Model rankings updated April 2026 based on real usage data.
OpenRouter provides access to leading image generation models through a single, unified API gateway. Compare pricing, capabilities, and performance across multiple image generation APIs to find the best fit for models that transform text descriptions into high-quality images.
Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, a.k.a. "Nano Banana," is now generally available. It is a state of the art image generation model with contextual understanding. It is capable of image generation, edits, and multi-turn conversations. Aspect ratios can be controlled with the image_config API Parameter
Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview, a.k.a. "Nano Banana 2," is Google’s latest state of the art image generation and editing model, delivering Pro-level visual quality at Flash speed. It combines advanced contextual understanding with fast, cost-efficient inference, making complex image generation and iterative edits significantly more accessible. Aspect ratios can be controlled with the image_config API Parameter
Nano Banana Pro is Google’s most advanced image-generation and editing model, built on Gemini 3 Pro. It extends the original Nano Banana with significantly improved multimodal reasoning, real-world grounding, and high-fidelity visual synthesis. The model generates context-rich graphics, from infographics and diagrams to cinematic composites, and can incorporate real-time information via Search grounding.
It offers industry-leading text rendering in images (including long passages and multilingual layouts), consistent multi-image blending, and accurate identity preservation across up to five subjects. Nano Banana Pro adds fine-grained creative controls such as localized edits, lighting and focus adjustments, camera transformations, and support for 2K/4K outputs and flexible aspect ratios. It is designed for professional-grade design, product visualization, storyboarding, and complex multi-element compositions while remaining efficient for general image creation workflows.
Seedream 4.5 is the latest in-house image generation model developed by ByteDance. Compared with Seedream 4.0, it delivers comprehensive improvements, especially in editing consistency, including better preservation of subject details, lighting, and color tone. It also enhances portrait refinement and small-text rendering. The model’s multi-image composition capabilities have been significantly strengthened, and both reasoning performance and visual aesthetics continue to advance, enabling more accurate and artistically expressive image generation.
Pricing is $0.04 per output image, regardless of size.
GPT-5.4 Image 2 combines OpenAI's GPT-5.4 model with state-of-the-art image generation capabilities from GPT Image 2. It enables rich multimodal workflows, allowing users to seamlessly move between reasoning, coding, and visual generation within the same interaction.
GPT-5 Image Mini combines OpenAI's advanced language capabilities, powered by GPT-5 Mini, with GPT Image 1 Mini for efficient image generation. This natively multimodal model features superior instruction following, text rendering, and detailed image editing with reduced latency and cost. It excels at high-quality visual creation while maintaining strong text understanding, making it ideal for applications that require both efficient image generation and text processing at scale.
GPT-5 Image combines OpenAI's GPT-5 model with state-of-the-art image generation capabilities. It offers major improvements in reasoning, code quality, and user experience while incorporating GPT Image 1's superior instruction following, text rendering, and detailed image editing.
Riverflow V2 Fast is the fastest variant of Sourceful's Riverflow 2.0 lineup, best for production deployments and latency-critical workflows.
The Riverflow 2.0 series represents SOTA performance on image generation and editing tasks, using an integrated reasoning model to boost reliability and tackle complex challenges.
Pricing is $0.02 per 1K output image and $0.04 per 2K output image. Does not support 4K image output.
Additional features:
See the image generation docs for details: https://openrouter.ai/docs/features/multimodal/image-generation
Note: Sourceful imposes a 4.5MB request size limit, therefore it is highly recommended to pass image URLs instead of Base64 data.
A high-end image generation and editing model focused on frontier-level visual quality and reliability. It delivers strong prompt adherence, stable lighting, sharp textures, and consistent character/style reproduction across multi-reference inputs. Designed for production workloads, it balances speed and quality while supporting text-to-image and image editing up to 4 MP resolution.
Pricing is as follows, per the docs: Input: We charge $0.015 for each megapixel on the input (i.e. reference images for editing) Output: The first megapixel is charged $0.03 and then each subsequent MP will be charged $0.015.
Riverflow V2 Pro is the most powerful variant of Sourceful's Riverflow 2.0 lineup, best for top-tier control and perfect text rendering.
The Riverflow 2.0 series represents SOTA performance on image generation and editing tasks, using an integrated reasoning model to boost reliability and tackle complex challenges.
Pricing is $0.15 per 1K/2K output image and $0.33 per 4K output image.
Additional features:
See the image generation docs for details: https://openrouter.ai/docs/features/multimodal/image-generation
Note: Sourceful imposes a 4.5MB request size limit, therefore it is highly recommended to pass image URLs instead of Base64 data.
FLUX.2 [max] is the new top-tier image model from Black Forest Labs, pushing image quality, prompt understanding, and editing consistency to the highest level yet.
Pricing is as follows, per the docs: Input: We charge $0.03 for each megapixel on the input (i.e. reference images for editing) Output: The first generated megapixel is charged $0.07. Each subsequent megapixel is charged $0.03.
Riverflow V2 Fast Preview is the fastest variant of Sourceful's Riverflow V2 preview lineup. This preview version exceeds the performance of Riverflow 1 Family and is Sourceful's first unified text-to-image and image-to-image model family.
Pricing is $0.03 per output image, regardless of size.
Sourceful imposes a 4.5MB request size limit, therefore it is highly recommended to pass image URLs instead of Base64 data.