Compare AI Models — Head-to-Head
Direct comparisons between the top AI photo editing and image generation models. Specs, where each one wins, and which to pick for your brief.
AI Photo Editing
Pick FLUX Kontext Dev for everyday edits — it's 3× cheaper, faster, and the quality is good enough for 80% of background swaps, retouching, and small object edits. Reach for FLUX 2 Pro when the result is going public: hero campaigns, e-commerce listings, anything where the difference in detail (skin, fabric, lighting) will be visible side-by-side.
Pick FLUX Kontext Dev for fast, cheap general edits — background swaps, prop removal, retouching, colour changes. Pick Nano Banana 2 when the edit involves text inside the image (signs, logos, captions) or when you need to give complex multi-step instructions in a single prompt.
AI Image Generation
Pick FLUX 1.1 Pro for volume work and iteration — it's 3× cheaper and 4× faster than 2 Pro at quality good enough for 80% of briefs. Step up to FLUX 2 Pro for hero shots, finals, or anything where a critic might zoom in: prompt adherence and texture detail are visibly higher.
Pick RealVisXL V4 for portraits, product shots, and anything that needs to read as a real photograph — its skin and fabric textures stay grounded where FLUX drifts toward a slightly painterly look. Use FLUX 1.1 Pro for everything else: it's faster, cheaper, and more versatile across non-photographic styles.
Pick Stable Diffusion 3 for editorial illustration, watercolour, comic art, mid-century print, and anything painterly — it interprets prompts more loosely and produces more visually interesting style work. Use FLUX 1.1 Pro for literal scene descriptions and photographic prompts where prompt fidelity matters more than artistic flair.
Pick FLUX 2 Pro for visual quality, photographic work, and anything where texture and lighting matter most. Pick ChatGPT Images 2.0 (gpt-image-2) when the prompt is long and structured, when text needs to render legibly inside the image, or when you'd otherwise have to chain multiple edits to get there.
Pick FLUX 2 Pro for photographic quality, hero campaigns, and anything where lighting and texture matter. Pick Nano Banana 2 when the image needs legible text — posters, signage, brand wordmarks, packaging mockups — or when you want conversational edit instructions parsed accurately.
Both render text in images at near-print quality — the two best models in the catalogue for that. Pick ChatGPT Images 2.0 (gpt-image-2) for long English captions, conditional prompts, and infographics. Pick Nano Banana 2 for brand wordmarks, multi-line typography, and photo edits that involve adding or fixing text.
Want a deep dive on a single model?
Each model also has its own page with examples, FAQ, and a one-click handoff to the editor.