All tasks / Comparisons
Nano Banana 2.1 vs MAI-Image-2.6
Compared only on public benchmark results, across the 2 tasks where both are listed: they share a tier in 2.
Nano Banana 2.1
Google's Flash-tier native Gemini image generation and editing model with 1K-4K output and search grounding.
- Vendor
- Weights
- Closed: API and apps only
- Released
- 6 Oct 2026
- API price
- $0.03 per image (1K (1024x1024) output, Standard tier: $30 per 1M image output tokens = $0.0336/image; 2K $0.0504, 4K $0.113)
- License
- proprietary
- Last verified
- 18 Oct 2026
MAI-Image-2.6
Microsoft AI's in-house image generation and editing model, with a cheaper Flash variant; public preview on Microsoft Foundry.
- Vendor
- Microsoft AI
- Weights
- Closed: API and apps only
- Released
- 10 Aug 2026
- 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)
- License
- proprietary
- Last verified
- 18 Oct 2026
Task by task
| Task | Nano Banana 2.1 | MAI-Image-2.6 | Higher tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Image generation Models | A1,174 on Artificial Analysis Text to Image Arena (AA-Image-T2I v2.1) · Cloud | A1,166 on Artificial Analysis Text to Image Arena (AA-Image-T2I v2.1) · Cloud | Same tier |
| Image editing Models | A1,152 on Artificial Analysis Image Editing Arena (AA-Image-Editing v2.1) · Cloud | A1,152 on Artificial Analysis Image Editing Arena (AA-Image-Editing v2.1) · Cloud | Same tier |
A tier spans a range of scores, and small gaps on a leaderboard are often within its margin of error, so only a different tier counts as ahead. How we rank.
Same benchmark, both results
| Benchmark | Nano Banana 2.1 | MAI-Image-2.6 | Snapshot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artificial Analysis Image Editing Arena (AA-Image-Editing v2.1) Elo from pairwise human preference (FLUX.2 [dev] anchored at 1000), higher is better | 1,152 | 1,152 | 18 Oct 2026 |
| Artificial Analysis Text to Image Arena (AA-Image-T2I v2.1) Elo from pairwise human preference (FLUX.2 [dev] anchored at 1000), higher is better | 1,174 | 1,166 | 18 Oct 2026 |
| LMArena Image Edit Arena Arena score (Bradley-Terry rating from pairwise human votes), higher is better | 1,428 | 1,428 | 6 Oct 2026 |
| LMArena Text-to-Image Arena Arena score (Bradley-Terry rating from pairwise human votes), higher is better | 1,328 | 1,332 | 7 Oct 2026 |