“I want my users to create designs in my app”
Social posts, invitations and personal designs created by your users inside your product. What matters when a person is watching a spinner: latency first, unit cost at user volume, and output that lands close enough to edit.
Recommended models
| Use-case score | Criteria covered | $ / image | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Nano Banana 2 Lite Best fit | 4.12 / 5 | 100% | $0.020 |
| 2. FLUX.2 | 4.03 / 5 | 100% | $0.013 |
| 3. FLUX.2 [dev] Turbo | 3.96 / 5 | 100% | $0.015 |
| 4. Gemini 2.5 Flash Image | 3.70 / 5 | 100% | $0.039 |
| 5. Seedream 4.5 | 3.60 / 5 | 100% | $0.048 |
| 6. FLUX.2 [pro] | 3.55 / 5 | 100% | $0.040 |
| 7. Qwen-Image | 3.54 / 5 | 100% | $0.030 |
| 8. Nano Banana 2 | 3.47 / 5 | 100% | $0.100 |
| 9. Seedream 5.0 Lite | 3.46 / 5 | 100% | $0.020 |
| 10. GPT Image 1.5 | 3.24 / 5 | 100% | $0.120 |
| 11. Luma Photon | 3.23 / 5 | 100% | $0.019 |
| 12. Recraft V3 | 3.23 / 5 | 100% | $0.040 |
| 13. Ideogram 3.0 | 3.13 / 5 | 100% | $0.060 |
| 14. Stable Diffusion 1.5 | 3.01 / 5 | 100% | $0.010 |
| 15. Nano Banana Pro | 2.77 / 5 | 100% | $0.360 |
How this is weighted
A person is watching the spinner, so latency leads and cost follows: consumer products generate on every tap and pay for every retry. Prompt adherence weighs the same as cost because a result that ignores the prompt is a retry. The fidelity criteria stay light: UGC is judged by its creator, not by a brand team.
- Latency 25%
- Cost 20%
- Prompt Adherence 20%
- Composition 10%
- Text Accuracy 10%
- Color Accuracy 10%
- Resolution 5%
The evidence: Nano Banana 2 Lite
Nano Banana 2 Lite takes the top spot where this job puts its weight: latency at 3.9 / 5 (25% of the matrix), prompt adherence at 4.7 / 5 (20% of the matrix) and cost at 4.0 / 5 (20% of the matrix).
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15 models, 37 prompts, 1,662 measured images. Every finding and ranking from this benchmark, with the methodology behind the numbers, as a PDF in your inbox.
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The last mile: what no model delivers
In-app generation is where the editing canvas stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the product surface: the model proposes, the user refines. The data supports routing for speed here, since the fast tier holds 4.0-plus quality at around two seconds while slow endpoints run over thirty. What no model provides is the refinement step itself: swapping the headline, nudging the layout, applying the user's colors. That loop is the canvas, and it is also what turns one generation into a kept, personalized design instead of a re-roll.
Generate with any model. Finish in the AI Editor.
Give your users the control they need to be productive with generative AI. The IMG.LY AI Editor turns in-app ugc creation generations into finished, on-spec assets: background removal, brand kits and editable text on a real canvas.
