Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.6-Flash: 2.8x Faster Than GPT-Image-2-Medium, With Sharply Lower Pricing
eyishazyer · x · 2026-09-06
Microsoft shipped MAI-Image-2.6-Flash this week, claiming 2.8x faster than GPT-Image-2-Medium and 72% better GPU efficiency. The comparison target is the medium tier, not OpenAI's top model, which still holds #1 on Arena ahead of Microsoft's #2.
Pricing:
- Flash: $1.75/M text tokens, $2.50 image input, $19 image output
- Full model: $5 / $8 / $38
- Input roughly a third of the price, output about half
Artificial Analysis independently placed both MAI-Image-2.6 and Flash on the quality-vs-price Pareto frontier. The author reads this as the first real sign the Microsoft-OpenAI gap inside Foundry and Copilot is closing.
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