10-14). Builds: 291 of the 422 on /builds, r/ClaudeAI left out. News: the daily briefing, 30 days to 2026-10-21.

RANK BY CATEGORY

All Tools 404tools LLMs 152tools IDEs & Coding Tools 75tools Text → Image 63tools Multimodal Reasoning 51tools Image → Video 49tools Text → Video 46tools Image → Image 46tools Text → Audio 30tools Image → 3D 29tools Text → 3D 28tools AI Assistants 20tools Video → Video 14tools Multi-Service Platforms 13tools Infrastructure 9tools Agentic Browsers 7tools

REAL BENCHMARK SCORES

① GPT-Image-2 [1172 ELO]

② Nano Banana 2.1 [1159 ELO]

③ Grok Imagine Image 2.0 [1155 ELO]

#4 MAI-Image-2.6 [1149 ELO]

#5 Nano Banana 2 [1125 ELO]

#6 GPT-Image 1.5 [1107 ELO]

#7 LongCat Image [1031 ELO]

#8 Flux 2 Flex [1028 ELO]

#9 FLUX.2 [max] [1020 ELO]

#10 Ideogram 4.5 [1014 ELO]

#11 Ideogram 4.0 [1011 ELO]

#12 FLUX.2 Pro [1004 ELO]

#13 Recraft V4 [984 ELO]

#14 Bagel [900 ELO]

Source: Artificial Analysis AA-Image-T2I v2.0, as of 2026-10-14. Shown only for models with independently verified scores. Not every tool in this category has published, comparable data.

