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
8
Open weights
241,400
Arena appearances
5
Prompt categories
Arena Elo
Higher is betterOverall leaderboard · best model per lab
- 1GPT Image 2 (high)1338
- 2HiDream-O1-Image-1.51263
- 3Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview)1258
- 4Riverflow 2.01254
- 5Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic)1236
- 6Krea 2 Medium1208
- 7grok-imagine-image-quality1203
- 8Recraft V4.1 Utility Pro1203
- 9FLUX.2 [max]1193
Open Weights
Higher is betterDownloadable checkpoints · best per lab
- 1Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic)1236
- 2HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-26041189
- 3ERNIE Image1173
- 4Qwen Image Max 25121160
- 5FLUX.2 [dev]1158
- 6FLUX.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
- 4grok-imagine-image$0.02
- 5Qwen Image Max 2512$0.02
- 6MAI-Image-2-Efficient$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 | 1338 | ±9 | 10,806 | $0.21 | Apr 2026 |
| 2 | GPT Image 1.5 (high) | OpenAI | 1266 | ±9 | 5,952 | $0.13 | Dec 2025 |
| 3 | HiDream-O1-Image-1.5 | HiDream | 1263 | ±10 | 4,729 | $0.08 | Jun 2026 |
| 4 | Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview) | 1258 | ±9 | 7,985 | $0.07 | Feb 2026 | |
| 5 | Riverflow 2.0 | Sourceful | 1254 | ±9 | 6,110 | $0.15 | Feb 2026 |
| 6 | Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic)Open | NVIDIA | 1236 | ±11 | 2,472 | — | May 2026 |
| 7 | Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image) | 1219 | ±9 | 5,306 | $0.13 | Nov 2025 | |
| 8 | Krea 2 Medium | Krea | 1208 | ±11 | 2,685 | $0.03 | May 2026 |
| 9 | grok-imagine-image-quality | xAI | 1203 | ±10 | 3,620 | $0.05 | Apr 2026 |
| 10 | Recraft V4.1 Utility Pro | Recraft | 1203 | ±11 | 2,641 | $0.25 | May 2026 |
| 11 | Recraft V4.1 Utility | Recraft | 1196 | ±10 | 2,931 | $0.04 | May 2026 |
| 12 | FLUX.2 [max] | Black Forest Labs | 1193 | ±9 | 5,201 | $0.07 | Dec 2025 |
| 13 | Seedream 4.0 | ByteDance Seed | 1193 | ±8 | 11,419 | $0.03 | Sep 2025 |
| 14 | MAI-Image-2 | Microsoft | 1190 | ±9 | 5,274 | $0.04 | Mar 2026 |
| 15 | HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-2604Open | HiDream | 1189 | ±9 | 4,652 | — | May 2026 |
| 16 | FLUX.2 [pro] | Black Forest Labs | 1187 | ±9 | 4,914 | $0.03 | Nov 2025 |
| 17 | Krea 2 Large | Krea | 1183 | ±10 | 3,084 | $0.06 | May 2026 |
| 18 | Imagen 4 Ultra Preview 0606 | 1183 | ±9 | 4,911 | $0.06 | Jun 2025 | |
| 19 | FLUX.2 [flex] | Black Forest Labs | 1181 | ±9 | 4,909 | $0.06 | Nov 2025 |
| 20 | grok-imagine-image | xAI | 1178 | ±9 | 8,310 | $0.02 | Jan 2026 |
| 21 | Luma UNI 1 Max | Luma Labs | 1177 | ±10 | 3,313 | $0.10 | May 2026 |
| 22 | Qwen Image 2.0 Pro (2026-04-22) | Alibaba | 1174 | ±10 | 3,277 | $0.07 | Apr 2026 |
| 23 | ImagineArt 2.0 | ImagineArt | 1173 | ±8 | 8,562 | $0.03 | Apr 2026 |
| 24 | ERNIE ImageOpen | Baidu | 1173 | ±11 | 2,371 | $0.03 | Apr 2026 |
| 25 | Imagen 4 Ultra | 1171 | ±9 | 5,290 | $0.06 | Jun 2025 | |
| 26 | ERNIE Image TurboOpen | Baidu | 1165 | ±10 | 3,259 | $0.01 | Apr 2026 |
| 27 | Seedream 4.5 | ByteDance Seed | 1165 | ±8 | 7,081 | $0.04 | Dec 2025 |
| 28 | Imagen 4 Preview 0606 | 1164 | ±9 | 4,931 | $0.04 | Jun 2025 | |
| 29 | Qwen Image Max 2512Open | Alibaba | 1160 | ±9 | 4,502 | $0.02 | Dec 2025 |
| 30 | Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) | 1160 | ±8 | 10,413 | $0.04 | Aug 2025 | |
| 31 | MAI-Image-2-Efficient | Microsoft | 1160 | ±8 | 5,999 | $0.02 | Apr 2026 |
| 32 | FLUX.2 [dev]Open | Black Forest Labs | 1158 | ±9 | 4,396 | $0.01 | Nov 2025 |
| 33 | FLUX.2 [dev] TurboOpen | Fal | 1157 | ±9 | 4,851 | $0.01 | Dec 2025 |
| 34 | Seedream 3.0 | ByteDance Seed | 1151 | ±8 | 5,701 | $0.03 | Apr 2025 |
| 35 | ImagineArt 1.5 Preview | ImagineArt | 1150 | ±8 | 9,032 | $0.03 | Nov 2025 |
| 36 | Luma UNI 1 | Luma Labs | 1148 | ±10 | 3,800 | $0.04 | May 2026 |
| 37 | Wan 2.5 Preview | Alibaba | 1147 | ±9 | 4,700 | $0.02 | Sep 2025 |
| 38 | grok-imagine-image-pro | xAI | 1146 | ±9 | 7,633 | $0.07 | Feb 2026 |
| 39 | Recraft V4.1 Pro | Recraft | 1142 | ±10 | 2,602 | $0.25 | May 2026 |
| 40 | FLUX.2 [dev] FlashOpen | Fal | 1141 | ±9 | 4,836 | $0.01 | Dec 2025 |
| 41 | Recraft V4.1 | Recraft | 1140 | ±10 | 2,962 | $0.04 | May 2026 |
| 42 | Recraft V4 Pro | Recraft | 1137 | ±9 | 6,835 | $0.25 | Feb 2026 |
| 43 | Wan2.6 Text to Image | Alibaba | 1137 | ±9 | 7,029 | $0.03 | Jan 2026 |
| 44 | Vivago 2.1 | HiDream | 1135 | ±9 | 5,123 | $0.04 | Oct 2025 |
| 45 | GPT Image 1 (high) | OpenAI | 1134 | ±9 | 4,991 | $0.17 | Apr 2025 |
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 1338 across 10,806 appearances — a 72-point gap over the chasing pack.
And among open weights?
NVIDIA's Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (agentic) leads the open-weights cut at 1236 — sixth overall, ahead of plenty of closed APIs — followed by HiDream-O1-Image-Dev-2604 (1189) and Baidu's ERNIE Image (1173).
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 11, 2026. Prices are list API prices per image at default quality and change frequently.