Nano Banana 2 vs GPT Image 2 (2026): Which Image Model for Which Job

September 8, 2026 · 6 min read

Ask which AI image model is "best" in 2026 and two names come up more than any others: Google's Nano Banana 2 and OpenAI's GPT Image 2. They're both flagships, they both generate and edit — and they're good at almost opposite things. One is the strongest likeness-keeper and photo editor we've tested; the other is the strongest instruction-follower, with text that actually reads. We run both daily inside Hermosso's studio, so here's the honest head-to-head: where each wins, what each costs, and how to pick.

The short version

• Nano Banana 2 (Google): identity and editing. Best-in-class likeness-keeping from a reference photo, true multi-resolution output up to 4K, fast. 100–200 credits per image by resolution.
• GPT Image 2 (OpenAI): the brief. The strongest instruction-follower in the studio, legible text and exact layouts, deep world knowledge. 100 credits per image, around a minute each.

Where Nano Banana 2 wins: faces and edits

Nano Banana made conversational photo editing mainstream — upload a photo, describe the change — and version 2 keeps a real person's likeness better than anything else we've tested. Change the background, the outfit, the light: the face stays yours, and it stays yours across a whole batch, which is why Nano Banana 2 is the instant engine behind Hermosso's no-training AI personas. It's also the only model here with true multi-resolution output up to 4K (100 credits at 1K, 150 at 2K, 200 at 4K), so the same engine covers drafts and print-ready finals. And it's quick — noticeably faster than GPT Image 2 on comparable prompts. Full breakdown on the Nano Banana 2 model page and in Nano Banana models explained.

Where GPT Image 2 wins: instructions, text and knowledge

GPT Image 2 is the model you want when the prompt is the hard part. Complex, multi-part briefs — "a poster with this exact headline, three objects arranged left to right, the middle one lit from below" — come back right more often than with anything else in the studio. Its text rendering is the other signature: headlines, labels and layouts that actually read, a job only Ideogram contests. And because it comes from a frontier language model, it brings world knowledge image-only models lack — it knows what things are, so specific, referential prompts land instead of being approximated. The trade-offs: around a minute per image, and likeness-keeping on real faces, while good, is not Nano Banana 2's class. More on the GPT Image 2 model page.

Speed and cost

On Hermosso, GPT Image 2 costs a flat 100 credits per image and takes about a minute — deliberate rather than instant. Nano Banana 2 is priced by fidelity: 100 credits at 1K, 150 at 2K, 200 at 4K, and it's the faster of the two. For volume drafting, Nano Banana 2 Lite runs at 50 credits and lands surprisingly close to its flagship on straightforward prompts. Both are also available from their own vendors — Nano Banana 2 through Google's Gemini app, GPT Image 2 through ChatGPT and OpenAI's API, as of writing — but each of those subscriptions buys you exactly one model.

The verdict: it's workflow-dependent

Pick by job, not by brand. Photos of a real person, edits that must keep a face, 4K output, fast iteration: Nano Banana 2. Complex briefs, text in the image, exact layouts, referential scenes: GPT Image 2. Most real projects touch both — generate the scene on one, edit the person into it on the other — which is exactly why Hermosso's Create studio runs both on one credit balance: same prompt box, no two subscriptions, no export-import shuffle. The test that settles it for your work takes five minutes: run the same prompt on both and keep the winner. New accounts get 750 free credits — enough for several rounds. For the wider field, see our 17-model comparison.