Live ranking, refreshed every 2 days
Best AI Image Generators
As of October 7, 2026, the top-ranked model on LMArena's text-to-image leaderboard is gpt-image-2.5-sunburst by OpenAI with a score of 1,425, 27 points ahead of gpt-image-2.5-flare by OpenAI.
Updated October 13, 2026. Showing the last saved copy of the leaderboard, dated October 7, 2026, because the live source could not be reached.
Ranking: top 10 models
Scores come from blind head-to-head votes on LMArena's text-to-image leaderboard. Rank is LMArena's published rank, which accounts for confidence intervals, so several models can share a rank. The top 10 are shown below, and ranks 11 to 40 follow in the expandable list.
| Rank | Model | Lab | Score | Votes | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | gpt-image-2.5-sunburst | OpenAI | 1,425 ±7 | 17,752 | Proprietary |
| 2 | gpt-image-2.5-flare | OpenAI | 1,398 ±7 | 16,889 | Proprietary |
| 3 | gpt-image-2 (medium) | OpenAI | 1,383 ±4 | 93,334 | Proprietary |
| 4 | grok-imagine-image-2.0 (canvas) | xAI | 1,334 ±12 | 3,113 | Proprietary |
| 5 | mai-image-2.6 | Microsoft Ai | 1,332 ±5 | 25,091 | Proprietary |
| 6 | gemini-nano-banana-2.1 | 1,328 ±9 | 5,310 | Proprietary | |
| 7 | reve-2.1 | Reve | 1,302 ±8 | 8,249 | Proprietary |
| 8 | grok-imagine-image-2.0 (20260801) | xAI | 1,294 ±6 | 14,483 | Proprietary |
| 9 | muse-image | Meta | 1,274 ±5 | 42,262 | Proprietary |
| 10 | reve-2.0 | Reve | 1,269 ±6 | 15,773 | Proprietary |
Show ranks 11 to 40
Rank Model Lab Score License 11 gemini-3.1-flash-image (nano-banana-2) [web-search] Google 1,262 ±4 Proprietary 12 seedream-5.0-pro ByteDance 1,255 ±4 Proprietary 13 qwen-image-3.0-pro Alibaba (Qwen) 1,255 ±7 Proprietary 14 mai-image-2.5 Microsoft Ai 1,254 ±4 Proprietary 15 gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image (nano-banana-2-lite) Google 1,250 ±6 Proprietary 16 gemini-3-pro-image-2k (nano-banana-pro) Google 1,248 ±3 Proprietary 17 gpt-image-1.5-high-fidelity OpenAI 1,237 ±3 Proprietary 18 gemini-3-pro-image-preview (nano-banana-pro) Google 1,234 ±5 Proprietary 19 qwen-image-2.1 Alibaba (Qwen) 1,223 ±7 Open weights 20 ideogram-4.0-quality Ideogram 1,205 ±4 Open weights 21 qwen-image-2.0-pro-2026-06-22 Alibaba (Qwen) 1,192 ±6 Proprietary 22 uni-1.1-max Luma Ai 1,189 ±6 Proprietary 23 uni-1.1 Luma Ai 1,184 ±4 Proprietary 24 mai-image-2 Microsoft Ai 1,184 ±5 Proprietary 25 grok-imagine-image xAI 1,170 ±3 Proprietary 26 recraft-v4.1-utility-pro Recraft 1,169 ±11 Proprietary 27 Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image (Agentic) NVIDIA 1,165 ±7 Open weights 28 grok-imagine-image-pro xAI 1,162 ±4 Proprietary 29 flux-2-max Bfl 1,162 ±4 Proprietary 30 flux-2-flex Bfl 1,157 ±3 Proprietary 31 reve-v1.5 Reve 1,155 ±4 Proprietary 32 flux-2-pro Bfl 1,153 ±3 Proprietary 33 Cosmos3-Super-Text2Image NVIDIA 1,152 ±6 Open weights 34 gemini-2.5-flash-image-preview (nano-banana) Google 1,150 ±2 Proprietary 35 hunyuan-image-3.0 Tencent 1,150 ±3 Open weights 36 seedream-4.5 ByteDance 1,149 ±3 Proprietary 37 imagen-ultra-4.0-generate-001 Google 1,148 ±4 Proprietary 38 flux-2-dev Bfl 1,146 ±4 Open weights 39 seedream-4-2k ByteDance 1,140 ±7 Proprietary 40 seedream-5.0-lite ByteDance 1,138 ±3 Proprietary
Showing the top 40 of 82 models on this leaderboard. Data from October 7, 2026.