RESULTS

63 tools • curated

Rank	Tool	Modality	Pricing
①	GPT-Image-2 OpenAI's latest image generation model	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
②	Nano Banana 2.1 Google's update to Nano Banana 2: better images and edits at half the price per image	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
③	Grok Imagine Image 2.0 Quality Mode in Grok for layout, type, and edits with up to five references	Text → Image, Image → Image	Paid
4	MAI-Image-2.6 Microsoft's preview image model, third on the editing board	Image → Image, Text → Image	Paid
5	Recraft V4 Design and brand image generation with vector support	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
6	Ideogram 4.5 Ideogram's edit model: change one thing, copy the rest of the pixels exactly	Image → Image, Text → Image	Freemium
7	FLUX.2 [max] Black Forest Labs' top-tier image generation model	Text → Image, Image → Image	Paid
8	FLUX.2 [dev] Open-weight FLUX.2 for research and commercial use	Text → Image	Free
9	Nano Banana 2 Google's fast text-to-image model via Fal	Text → Image	Freemium
10	GPT-Image 1.5 OpenAI's high-fidelity image generation	Text → Image	Paid
11	LongCat Image Multilingual text rendering and photorealism	Text → Image	Unknown
12	Flux 2 Flex Fine-tuned control with adjustable inference	Text → Image	Unknown
13	Ideogram 4.0 Ideogram's first downloadable image model, built for layout and type	Text → Image	Freemium
14	FLUX.2 Pro The Open Image Standard: The Midjourney Killer	Text → Image	Freemium
15	Bagel 7B multimodal model for text and images	Text → Image, Image → Image	Unknown
16	ComfyUI The node graph the rest of the field is measured against	Image → Image, Text → Image	Free
17	OpenArt Node workflows without running your own GPU	Image → Image, Text → Image	Freemium
18	Invoke Open-source node canvas built around the edit, not the prompt	Image → Image, Text → Image	Freemium
19	Gemini Omni Google's unified multimodal generation model	LLMs, Text → Image, Text → Video, Text → Audio, Multimodal Reasoning	Freemium
20	Flora The Workflow Canvas: Figma for Generative AI	Image → Image, Text → Image	Freemium
21	Z-Image Ultra-fast photorealistic image generation with bilingual text rendering	Text → Image	Freemium
22	Qwen-Image Open-source 20B model with commercial-grade text rendering and advanced image editing	Text → Image	Free
23	GPT Image 2.5 Next-gen image generation with sharper detail, natural lighting, 50% faster, and reliable multi-turn editing	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
24	Luma Uni-1.1 Multimodal reasoning model that generates brand-consistent images and edits	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
25	Recraft V4.1 Recraft's most advanced image model with photorealistic, vector, and utility variants	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
26	FLUX.1 [pro] The new gold standard for prompt adherence and text rendering	Text → Image, Image → Image	Paid
27	BRIA FIBO Lite Fast, lightweight FIBO pipeline designed for speed, efficiency, and on-prem deployment	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
28	HunyuanImage 3.0 Tencent's 80B-parameter open-source MoE image generator	Text → Image, Image → Image	Free
29	BRIA FIBO Open-source JSON-native text-to-image model built for controllable, enterprise-safe generation	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
30	FLUX.2 [schnell] Fast local FLUX.2 generation for personal hardware	Text → Image	Free
31	Kling Image 2.0 Kling's image generation model with style control	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
32	Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large Stability AI's largest 3.5 model with best quality	Text → Image	Free
33	FLUX.1.1 [pro] Ultra-realistic FLUX.1 update with faster generation	Text → Image	Paid
34	FLUX.1 Canny Canny-edge-guided image generation and editing	Image → Image, Text → Image	Paid
35	FLUX.1 Depth Depth-map-guided image generation and editing	Image → Image, Text → Image	Paid
36	Runway Frames Image generation model with strong style control	Text → Image	Freemium
37	Ideogram 2a Fast, low-cost generation for rapid creative exploration	Text → Image	Freemium
38	Ideogram 2.0 Realistic images, flexible styles, and reliable typography in one prompt	Text → Image	Freemium
39	Stable Diffusion 3 Stability AI's first multimodal-diffusion Transformer image model	Text → Image	Free
40	Stable Diffusion 3 Medium Efficient SD3 variant for consumer hardware	Text → Image	Free
41	HunyuanDiT Tencent's open-source bilingual text-to-image diffusion transformer	Text → Image	Free
42	Recraft V2 Second-generation designer-first image generation model	Text → Image	Freemium
43	Imagen 2 Google's photorealistic text-to-image model with text rendering	Text → Image	Paid
44	Stable Diffusion XL Turbo Fast one-step SDXL for real-time generation	Text → Image	Free
45	Microsoft Copilot Microsoft's everyday AI assistant across web, PC, and mobile	LLMs, AI Assistants, Text → Image	Freemium
46	Stable Diffusion XL High-resolution open-source image generation	Text → Image	Free
47	Stable Diffusion 1.5 The foundational open-source text-to-image model	Text → Image	Free
48	Microsoft Designer Free AI design and image generation app powered by DALL-E	Text → Image	Freemium
49	Flux Kontext Context-aware image generation and editing	Text → Image, Image → Image	Unknown
50	Stable Diffusion 3.5 Open-source image generation with flexibility	Text → Image	Free
51	Microsoft MAI Models (Build 2026) Microsoft's unified AI model family from Build 2026	LLMs, Multimodal Reasoning, Text → Audio, Text → Image, IDEs & Coding Tools, AI Assistants	Enterprise
52	ChatGPT Images 2.0 Improved text-to-image generation with better detail, faster speed, and text rendering	Text → Image, Image → Image	Freemium
53	Google Pics AI-powered design platform replacing UI tools with natural language prompts	Text → Image	Freemium
54	Flux 1 [schnell] Fast Flux variant for rapid image generation	Text → Image	Unknown
55	Imagen 3 Google's high-quality text-to-image model	Text → Image	Unknown
56	Recraft V3 Vector art and brand-style image generation	Text → Image	Unknown
57	Ideogram V3 Exceptional typography and text rendering	Text → Image	Unknown
58	Qwen-Image-2.1-Turbo Alibaba's open-weight 7B image model, cut to 8 steps for fast generation and editing	Text → Image, Image → Image	Free
59	Flux 1 [dev] Development Flux for advanced control	Text → Image	Unknown
60	Ovis Image Quick text rendering for marketing graphics	Text → Image	Unknown
61	Flux Realism LoRA Photorealistic Flux with LoRA fine-tuning	Text → Image	Unknown
62	Flux LoRA Customizable Flux with LoRA fine-tuning	Text → Image	Unknown
63	FLUX 3 Multimodal model generating image, video and audio from one set of weights	Text → Image, Text → Video, Image → Video, Text → Audio	Paid

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