Skip to content
Model Pareto

Nano Banana 2.1 vs MAI-Image-2.6

In image generation, Nano Banana 2.1 scores 77.6 and MAI-Image-2.6 75.7 on the 0–100 quality scale. MAI-Image-2.6 costs 1.2× as much as Nano Banana 2.1 ($0.039 vs $0.034 per image).
Nano Banana 2.1MAI-Image-2.6
Focus

Image generation: quality vs price

Compared models are ringed; the other 42 ranked here are greyed.

Lower price is better. Pareto frontier: Z-Image Turbo, Muse Image, MAI-Image-2.6-Flash, Nano Banana 2.1, GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst. 2 models are not plotted: Qwen-Image-2.1, Ideogram 4.5.

2 models with no price data — shown in the strip at the left edge

Qwen-Image-2.1, Ideogram 4.5

  • Best-value frontier (nothing is both cheaper and better)
  • Evidencestrong → weak
  • Estimated from other categories
  • Nano Banana 2.1
    Quality
    77.6
    Rank
    #4/44
    Price
    $0.034/img
    Speed
    —

    vs MAI-Image-2.6: +1.9 quality · 0.86× price

  • MAI-Image-2.6
    Quality
    75.7
    Rank
    #5/44
    Price
    $0.039/img
    Speed
    —

    vs Nano Banana 2.1: −1.9 quality · 1.2× price

Overview

Metric
Nano Banana 2.1
MAI-Image-2.6
Lab
Google DeepMind
Microsoft AI
Released
Oct 6, 2026
Aug 10, 2026
Weights
Proprietary
Proprietary
Price per image
$0.034Best
$0.039

Quality by category

0–100 within each category (100 = best tracked model). Rank is among all models ranked there. Click a row to focus it.

Metric
Nano Banana 2.1
MAI-Image-2.6
Image generation
77.6±3.9Best
#4/44Verifiedbest value
75.7±3.2
#5/44Verified

Image generation benchmarks

Rank among models with a published score, and the leaderboard around each model. ~ italic = no published score, estimated from related benchmarks.

Metric
Nano Banana 2.1
MAI-Image-2.6
AA Text-to-Image Arena
third-party
#3/421176BestVerifiedFew votes
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1196
  2. #2GPT Image 2.5 Flare1190
  3. #3Nano Banana 2.1Few votes1176
  4. #4GPT Image 21171
artificialanalysis.ai · 2026-10-24
#6/421147Verified
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1196
  2. #5Grok Imagine Image 2.01154
  3. #6MAI-Image-2.61147
  4. #7Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image)1122
artificialanalysis.ai · 2026-10-13
AA Image Editing Arena
third-party
#3/351152BestVerifiedFew votes
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1186
  2. #2GPT Image 2.5 Flare1166
  3. #3Nano Banana 2.1Few votes1152
  4. #4MAI-Image-2.61143
artificialanalysis.ai · 2026-10-17
#4/351143Verified
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1186
  2. #3Nano Banana 2.1Few votes1152
  3. #4MAI-Image-2.61143
  4. #5MAI-Image-2.6-Flash1131
artificialanalysis.ai · 2026-10-13
LMArena Text-to-Image
third-party
#6/321328Verified
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1423
  2. #4MAI-Image-2.61334
  3. #6Nano Banana 2.11328
  4. #7Muse Image1276
arena.ai · 2026-10-06
#4/321334BestVerified
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1423
  2. #4Grok Imagine Image 2.01334
  3. #4MAI-Image-2.61334
  4. #6Nano Banana 2.11328
arena.ai · 2026-10-13
LMArena Image Edit
third-party
#6/261428Verified
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1522
  2. #5MAI-Image-2.61429
  3. #6Nano Banana 2.11428
  4. #7Muse Image1402
arena.ai · 2026-10-06
#5/261429BestVerified
  1. #1GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst1522
  2. #4Grok Imagine Image 2.01441
  3. #5MAI-Image-2.61429
  4. #6Nano Banana 2.11428
arena.ai · 2026-10-13
GenEval
day 0
~#2/4~87.9%Estimated
  1. #1HiDream-O1-Image90.0%
  2. ~#2Nano Banana 2.1Estimated87.9%
  3. #2Qwen-Image87.0%
estimated from related benchmarks
~#2/4~87.7%Estimated
  1. #1HiDream-O1-Image90.0%
  2. ~#2MAI-Image-2.6Estimated87.7%
  3. #2Qwen-Image87.0%
estimated from related benchmarks
DPG-Bench
day 0
~#2/4~88.4%Estimated
  1. #1HiDream-O1-Image89.8%
  2. ~#2Nano Banana 2.1Estimated88.4%
  3. #2Qwen-Image88.3%
estimated from related benchmarks
~#3/4~88.2%Estimated
  1. #1HiDream-O1-Image89.8%
  2. #2Qwen-Image88.3%
  3. ~#3MAI-Image-2.6Estimated88.2%
  4. #3Z-Image Turbo84.9%
estimated from related benchmarks