Trending AI image research daily
Font Matcher
Pair typography and visuals that hold one consistent style.
Style Transfer (Text to Image)
Carry a defined aesthetic across every new design.
Image Remix
Rework existing assets into new layouts or treatments.
Every major text-to-image model, ranked by Elo from blind head-to-head human votes — no cherry-picked grids, no lab-supplied samples. Filter by prompt category, flip on the open-weights cut, and see where the checkpoints you can download stand against the closed APIs.
45
Models ranked
9
Open weights
238,182
Arena appearances
5
Prompt categories
Arena Elo
Higher is betterOverall leaderboard · best model per lab
- 1GPT Image 2 (high)1340
- 2HiDream-O1-Image-1.51263
- 3Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview)1257
- 4Riverflow 2.01255
- 5Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic)1232
- 6MAI-Image-2.5-Flash (Foundry)1218
- 7Krea 2 Medium1209
- 8Recraft V4.1 Utility Pro1204
- 9grok-imagine-image-quality1203
Open Weights
Higher is betterDownloadable checkpoints · best per lab
- 1Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic)1232
- 2HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-26041189
- 3ERNIE Image1167
- 4Qwen Image Max 25121160
- 5Ideogram 4.0 Quality1160
- 6FLUX.2 [dev]1159
- 7FLUX.2 [dev] Turbo1157
Price per Image
Lower is betterUSD per generation, default quality · cheapest per lab
- 1FLUX.2 [dev] Flash$0.01
- 2ERNIE Image Turbo$0.01
- 3FLUX.2 [dev]$0.01
- 4MAI-Image-2.5-Flash (Foundry)$0.02
- 5grok-imagine-image$0.02
- 6Qwen Image Max 2512$0.02
- 7Krea 2 Medium$0.03
- 8Seedream 4.0$0.03
- 9ImagineArt 2.0$0.03
Global leaderboard
Elo from blind head-to-head votes · All categories
| Rank | Model | Creator | Elo | 95% CI | Appearances | $/Image | Released |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GPT Image 2 (high) | OpenAI | 1340 | ±9 | 11,020 | $0.21 | Apr 2026 |
| 2 | GPT Image 1.5 (high) | OpenAI | 1267 | ±9 | 6,031 | $0.13 | Dec 2025 |
| 3 | HiDream-O1-Image-1.5 | HiDream | 1263 | ±10 | 4,990 | $0.08 | Jun 2026 |
| 4 | Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview) | 1257 | ±9 | 8,218 | $0.07 | Feb 2026 | |
| 5 | Riverflow 2.0 | Sourceful | 1255 | ±9 | 6,196 | $0.15 | Feb 2026 |
| 6 | Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic)Open | NVIDIA | 1232 | ±11 | 2,709 | — | May 2026 |
| 7 | Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image) | 1219 | ±9 | 5,365 | $0.13 | Nov 2025 | |
| 8 | MAI-Image-2.5-Flash (Foundry) | Microsoft | 1218 | ±11 | 2,425 | $0.02 | Jun 2026 |
| 9 | Krea 2 Medium | Krea | 1209 | ±11 | 2,886 | $0.03 | May 2026 |
| 10 | Recraft V4.1 Utility Pro | Recraft | 1204 | ±11 | 2,880 | $0.25 | May 2026 |
| 11 | grok-imagine-image-quality | xAI | 1203 | ±10 | 3,850 | $0.05 | Apr 2026 |
| 12 | MAI-Image-2.5 (Foundry) | Microsoft | 1202 | ±11 | 2,288 | $0.05 | Jun 2026 |
| 13 | Recraft V4.1 Utility | Recraft | 1198 | ±10 | 3,158 | $0.04 | May 2026 |
| 14 | FLUX.2 [max] | Black Forest Labs | 1194 | ±9 | 5,282 | $0.07 | Dec 2025 |
| 15 | Seedream 4.0 | ByteDance Seed | 1194 | ±8 | 11,485 | $0.03 | Sep 2025 |
| 16 | MAI-Image-2 | Microsoft | 1191 | ±9 | 5,485 | $0.04 | Mar 2026 |
| 17 | HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-2604Open | HiDream | 1189 | ±9 | 4,894 | — | May 2026 |
| 18 | FLUX.2 [pro] | Black Forest Labs | 1188 | ±9 | 4,990 | $0.03 | Nov 2025 |
| 19 | Krea 2 Large | Krea | 1187 | ±10 | 3,319 | $0.06 | May 2026 |
| 20 | Imagen 4 Ultra Preview 0606 | 1184 | ±9 | 4,983 | $0.06 | Jun 2025 | |
| 21 | FLUX.2 [flex] | Black Forest Labs | 1181 | ±9 | 4,984 | $0.06 | Nov 2025 |
| 22 | Luma UNI 1 Max | Luma Labs | 1179 | ±10 | 3,543 | $0.10 | May 2026 |
| 23 | grok-imagine-image | xAI | 1178 | ±9 | 8,390 | $0.02 | Jan 2026 |
| 24 | Qwen Image 2.0 Pro (2026-04-22) | Alibaba | 1177 | ±10 | 3,524 | $0.07 | Apr 2026 |
| 25 | ImagineArt 2.0 | ImagineArt | 1175 | ±8 | 8,803 | $0.03 | Apr 2026 |
| 26 | Imagen 4 Ultra | 1172 | ±9 | 5,372 | $0.06 | Jun 2025 | |
| 27 | ERNIE ImageOpen | Baidu | 1167 | ±10 | 2,617 | $0.03 | Apr 2026 |
