Best AI image generators, November 9, 2026

The top 30 text-to-image models on Arena's leaderboard: people see two pictures from one prompt and vote without knowing which model made them.

Key facts

First: GPT-Image-2.5 Sunburst (1,429), then GPT-Image-2.6 Sunburst (Medium) (1,406) and GPT-Image-2.5 Flare (1,400).
OpenAI holds the most places in the top 10: 5.
Data as of November 9, 2026.

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30 rows

Best AI image generators, November 9, 2026. Select a column heading to sort.

1	GPT-Image-2.5 Sunburst	OpenAI	Proprietary	1,429	57,928
2	GPT-Image-2.6 Sunburst (Medium)	OpenAI	Proprietary	1,406	2,718
3	GPT-Image-2.5 Flare	OpenAI	Proprietary	1,400	57,020
4	GPT-Image-2.6 Flare (Medium)	OpenAI	Proprietary	1,383	2,551
5	GPT-Image-2 (Medium)	OpenAI	Proprietary	1,382	106,021
6	MAI-Image-2.6	Microsoft	Proprietary	1,329	38,700
7	Gemini Nano Banana 2.1	Google	Proprietary	1,328	4,966
8	Grok Imagine Image 2.0	xAI	Proprietary	1,319	9,959
9	Reve 2.1	Reve	Proprietary	1,302	7,909
10	Grok Imagine Image 2.0 (20260801)	xAI	Proprietary	1,288	32,600
11	Reve 2.0	Reve	Proprietary	1,268	15,323
12	Muse Image	Meta	Proprietary	1,266	57,330
13	Gemini 3.1 Flash Image (nano-banana-2, Web Search)	Google	Proprietary	1,256	77,579
14	Qwen-Image-3.0-Pro	Alibaba	Proprietary	1,254	10,915
15	MAI-Image-2.5	Microsoft	Proprietary	1,253	59,127
16	Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Image (nano-banana-2-lite)	Google	Proprietary	1,249	17,149
17	Seedream 5.0 Pro	ByteDance	Proprietary	1,249	107,413
18	Gemini 3 Pro Image (nano-banana-pro, 2K)	Google	Proprietary	1,246	185,022
19	GPT-Image-1.5 (High Fidelity)	OpenAI	Proprietary	1,236	169,495
20	Gemini 3 Pro Image Preview (nano-banana-pro)	Google	Proprietary	1,231	83,834
21	Qwen-Image-2.1	Alibaba	qwen-research	1,227	17,883
22	Ideogram 4.0 (Quality)	Ideogram	Ideogram Open Model	1,199	77,406
23	Qwen-Image-2.0-Pro (2026-06-22)	Alibaba	Proprietary	1,190	12,670
24	UNI-1.1 Max	Luma AI	Proprietary	1,188	13,748
25	MAI-Image-2	Microsoft	Proprietary	1,183	50,455
26	UNI-1.1	Luma AI	Proprietary	1,182	58,725
27	Recraft V4.1 Utility Pro	Recraft	Proprietary	1,169	2,565
28	Grok Imagine Image	xAI	Proprietary	1,168	287,761
29	Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (Agentic)	NVIDIA	OpenMDW-1.1	1,164	10,160
30	FLUX.2 [max]	Black Forest Labs	Proprietary	1,161	120,498

Source: Arena leaderboard dataset · Licence: CC BY 4.0 · Data as of November 9, 2026 · Collected 2026-11-10

About this ranking

Voters pick the picture they prefer for a shared prompt, and those votes become a rating. That favours overall appeal, so a model that is strong at one job, such as text in images or a certain style, can rank lower than it deserves for that job.

The table ranks models, not apps. One app can offer several of these models, and price and limits differ by app.

FAQ

What is the best AI image generator?

By Arena's votes as of November 9, 2026, GPT-Image-2.5 Sunburst ranks first with 1,429, then GPT-Image-2.6 Sunburst (Medium) and GPT-Image-2.5 Flare. For a specific style, compare the top few with your own prompts.

Are these rankings about free tools?

No. The table ranks the quality of models, whatever they cost. The licence column shows which ones have open weights.

How often does this change?

Arena publishes new snapshots often, and this page shows the date of the one it uses.

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