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Microsoft AI: MAI-Image-2.6 Flash

microsoft/mai-image-2.6-flash

MAI-Image-2.6 Flash is the lower-latency, lower-cost member of the MAI-Image-2.6 family from Microsoft AI, built for latency-sensitive, high-throughput production image generation and editing at comparable quality to the precision tier. It supports the same multi-reference editing with up to five input images and the same fixed or model-chosen aspect ratios.

Modalities
In / out price
$2.50 / $19per 1M
Context
4K
Released
Sep 4, 2026

Playground

Benchmarks

Scores on standardized evaluations and this model’s own outputs on shared benchmark prompts. Higher percentages are better — and each rank shows where this model lands among the models evaluated on that source.

Benchmark score summary for Microsoft AI: MAI-Image-2.6 Flash (Design Arena)
SourceBenchmarkScore
Design ArenaMAI-Image-2.6 Flash Models Arena Graphic Design Elo1308
Design ArenaMAI-Image-2.6 Flash Models Arena Image Elo1291
Design ArenaMAI-Image-2.6 Flash Models Arena Imageediting Elo1235
Design ArenaMAI-Image-2.6 Flash Models Arena Logo Elo1268

Benchmark outputs summary for Microsoft AI: MAI-Image-2.6 Flash

  • Full wine glass: A wine glass filled to the brim with white wine, the surface level with the rim of the glass, standing upright on a plain wooden table. Straight-on eye-level shot, glass upright and not tilted, no other objects in the frame. (Tied 10th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Closed umbrellas: Wide street-level photograph of about twelve people crossing a city street in heavy rain. Every person is carrying a closed, furled umbrella held down at their side. Not a single umbrella is open. Each umbrella is clearly visible. They are all getting soaked. No other people in the frame. (Tied 34th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Three fingers: Close straight-on photograph of an open right hand raised palm towards the camera, with exactly three fingers extended straight up and the other two folded down into the palm. Plain background, nothing else in the frame. (Tied 1st of 60 on this prompt)
  • Cards & dice: Exactly four playing cards face up in a single straight row on a polished marble counter, evenly spaced, all the same size, showing the seven of hearts, the eight of spades, the nine of diamonds and the ten of clubs from left to right. No other objects in the frame. Straight-on eye-level shot, soft even light. (Tied 44th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Long exact string: A white A4 poster on a brick wall reading exactly "SPRING CLEARANCE - EVERYTHING 40% OFF - SATURDAY 14 JUNE, 9AM TO 6PM". No other text in the frame. (Tied 29th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Multiple languages: Straight-on photograph of a white overhead directional sign in an international airport terminal, with a black arrow pointing right at the left end. The sign carries the same word in four scripts on four stacked lines, in this order from top to bottom: "DEPARTURES", then the Japanese 出発, then the Korean 출발, then the Arabic المغادرة. Clean sans-serif lettering, sharp focus, no other text anywhere in the frame. (Tied 40th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Occlusion: Straight-on eye-level photograph of a plain wooden desk. On the left, a closed hardcover book with a dark red cover stands upright, its front cover facing the camera. A blue ceramic mug stands on the desk to the right of the book and clearly further back, about 20 cm behind it, positioned so that the right edge of the book overlaps and hides the left third of the mug. The mug's handle points to the right and the whole rim of the mug is visible. Bare desk surface is visible between the book and the mug. Nothing else on the desk. Plain wall behind, soft even light. (Tied 39th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Mirror: Straight-on eye-level photograph of a bathroom vanity. A large rectangular mirror covers the wall behind the counter and its bottom edge meets the countertop, so both the objects and their reflections are visible. On the counter, a tall red toothbrush cup on the left and a tall green glass bottle on the right, both roughly 20 cm tall and well apart from each other. The mirror reflects the counter and the objects on it accurately. Nothing else in the frame. (Tied 2nd of 60 on this prompt)
  • Plain zebra: Photograph of a zebra standing side-on in short grass. Its coat is a uniform solid grey with no stripes, no bands and no markings of any kind anywhere on its body. The whole animal is visible. Sharp focus. (Tied 27th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Times Square: Wide street-level photograph of Times Square in New York at night, wet asphalt reflecting the lights. Every billboard, screen, storefront window, awning, taxi door and road marking is completely blank — lit with plain colour fields and soft gradients only. No letters, no words, no numbers, no logos, no lettering of any kind anywhere in the frame. Sharp focus, straight-on shot. (Tied 11th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Minimal diff: From the reference photo, change only the sign text to "ROUTE 7 ESPRESSO - OPEN TILL 8". Keep the sign, wall, lighting and framing identical. (Tied 5th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Object removal: Remove only the second cup from the left in the reference photo. Leave the other four cups exactly as they are, in the same positions, and leave the shelf, towel, wall, plant and lighting untouched. (Tied 33rd of 60 on this prompt)
  • Person removal: In the reference photo, remove only the person in the yellow coat. Their shadow on the pavement and their reflection in the shop window must be removed as well. Reconstruct the pavement and the window glass behind them. The person in the red coat and the person in the green coat must stay completely unchanged, including their own shadows and their own reflections. Change nothing else in the frame. (Tied 1st of 60 on this prompt)
  • Product placement: Product photograph of the ceramic mug from the reference image, standing upright on a café table. Show the same side of the mug, from the same side-on eye-level angle as the reference, with the handle on the right. The shape, proportions, colours, moulded relief and every painted detail must match the reference exactly. Only the setting and lighting change: soft daylight in a café interior, shallow depth of field. (Tied 36th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Four references: Place the person from the portrait reference at the desk in the scene reference, wearing the rust orange canvas jacket from its reference and holding the navy blue travel mug from its reference in one hand. Keep the face, the jacket and the mug exactly as they appear in the references — same colours, same details, same proportions. Do not change the room. (Tied 14th of 60 on this prompt)
  • Portraits: Studio headshot of a woman in a charcoal blazer against a mid-grey seamless backdrop, lit by a large softbox slightly above and to the left with a soft fill from the right, catchlights in both eyes. An 85mm look with shallow depth of field, skin texture and flyaway hairs kept rather than smoothed.
  • People in scenes: Photograph of four cooks working the pass in a restaurant kitchen at service, plating three dishes at once, several hands in frame and some of them overlapping. One cook partly hidden behind another, steam rising into hard overhead light, each face clearly a different person.
  • Animals: Photograph of a tabby cat asleep on a sunlit windowsill, fur lit from behind so the individual hairs glow at the edges, one ear turned toward the camera. Shallow depth of field, a houseplant soft in the background, quiet morning light.
  • Landscape and nature: Photograph of an old-growth temperate rainforest after rain, moss on every trunk and fallen log, ferns dense across the floor, thin fog between the far trees. Overcast light with no direct sun, everything from the nearest fern to the last trunk in focus.

