Flux vs Stable Diffusion
A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.
 Flux Image Generation |  Stable Diffusion Image Generation | |
|---|---|---|
| Tagline | Black Forest Labs' open-weights image model — rivals Midjourney quality. | Open-source image generation — run anywhere, fine-tune anything. |
| Category | Image Generation | Image Generation |
| Pricing | Freemium· FLUX.2 [max]: $0.07 · FLUX.2 [pro]: $0.03 · FLUX.2 [klein] 9B: $0.015 · FLUX.2 [klein] 4B: $0.014 · FLUX.2 [flex]: $0.05 | Free· Free open weights; optional Stability API |
| Model | Flux.1 [schnell / dev / pro] | SD 3.5 / SDXL |
| Editorial score | 9.0 / 10 | 8.8 / 10 |
| Use cases | open sourceself-hostedhigh quality | localfine-tuningopen sourceControlNet |
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| Website | blackforestlabs.ai | stability.ai |
Pick Flux if
- ✅ Open weights for [schnell]/[dev] variants
- ✅ Quality rivals Midjourney
- ✅ Excellent prompt adherence
- ✅ Self-hostable
Pick Stable Diffusion if
- ✅ Fully open weights
- ✅ Run locally
- ✅ Massive ecosystem (LoRAs, ControlNet)
- ✅ Fine-tunable for custom domains