Qwen-Image
Ranked 5 of 22 image generation models by recommenders
Recommended for prompt following, text rendering and complex scenes among open-weights image models; the most common caveat is an unnatural smoothness and commercial use needs a separate license.
Recommended for prompt following, text rendering and complex scenes among open-weights image models; the most common caveat is an unnatural smoothness and commercial use needs a separate license.
85 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 47
- criticize it
- 38
- approval share
- 55%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 47 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong prompt understanding and following
“has significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters” “significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters” “The complex prompt following ability and editing is seriously impressive here.”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Qwen-Image-2.0: Professional infographics, exquisite photorealism” - Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”
Open-weights release with diverse models
“there's been a lot of positive movement in the open-weights space”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Krea 2 Technical Report” “Easily the most diverse set of models from all the Chinese labs.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1” “the Chinese models are easily the best or very close to the best”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “DeepSeek-v3.2: Pushing the frontier of open large language models [pdf]” Strong text rendering, including CJK
“The text rendering definitely is much, much better than anything else on the open weights market right now.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1” “A 7B diffusion model can now render CJK text better than Microsoft Windows.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1” Handles complex layouts and scenes
“Qwen-Image-2512 / Z-Image / Flux.2 absolutely crush SDXL if you're actually generating moderately complex scenes.”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Remove AI Watermarks” “effortlessly generating complex layouts such as newspapers, storyboards, and exam papers”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Unnatural smoothness in images
“has significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters” “significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters” License needs separate commercial deal
“You shall not use the Materials for any commercial purpose without obtaining a separate commercial license from us.”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1” “the license seems to cover any commercial usage at all, which would certainly include self-hosting for internal business purposes”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1” “now with the restriction on commercial use (which is against opensource definition) it is not even open-weights”
Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1” - Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”
- Comment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”
Trails proprietary models like gpt-image
“Everything is less good than gpt-2-image and I suspect that will be the case for awhile”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Qwen 3.0 Image Pro” “It's a big step up over their prior model, but it's nowhere near gpt-image-2”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Qwen 3.0 Image Pro” “From the images I've seen, Qwen-Image 3.0 is just a subpar equivalent to other proprietary models like gpt-image-2 and nb-pro.”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge”
Other image generation models people recommend
The four most recommended other image generation models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nano Banana | 265 | 159 | 63% | 12 | 6 mo5 owners | — |
| gpt-image-1 | 79 | 79 | 50% | 12 | — | — |
| FLUX.2 | 66 | 51 | 56% | 10 | — | — |
| gpt-image-2 | 63 | 26 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Qwen-ImageThis page | 47 | 38 | 55% | 10 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 112 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I found that for Qwen Image 2.1 the prompt enhancer makes a big difference.”
“uncensored Qwen-Image then tell it where the ads are and what to replace them with”
“Flux 2 Klein or Qwen Image 2.1 might give you a less frustrating experience at comparable or better performance.”
“It's bafflingly worse than other comparably sized ones: Qwen-Image 2.1 7B”
“a rather impressive example of what sounds just like this in Qwen recently”
“Qwen-Image 2.1 is definitely a pretty big leap over the last open-weight version”
“A lot of people were putting ZiT as a refiner downstream in early Qwen-Image 1.0 workflows”
“Qwen is trained off of gpt's outputs. This is both a positive and negative”
“Still fails to generate smoothly animated sprites, although the native RGBA transparency is nice.”
“the license seems to cover any commercial usage at all, which would certainly include self-hosting for internal business purposes”
“it seems a lot better at understanding and following Chinese prompts”
“It's fast using QwenImage2.1 convrot, a 1MP image took around ~5 seconds on an RTX4090.”
“The text rendering definitely is much, much better than anything else on the open weights market right now.”
“What this research license achieves is that we cannot use this model in applications we publish.”
“I am disappointed that the model is not actually open-weights as I expected based on the headline.”
“now with the restriction on commercial use (which is against opensource definition) it is not even open-weights”
“I love the non-commercial clauses because of how many people are using these for deceptive ads”
“While I'm impressed with the Bluey example, the lack of Muffin disappoints me.”
“You shall not use the Materials for any commercial purpose without obtaining a separate commercial license from us.”
“It still produces artifacts it's better but unusable for production work.”
“A 7B diffusion model can now render CJK text better than Microsoft Windows.”
“Boy do I love waking up to find a new awesome toy from the Qwen team”
“Easily the most diverse set of models from all the Chinese labs.”
“Very impressive, and kind of worrying a 7B model can have such capabilities.”
“It's a big step up over their prior model, but it's nowhere near gpt-image-2”
“Everything is less good than gpt-2-image and I suspect that will be the case for awhile”
“it's ability to things like render images that look like they were rendered with LaTeX”
“It's not authoritative, by any means, but it did answer some questions”
“From the images I've seen, Qwen-Image 3.0 is just a subpar equivalent to other proprietary models like gpt-image-2 and nb-pro.”
“their woman face generation always use very similar, too perfect, same prettiness faces”
“The examples posted on their launch blog page are quite impressive, especially for fine details”
“effortlessly generating complex layouts such as newspapers, storyboards, and exam papers”
“there's been a lot of positive movement in the open-weights space”
“Qwen-Image-2512 / Z-Image / Flux.2 absolutely crush SDXL if you're actually generating moderately complex scenes.”
“Qwen was already excellent and now they rolled Image and Edit together for an “Omni” model.”
“The complex prompt following ability and editing is seriously impressive here.”
“it's worse at all of those things other than perhaps looking like it was shot on a cell phone camera than Qwen Image and Flux 2”
“significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”
“has significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”
“the Chinese models are easily the best or very close to the best”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.