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MAI-Image-2.6

Microsoft AI's in-house image generation and editing model, with a cheaper Flash variant; public preview on Microsoft Foundry.

Microsoft AI
Closed
Released 10 Aug 2026

Where it ranks

A
Image generation
Models · Cloud · 1,166 on Artificial Analysis Text to Image Arena (AA-Image-T2I v2.1)
A
Image editing
Models · Cloud · 1,152 on Artificial Analysis Image Editing Arena (AA-Image-Editing v2.1)

Facts

Vendor: Microsoft AI
Family: MAI-Image
Released: 10 Aug 2026
Weights: Closed: API and apps only
License: proprietary
API price: $0.04 per image (API price listed by Artificial Analysis for "MAI-Image-2.6": $38.9 per 1k images; Microsoft Foundry public preview)
Last verified: 18 Oct 2026

Price from artificialanalysis.ai, 18 Oct 2026.

Benchmark results

Benchmark	Result	Entry on the leaderboard	As of	Source
Artificial Analysis Image Editing Arena (AA-Image-Editing v2.1)	1,152	`MAI-Image-2.6` AA-Image-Editing v2.1 overall; rank 4 of 71, 16528 samples; page shows no last-updated date	18 Oct 2026	artificialanalysis.ai
Artificial Analysis Text to Image Arena (AA-Image-T2I v2.1)	1,166	`MAI-Image-2.6` AA-Image-T2I v2.1 overall; rank 6, 8090 samples; page shows no last-updated date	18 Oct 2026	artificialanalysis.ai
LMArena Image Edit Arena	1,428	`mai-image-2.6` from LMArena's official HF leaderboard dataset (image_edit/latest, overall, published 2026-10-06; rank 5 of 59, 51384 votes); arena.ai blocks scripted fetches	6 Oct 2026	huggingface.co
LMArena Text-to-Image Arena	1,332	`mai-image-2.6` from LMArena's official HF leaderboard dataset (text_to_image/latest, overall, published 2026-10-07; rank 5, 25091 votes); arena.ai blocks scripted fetches	7 Oct 2026	huggingface.co

Where you can use it

No tracked tool lists this model yet.

Earlier versions

MAI-Image-2.5 · 2 Jun 2026
MAI-Image-2 · —
MAI-Image-1 · —

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Alternatives to MAI-Image-2.6

Sources