Overview
GPT-Image-2.6 Flare is OpenAI’s smaller, speed-oriented image generation and editing model, intended for interactive workflows and rapid visual iteration. OpenAI announced Images 2.6 on November 4, 2026 and made Flare available through its API. (openai.com)
Capabilities and uses
- Generates and edits images from text and image inputs, including transparent-background assets. It can be used for posters, product imagery, visual concepts and iterative design. (developers.openai.com)
- Through the Images API, supports markup-guided editing, animated GIF output, SVG output and a configurable complexity setting. The API also offers multiple image quality settings. (developers.openai.com)
- OpenAI says Flare can generate an image in as little as six seconds at low quality; this is not a guaranteed latency. (openai.com)
Limitations
- Flare prioritizes speed; OpenAI recommends Sunburst when demanding detail, layout or edit accuracy is more important. Outputs should be checked for text, factual details and unintended changes. The model accepts text as input but does not generate text output, and does not support audio or video modalities. (developers.openai.com)
- Safety moderation is not perfect. In OpenAI’s offline adversarial evaluation, 66 of 3,077 Flare requests produced outputs graded unsafe that were not blocked by the evaluated moderation checks. This result is not an estimate of production frequency. GIF safeguards may also miss violations conveyed through motion. (deploymentsafety.openai.com)
API pricing
Currency: USD. OpenAI’s published prices are per 1 million tokens, checked November 14, 2026. Cached-input rates apply to eligible cached usage. A dash means the model does not produce that output modality. (developers.openai.com)
| Service | Modality | Input | Cached input | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | Text | $5.00 | $1.25 | — |
| Standard | Image | $8.00 | $2.00 | $30.00 |
| Batch | Text | $2.50 | $0.625 | — |
| Batch | Image | $4.00 | $1.00 | $15.00 |
Actual cost depends on token usage. Markup-guided edits have no additional markup fee. SVG output also incurs charges for the authoring model used to produce the SVG, in addition to the image-model reference image. (developers.openai.com)