Best model by lab
Each lab's highest-ranked model on this leaderboard, and how far it sits from the top.
| Lab | Best model | Rank | Score | Behind #1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | gpt-image-2.5-sunburst | 1 | 1,425 | Leader |
| xAI | grok-imagine-image-2.0 (canvas) | 4 | 1,334 | 91 pts |
| Microsoft Ai | mai-image-2.6 | 5 | 1,332 | 92 pts |
| gemini-nano-banana-2.1 | 6 | 1,328 | 97 pts | |
| Reve | reve-2.1 | 7 | 1,302 | 123 pts |
| Meta | muse-image | 9 | 1,274 | 151 pts |
| ByteDance | seedream-5.0-pro | 12 | 1,255 | 169 pts |
| Alibaba (Qwen) | qwen-image-3.0-pro | 13 | 1,255 | 169 pts |
Which AI lab leads?
The lab with the most models at the top of the board is the one with the deepest bench, not only the single best model.
OpenAI holds 3 of the top 10 models (30%).
Models in the top 10 by lab
Show data table
| Lab | Top 10 |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | 3 |
| Reve | 2 |
| xAI | 2 |
| 1 | |
| Meta | 1 |
| Microsoft Ai | 1 |
Open vs proprietary: how big is the gap?
The best open-weight model is qwen-image-2.1 by Alibaba (Qwen) at 1,223, 202 points behind the best proprietary model, gpt-image-2.5-sunburst by OpenAI at 1,425. Their 95% confidence intervals do not overlap, so the gap is statistically meaningful.
18 proprietary models rank above the best open-weight model, and 2 of the top 20 are open-weight.
Open-weight here means any license other than Proprietary, including licenses with usage limits. It is a broader definition than the OSI one.
Other leaderboards
LMArena runs separate arenas for different jobs. The best model for one is often not the best for another.
Other arenas
- Text (overall)
- WebDev: claude-opus-5.5-max by Anthropic, 1,813
- Vision: claude-fable-5-high by Anthropic, 1,308
- Search: gpt-5.6-sol-xhigh by OpenAI, 1,256
- Document: claude-fable-5 by Anthropic, 1,499
- Image editing: gpt-image-2.5-sunburst by OpenAI, 1,524
- Text to video: gemini-omni-1.1-flash by Google, 1,516
Text arena by category
How to read this leaderboard
The text-to-image arena compares images generated from the same prompt and asks people to pick the better one. These are image models, not language models, ranked by the same blind-vote method.
- Scores come from blind votes
- LMArena shows a person two anonymous answers to the same prompt and asks which is better. Those head-to-head votes are fitted with a Bradley-Terry model, the statistical successor to Elo, to give each model one arena score. On the Elo scale LMArena uses, a 100-point lead means the higher model is expected to win about 64% of matchups.
- Confidence intervals decide ties
- Every score carries a 95% confidence interval. When two intervals overlap, the order of those two models is not settled. LMArena's rank column already accounts for this, which is why more than one model can hold the same rank.
- Why it differs from usage share
- A high rank does not mean many people use a model. Usage depends on price, distribution and habit. For adoption rather than quality, see AI market share.
Methodology and source
All rankings are read from the LMArena leaderboard dataset on Hugging Face, published by LMArena (formerly Chatbot Arena) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Credit for the underlying votes, scores and confidence intervals belongs to LMArena. Essentras is not affiliated with LMArena.
This page reads the text_to_image subset, category overall, from the dataset's latest split. Scores, intervals, ranks, vote counts and license labels are shown as published. Essentras adds the grouping by lab and the derived figures on this page: gaps, lab shares, open vs proprietary and, on the main page, the history of who held #1.
Data refreshes automatically every 2 days. If the source cannot be reached, the page falls back to the last saved copy and says so at the top. Models are never merged or renamed; model and lab names appear exactly as LMArena publishes them.
Open-weight means any license other than Proprietary. History is limited to what the dataset records: the style-controlled text leaderboard from August 28, 2024. We do not scrape any other ranking site.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI model for text-to-image generation?
As of October 7, 2026, gpt-image-2.5-sunburst by OpenAI ranks first on LMArena's text-to-image leaderboard with a score of 1,425. Rankings move as models and votes are added, so check the table above for the current order.
Which AI lab leads for text-to-image generation?
OpenAI holds 3 of the top 10 models (30%), ahead of Reve (2), xAI (2), and Google (1).
Is the best open-source model close to the best proprietary model?
The best open-weight model is qwen-image-2.1 by Alibaba (Qwen) at 1,223, 202 points behind the best proprietary model, gpt-image-2.5-sunburst by OpenAI at 1,425. 18 proprietary models rank above the best open-weight model, and 2 of the top 20 are open-weight. Their 95% confidence intervals do not overlap, so the gap is statistically meaningful. "Open" here means any license other than Proprietary, which is broader than the OSI definition.
What does this leaderboard measure?
The text-to-image arena compares images generated from the same prompt and asks people to pick the better one. These are image models, not language models, ranked by the same blind-vote method.
How often does this leaderboard update?
This page re-reads LMArena's dataset every 2 days. LMArena publishes a new snapshot when it has gathered enough votes or added models, so the date at the top shows the latest published data.
Models rank themselves. What do they say about you?
A leaderboard shows which AI models are strongest. It does not show what those models tell your customers about your company. Run the free check and see the answers.