Google's Nano Banana 2 Lite debuts at #5 on the Artificial Analysis Text to Image Leaderboard, slightly ahead of the base Nano Banana 2, but ranks substantially lower in Image Editing at #18 vs. Nano Banana 2's #3

Nano Banana 2 Lite (Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite Image) is the newest and smallest Nano Banana model, handling both text to image and image editing. Google positions it as the fastest and most cost-efficient in the family, generating 1K images in ~4 seconds across 14 aspect ratios.

In Text to Image, Nano Banana 2 Lite ranks #5 in the Artificial Analysis Image Arena, ahead of the base Nano Banana 2 at #7, making it an effective replacement for Nano Banana 2 in image generation at half the price.

The same is not true for Image Editing, where Nano Banana 2 Lite ranks #18 on our Image Editing Leaderboard, well below Nano Banana 2 (#3) and Nano Banana Pro (#5). For editing workloads, the larger Nano Banana models remain the better choice.

Nano Banana 2 Lite shines in speed, generating a 1K image in an average of 3.4 seconds in our end-to-end testing, the fastest Text to Image model in the top 10 in quality. In comparison, Nano Banana 2 takes ~20 seconds; GPT Image 2 (high) can take several minutes.

Pricing is $33.60 per 1k images via the Gemini API ($16.80 with the Batch API), half the price of Nano Banana 2 ($67/1k images) and a quarter of Nano Banana Pro ($134/1k images). Nano Banana 2 Lite is available now in the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, plus consumer surfaces including the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search, NotebookLM, and Google Photos.

Congratulations to @GoogleDeepMind on the release!

See below for comparisons with other leading models in the Artificial Analysis Image Arena 🧵