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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%
Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 10 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: not recommended
  2. December 2025: recommended
  3. January 2026: recommended
  4. February 2026: recommended
  5. March 2026: not recommended
  6. April 2026: recommended
  7. May 2026: recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. 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”
  • 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”
  • 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.

Qwen-Image compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
Nano Banana26515963%126 mo5 owners—
gpt-image-1797950%12——
FLUX.2665156%10——
gpt-image-2632671%8—Approved
Qwen-ImageThis page473855%10——
See all 22 image generation models, ranked

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.”

MixedComment from 24 Oct 2026 in “A practical guide to AI image generation, from diffusion to agents”

“uncensored Qwen-Image then tell it where the ads are and what to replace them with”

RecommendsComment from 23 Oct 2026 in “Disney Raising Prices Days After Confirming Ads Will Now Show Up on Every Tier”

“Flux 2 Klein or Qwen Image 2.1 might give you a less frustrating experience at comparable or better performance.”

RecommendsComment from 17 Oct 2026 in “FLUX 3 Image Klein”

“It's bafflingly worse than other comparably sized ones: Qwen-Image 2.1 7B”

RecommendsComment from 17 Oct 2026 in “FLUX 3 Image Klein”

“a rather impressive example of what sounds just like this in Qwen recently”

RecommendsComment from 2 Oct 2026 in “FLUX 3 Image”

“Qwen-Image 2.1 is definitely a pretty big leap over the last open-weight version”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“A lot of people were putting ZiT as a refiner downstream in early Qwen-Image 1.0 workflows”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“Qwen is trained off of gpt's outputs. This is both a positive and negative”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“Still fails to generate smoothly animated sprites, although the native RGBA transparency is nice.”

MixedComment 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”

CriticizesComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“it seems a lot better at understanding and following Chinese prompts”

RecommendsComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“It's fast using QwenImage2.1 convrot, a 1MP image took around ~5 seconds on an RTX4090.”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“The text rendering definitely is much, much better than anything else on the open weights market right now.”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“What this research license achieves is that we cannot use this model in applications we publish.”

CriticizesComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“I am disappointed that the model is not actually open-weights as I expected based on the headline.”

CriticizesComment 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”

CriticizesComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“I love the non-commercial clauses because of how many people are using these for deceptive ads”

RecommendsComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“While I'm impressed with the Bluey example, the lack of Muffin disappoints me.”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“You shall not use the Materials for any commercial purpose without obtaining a separate commercial license from us.”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“It still produces artifacts it's better but unusable for production work.”

MixedComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“A 7B diffusion model can now render CJK text better than Microsoft Windows.”

RecommendsComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“Boy do I love waking up to find a new awesome toy from the Qwen team”

RecommendsComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“Easily the most diverse set of models from all the Chinese labs.”

RecommendsComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“Very impressive, and kind of worrying a 7B model can have such capabilities.”

RecommendsComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“It's a big step up over their prior model, but it's nowhere near gpt-image-2”

MixedComment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Qwen 3.0 Image Pro”

“Everything is less good than gpt-2-image and I suspect that will be the case for awhile”

MixedComment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Qwen 3.0 Image Pro”

“it's ability to things like render images that look like they were rendered with LaTeX”

RecommendsComment from 24 Jul 2026 in “Flux 3”

“It's not authoritative, by any means, but it did answer some questions”

MixedComment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge”

“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.”

CriticizesComment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge”

“their woman face generation always use very similar, too perfect, same prettiness faces”

MixedComment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge”

“The examples posted on their launch blog page are quite impressive, especially for fine details”

MixedComment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge”

“effortlessly generating complex layouts such as newspapers, storyboards, and exam papers”

RecommendsComment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge”

“there's been a lot of positive movement in the open-weights space”

RecommendsComment from 24 Jun 2026 in “Krea 2 Technical Report”

“Qwen-Image-2512 / Z-Image / Flux.2 absolutely crush SDXL if you're actually generating moderately complex scenes.”

RecommendsComment from 20 May 2026 in “Remove AI Watermarks”

“Qwen was already excellent and now they rolled Image and Edit together for an “Omni” model.”

RecommendsComment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Qwen-Image-2.0: Professional infographics, exquisite photorealism”

“The complex prompt following ability and editing is seriously impressive here.”

RecommendsComment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Qwen-Image-2.0: Professional infographics, exquisite photorealism”

“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”

RecommendsComment from 17 Jan 2026 in “FLUX.2 [Klein]: Towards Interactive Visual Intelligence”

“significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”

MixedComment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters”

“has significantly better prompt understanding but has an unnatural "smoothness" to its generated images”

MixedComment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Z-Image: Powerful and highly efficient image generation model with 6B parameters”

“the Chinese models are easily the best or very close to the best”

RecommendsComment from 1 Dec 2025 in “DeepSeek-v3.2: Pushing the frontier of open large language models [pdf]”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.