Image 2.5 Flare vs Sunburst
Two official API tiers of Images 2.5, plus a calmer word on the cheaper models people keep lining up against them.
If you only use ChatGPT, you can skip the first half of this page. Flare and Sunburst are names you meet when you call the model from code, not when you ask a chat for a poster.
If you are choosing a model for an app, or you keep seeing “GPT Image 2 vs Nano Banana” under every thumbnail, stay. I will not tell you there is a winner. There is a job.
Flare and Sunburst
Both are GPT Image 2.5 in the API. Same family as Images 2.5 in ChatGPT. Different settings for how hard the model works, and how long you wait.
Flare is the default. OpenAI positions it as the everyday quality-and-speed tier — higher than GPT Image 2, with latency they describe as about 50% lower. This is the one you want for social frames, in-product pictures, and the long middle of a project when you are still finding the picture.
Sunburst is the slower, tighter one. You pay in time. You get it back in control: campaign stills, a hero product, the last version after Flare already found the composition. It is a finishing tool. Using it to brainstorm twenty bad ideas is a way to learn patience.
A simple rule we use ourselves: explore on Flare, print on Sunburst. If you only have one call to make and the picture has to go to a client tomorrow, start on Sunburst and write a narrower prompt. If you have an afternoon, do not.
Next to GPT Image 2
GPT Image 2 (Images 2.0) is the previous generation. It can still make a handsome picture. It is also the one a lot of people now recognize on sight: a little too smooth, a little too warm, a little too willing to restyle the object you asked it to keep.
2.5 is the update that tries to fix those three tells. Sharper small type. Light that belongs to a room. Edits that do not wander. If a 2025 tutorial still recommends “GPT Image 2” as the current thing, it is dated, not wrong for its year.
Next to Nano Banana
Nano Banana — and the lighter cousins you will meet on various sites — is good at cheap, fast drafts. Moodboards. “What if the room were blue.” The twentieth variation you will throw away. That is a real job. It deserves a real model, just not an expensive one.
Reach for Images 2.5 when the rest of the frame has to stay loyal. A face that is a specific person. A bottle that is a specific bottle. A room whose furniture you already placed. Banana will often give you a prettier stranger. 2.5 is more likely to give you the same person, under a different sky.
We do not think Banana is a joke, and we do not think 2.5 is a moral upgrade. One of them is a pencil. One of them is a studio light. You can need both in the same week.
What you get on this site today
We should be precise, because marketing pages usually are not.
The homepage talks about Images 2.5 because that is the model people are trying to understand. The first unsigned image here is a 1K preview on a lighter draft model. After you sign in, we generate with GPT Image 2 through our provider — text-to-image, or image-to-image if you attach references.
We do not currently expose a Flare / Sunburst switch. If you need those exact API tiers, you want OpenAI’s API, not our prompt box. If you need official Images 2.5 with their provenance on the file, you want ChatGPT.
That is the unglamorous version. It is also the useful one.
A way to pick without a spreadsheet
- Throwaway sketch, lots of tries, no logo to protect — a cheap draft model is enough.
- Daily social or a product page you will revise — Flare, or GPT Image 2 on a workbench like this one.
- Campaign hero, packaging, anything a lawyer will stare at — Sunburst, or official Images 2.5 in ChatGPT, and a human pass at the end.
If you are still unsure, make the cheap picture first. The expensive model cannot rescue a sentence that never named the object.