Microsoft MAI-Image-2.5 Pricing
All plans and pricing as of 2026-06-09
MAI-Image-2.5 (Azure Foundry / OpenRouter, launched 2026-06-02)
- ✓Text input: $5/1M tokens
- ✓Image input: $8/1M tokens
- ✓Image output: $47/1M tokens
- ✓#2 image editing + #3 text-to-image on Arena; surpasses Nano Banana Pro's Arena score
MAI-Image-2.5-Flash (LIVE)
- ✓Ultra-efficient variant of MAI-Image-2.5
- ✓~2.4x cheaper image output than full 2.5
- ✓For high-volume / latency-sensitive workloads
- ✓NOW AVAILABLE in Foundry (vendor post: 'now available to developers in Foundry today', verified 2026-06-09) + OpenRouter
MAI-Image-2 (original, 2026-04-02) + Efficient variant
- ✓Debuted #3 on Arena.ai image families at launch
- ✓MAI-Image-2-Efficient (2026-04-14): 22% faster, 4x more compute-efficient
- ✓Global standard deployment in US + West Europe + Sweden Central + South India
Bundled (Copilot / Bing Image Creator / PowerPoint)
- ✓Existing Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions use MAI-Image-2 under the hood
- ✓Bing Image Creator is the consumer-facing surface
- ✓No separate pricing or config required for existing Microsoft customers
Is Microsoft MAI-Image-2.5 Worth the Price?
Value Score: 7.5/10
Overall Score: 7.4/10 · Microsoft shops already on Azure or M365 Copilot who need a first-party image model without an OpenAI dependency. Also good for any high-volume programmatic image workflow (ad creative, product photography variations) where MAI-Image-2-Efficient's 4x cost efficiency materially changes the economics.
MAI-Image-2.5 (2026-06-02) is the version bump that closes the gap. Where MAI-Image-2 debuted #3 on Arena as a surprise, 2.5 now ranks #2 for image editing and #3 for text-to-image, with an overall Arena score Microsoft says surpasses Nano Banana Pro -- and the +107-point text-rendering jump directly targets the one area where Nano Banana used to win. The new fine-grained localized editing and face/identity consistency make it genuinely competitive for commercial work, and being live in PowerPoint + OneDrive means most Microsoft 365 users already have it. For Azure customers this is now a first-tier image option, not just a no-OpenAI-dependency fallback. Midjourney still wins on stylized art and Flux on open-weight control, but the gap is much smaller than it was in April. The cheaper MAI-Image-2.5-Flash is now live in Foundry for high-volume use.
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How Microsoft MAI-Image-2.5 Pricing Compares
| Tool | Free Tier | Starting Price | Value Score | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft MAI-Image-2.5(this tool) | Yes | $5 text / $8 image-in / $47 image-out/per 1M tokens | 7.5/10 | 7.4 |
| Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) | Yes | $0 | 8.5/10 | 8.9 |
| Meta Muse (Image + Video) | Yes | $0 | 9/10 | 8.4 |
| Leonardo AI | Yes | $0 | 9/10 | 8.3 |
| Stable Diffusion | Yes | $0 | 10/10 | 8.0 |
| Midjourney | No | $10/month | 7/10 | 7.8 |