Text-to-image & editing

Image Models

Text-to-image and image-editing models — from artistic generators to photorealistic, API-first and self-hostable options.

Black Forest Labs open

FLUX.2

The open-weight champion for photorealism, text rendering and developer workflows — top quality at a few cents per image via API or self-hosting.

~$0.04–0.08 per image (hosted API)
Google

Nano Banana 2

Google's Gemini 3 Pro Image model — 4K photorealism free inside the Gemini app, with near-perfect text rendering and conversational editing.

Free in the Gemini app · API via Gemini (usage-based)
Midjourney

Midjourney v8.1

The industry leader for raw artistic quality and aesthetic polish — a subscription-only image generator beloved by designers and concept artists.

$10–120 / month (subscription)
xAI

Grok Imagine Image 2.0

xAI's editing-first image model — Arena #2 in both T2I and image editing behind GPT-Image-2, with magic wand, segmentation, multi-reference compositing and templates.

Free on grok.com; API pricing TBD
OpenAI

GPT Image 2

OpenAI's image model — the strongest at prompt instruction-following and conversational editing, native to the ChatGPT and OpenAI API stack.

~$0.07 / image (standard), ~$0.13 / image (HD)
Boogu open

Boogu-Image 0.1

Apache-2.0 open-source image generation and editing family (Base / Turbo / Edit) with strong bilingual text rendering and near closed-source quality — trained on roughly 10× less data and fully self-hostable.

Free (Apache-2.0 open weights, self-host)
Recraft

Recraft V4

The design-and-brand specialist — vector/SVG output, brand-style consistency and strong typography built for professional design work.

Free tier + paid plans (from ~$12 / month)
Ideogram

Ideogram 3.0

The specialist for typography and logo design — the most reliable model for correct, legible text inside generated images.

Free tier + ~$16 / month (Plus)
Google

Imagen 4

Google's photorealism leader — best-in-class typography and people, available cheaply through Gemini Advanced or per-image on Vertex AI.

~$0.04 / image (Vertex AI) or included with Gemini Advanced ($20/mo)
Stability AI open

Stable Diffusion 3.5

The open-weights standard for local, private and customizable image generation — run it on your own GPU at no per-image cost, or via Stability's API.

Free (self-hosted) · API from $0.03–0.08 / image