Providers

This model is hosted by one provider. OpenRouter forwards every request without routing.

Pricing

The average price customers actually pay for this model, next to the prices providers post. Caching and discounts mean the price actually paid is often well below the listed one.

Weighted average

Input
$2.119/M tokens
Output
$19/M tokens
Price history
No effective price data for this selection

Performance

Latency is how long it takes to generate and return the image (lower is better).

End-to-end latency
15.35s

P50, best provider

Uptime

Uptime is the percentage of the past 3 days that at least one provider was responding to requests. Availability is the percentage of time that inference was successfully served. OpenRouter continuously monitors and uses the next-best provider when one returns an error.

Uptime (3d)The model was reachable. Request routed to a provider.
100.00%
Availability (3d)The model returned inference from any provider. Errors and empty responses count against it.
99.98%

Availability over the last 3 days

Last 72 hours
Availability 99.98%
3 Days Ago2 Days AgoYesterdayNow

Availability over the last 24 hours

OpenRouter Availability
100.00%

When an error occurs in an upstream provider, we can recover by routing to another healthy provider, if your request filters allow it. You can access per-provider uptime data programmatically through the Endpoints API. Learn more about our load balancing and provider routing options.

Apps

Public apps that send the most traffic to this model. Good signal for what real production workloads look like — and a hint at which use cases this model is best suited for.

1.
7.16Mtokens
2.
6.27Mtokens
4.
4.09Mtokens
5.
1.87Mtokens
Rest of OpenRouter
8.5M
Top 5 Apps
0

Activity

Token volume and request traffic to this model over time.

API

Drop-in code to call this model. OpenRouter's API is OpenAI-compatible — most SDKs work by just swapping the base URL. The only thing that changes between models is the model slug below.

Not currently available through EU in-region routing. In-region routing docs

Frequently asked questions