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Pick Best image generation

GPT-Image-2.5-Sunburst

As of 1 Nov 2026, GPT-Image-2.5-Sunburst is the RightSignal pick for best image generation.

Top of Artificial Analysis's text-to-image board at 1,222, fifteen clear of stablemate GPT Image 2.5 Flare on 1,207 and 36 clear of GPT Image 2 (high) on 1,186, and top of the same site's editing board at 1,199 — though MAI-Image-2.7-Preview is only six points back on 1,193 and statistically tied with it.

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Current pick
since 31 Oct 2026
1
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1days
current reign
0challenges
held off
31 OCT 2026became pick
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Last reviewed: 1 Nov 2026 Reviews are continuous. This pick can change when the evidence changes.

Why GPT-Image-2.5-Sunburst is the pick

  • Top of Artificial Analysis's text-to-image board at 1,222, fifteen clear of stablemate GPT Image 2.5 Flare on 1,207 and 36 clear of GPT Image 2 (high) on 1,186, and top of the same site's editing board at 1,199 — though MAI-Image-2.7-Preview is only six points back on 1,193 and statistically tied with it.
  • It also leads both Arena boards, text-to-image 1,425 against Flare's 1,398 and single-image edit 1,517 against Flare's 1,482, with both entries still flagged preliminary despite tens of thousands of votes.
  • At $210.70 per 1,000 images it is no dearer than the model it replaces, but MAI-Image-2.6 ($38.90) remains far cheaper for editing at volume.
Judged on photoreal quality · editability · text rendering · instruction following

Evidence

The sources behind this title’s record.

Vendor numbers are treated as claims until independently reproduced — how we judge. Structured benchmark comparisons are on the roadmap.

Caveats & challengers

  • Editing is no longer a GPT Image 2 story: on Arena's single-image edit board it sits fourth on 1,460, behind GPT-Image-2.5-Sunburst (1,517), GPT-Image-2.5-Flare (1,482) and MAI-Image-2.7-Preview (1,471), with Grok Imagine Image 2.0 fifth on 1,439 and MAI-Image-2.6 sixth on 1,427.
  • Artificial Analysis's editing board now has it eighth on 1,136, behind Sunburst (1,199), MAI-Image-2.7-Preview (1,193), Flare (1,182), a three-way tie between MAI-Image-2.6, Krea 3 (Ultra) and Nano Banana 2.1 on 1,151, and MAI-Image-2.6-Flash (1,144).
  • On price it is level with the newer OpenAI models rather than uniquely dear, at $211 per 1,000 images against $210.70 for both GPT-Image-2.5 variants, though still far above $67 for Nano Banana 2 and $38.90 for MAI-Image-2.6.

At a glance

Title
Best image generation
Licence
proprietary
Pick since
31 Oct 2026
Last reviewed
1 Nov 2026
Title holders to date
10
Official page
developers.openai.com/api/docs/mode...

Title history

Every change, on the record.

View full changelog
Pick 31 Oct 2026 – presentGPT-Image-2.5-Sunburst Current

Top of Artificial Analysis's text-to-image board at 1,222, fifteen clear of stablemate GPT Image 2.5 Flare on 1,207 and 36 clear of GPT Image 2 (high) on 1,186, and top of the same site's editing board at 1,199 — though MAI-Image-2.7-Preview is only six points back on 1,193 and statistically tied with it.

 1 days
as pick
Pick 21 Apr 2026 – 31 Oct 2026GPT Image 2

Putting a reasoning model in front of generation is what finally cracked complex multi-element prompts — it leads the image arena by a cl…

 193 days
as pick
Pick 26 Feb 2026 – 21 Apr 2026Nano Banana 2

Pro-tier instruction following and text rendering at Flash latency and price, rolled straight into the Gemini app, Search AI Mode and Lens.

 54 days
as pick
Pick 16 Dec 2025 – 26 Feb 2026GPT Image 1.5

Fixed the premature cropping and warm colour cast that made GPT Image 1 output obvious, and ran roughly four times faster at 20% lower AP…

 72 days
as pick
Pick 26 Aug 2025 – 16 Dec 2025Nano Banana

Google shipped character consistency and multi-image fusion that actually survived repeated edits — the thing that had been blocking real…

 112 days
as pick
Pick 25 Mar 2025 – 26 Aug 2025GPT-4o image generation

Autoregressive rather than diffusion, it finally made text rendering and image-to-image editing dependable — 700 million images in the fi…

 154 days
as pick
Pick 30 Oct 2024 – 25 Mar 2025Recraft V3

The first time the top spot was settled by a public blind-vote board rather than vibes — #1 on the Artificial Analysis image arena at 117…

 146 days
as pick
Pick 21 Dec 2023 – 30 Oct 2024Midjourney v6

Trained from scratch over nine months, v6 closed the prompt-adherence gap while keeping the aesthetic lead; the v6.1 web release held the…

 314 days
as pick
Pick 1 Oct 2023 – 21 Dec 2023DALL-E 3

The first model that reliably drew what you actually asked for — and the ChatGPT integration meant iterating in plain language instead of…

 81 days
as pick
Pick 22 Jun 2023 – 1 Oct 2023Midjourney v5.2 101 days
as pick