| 28 | Seedream 4.5 | ByteDance Seed | 1166 | ±8 | 7,147 | $0.04 | Dec 2025 |
| 29 | Imagen 4 Preview 0606 | 1165 | ±9 | 5,004 | $0.04 | Jun 2025 | |
| 30 | Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) | 1162 | ±8 | 10,475 | $0.04 | Aug 2025 | |
| 31 | ERNIE Image TurboOpen | Baidu | 1162 | ±10 | 3,502 | $0.01 | Apr 2026 |
| 32 | Qwen Image Max 2512Open | Alibaba | 1160 | ±9 | 4,573 | $0.02 | Dec 2025 |
| 33 | Ideogram 4.0 QualityOpen | Ideogram | 1160 | ±10 | 2,708 | $0.06 | Jun 2026 |
| 34 | MAI-Image-2-Efficient | Microsoft | 1159 | ±8 | 6,249 | $0.02 | Apr 2026 |
| 35 | FLUX.2 [dev]Open | Black Forest Labs | 1159 | ±9 | 4,473 | $0.01 | Nov 2025 |
| 36 | FLUX.2 [dev] TurboOpen | Fal | 1157 | ±9 | 4,936 | $0.01 | Dec 2025 |
| 37 | Seedream 3.0 | ByteDance Seed | 1151 | ±8 | 5,770 | $0.03 | Apr 2025 |
| 38 | ImagineArt 1.5 Preview | ImagineArt | 1151 | ±8 | 9,107 | $0.03 | Nov 2025 |
| 39 | Recraft V4.1 Pro | Recraft | 1150 | ±10 | 2,867 | $0.25 | May 2026 |
| 40 | Wan 2.5 Preview | Alibaba | 1147 | ±9 | 4,758 | $0.02 | Sep 2025 |
| 41 | Luma UNI 1 | Luma Labs | 1147 | ±10 | 4,045 | $0.04 | May 2026 |
| 42 | Recraft V4.1 | Recraft | 1145 | ±10 | 3,181 | $0.04 | May 2026 |
| 43 | grok-imagine-image-pro | xAI | 1145 | ±9 | 7,708 | $0.07 | Feb 2026 |
| 44 | FLUX.2 [dev] FlashOpen | Fal | 1140 | ±9 | 4,913 | $0.01 | Dec 2025 |
| 45 | Recraft V4 Pro | Recraft | 1139 | ±9 | 7,079 | $0.25 | Feb 2026 |
Showing 45 of 45 models. Category Elo is computed from votes on that prompt type alone.
Arena Elo — Open Weights
Every downloadable checkpoint on the board, ranked by overall Elo. Higher is better.
Cosmos3 sits fifth overall — ahead of most closed APIs — and the FLUX.2 [dev] line keeps Black Forest Labs in four of the fourteen open slots.
Arena Elo vs. Price per Image
Crowd-judged quality against USD per generation (log scale).
Up and to the left wins. The open-weights mid-table — FLUX.2 [dev], Qwen-Image-2512, Hunyuan — is where the value lives; models without public per-image pricing are excluded.
Frontier Elo Over Time
Arena Elo by release date. The dashed line tracks the running frontier.
The frontier has changed hands five times since Seedream 3.0 — ByteDance Seed, Google, and OpenAI have all held it. GPT Image 2 set the current mark in April 2026.
How the arena works
1 · Prompt
Prompts are sampled across five categories — people, photorealism, art, product, and typography — so no model can farm a single style.
2 · Blind matchup
Two models generate from the same prompt. Voters see the images side by side with no names, no logos, and no way to tell who made what.
3 · Elo
Each vote updates both models' Elo ratings. Confidence intervals come from resampling the vote history; new models stay provisional until they clear roughly 3,000 appearances.
FAQ
Which model leads the arena right now?
GPT Image 2 (high) holds the top spot with an Elo of 1340 across 11,020 appearances — a 73-point gap over the chasing pack.
And among open weights?
NVIDIA's Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic) leads the open-weights cut at 1232 — sixth overall, ahead of plenty of closed APIs — followed by HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-2604 (1189) and Baidu's ERNIE Image (1167).
How are models ranked?
Pure crowd judgment. Voters get a prompt and two unlabeled images from different models and pick the better one; thousands of those blind matchups feed an Elo rating, with a 95% confidence interval from resampling the vote history.
What counts as open weights?
The checkpoint has to be downloadable and runnable on your own hardware under a published license. API-only siblings of open families — FLUX.2 [pro], Qwen Image 2.0 Pro — stay in the proprietary column.
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Methodology: rankings come from blind pairwise human votes; Elo, confidence intervals, and appearance counts reflect the full vote history at snapshot time. Arena data: Artificial Analysis Image Arena (artificialanalysis.ai) public snapshot, June 16, 2026. Prices are list API prices per image at default quality and change frequently.