Flux
Black Forest Labs' image AI model: photorealism and text rendering that beat Midjourney.
Flux is the family of AI image-generation models launched by Black Forest Labs, the team behind Stable Diffusion. Released in 2024 and the 2026 reference for photorealism and in-image text rendering — a weak spot for Midjourney.
The lineup includes Flux Schnell (fast, open weights, free), Flux Dev (open weights for non-commercial use), and Flux 1.1 Pro / Pro Ultra (closed, accessible via API at $0.04–0.06 per image). The Raw mode produces unstyled photo-look images ideal for editorial use.
Flux is available directly on fal.ai, Replicate, and the official bfl.ai API. Most consumer-grade AI image tools in 2026 (Krea, Freepik, Ideogram via plugin) run Flux on the backend.
Features
Key features
- Leading photorealism: faces, hands, fine details.
- Native text rendering: writes clean text in the image.
- Open weights (Schnell + Dev) for local fine-tuning.
- Official API at $0.04/image (Pro 1.1) with prod SLA.
- Raw mode: unstyled photo look for editorial.
- LoRA-compatible: custom style training.