Comparisons · both · chinese ai image generator

Chinese image models against the OpenAI rows on a public board

Published 16 Oct 2026. Updated 16 Oct 2026. Researched 16 Oct 2026.

Image searchers ask for Seedream, Qwen-Image, Hunyuan Image, and Kolors, then want them next to Midjourney and OpenAI’s image model. Only some of those names are on the board we stored. This page ranks the ones that are, and prices the ones with a vendor table we fetched on 16 Oct 2026.

The board

Text-to-image, category overall, from lmarena-ai/leaderboard-dataset, config text_to_image, split latest, published 7 Oct 2026. OpenAI’s newer image rows lead the overall list we kept. Seedream 5.0 Pro and Qwen-Image 3.0 Pro are close to each other, well below those OpenAI rows and well above the older open-weight Qwen-Image row. Hunyuan Image 3.0 is in the same band as Seedream 4.5. Kolors does not appear in this overall snapshot. Midjourney does not either. A missing row is not a loss. It is a missing row.

The text-rendering category on the same date still has the OpenAI rows first. Qwen-Image’s reputation for drawing words is not a licence to pretend the overall board is a text-in-image board. If you care about signs and labels, open that category in the dataset rather than quoting the chart above.

What an image costs when someone published a unit

BytePlus ModelArk is the international route to Seedream. The product page lists output-image prices, not a vague “credit.” Seedream 5.0 pro also charges $0.003 per input image after the first. QwenCloud lists Qwen-Image and Wan still-image ids per image. MiniMax’s image-01 is $0.0035 on its own docs, which is a different product from Hailuo video. These three sources are different companies. The bars are only comparable because the unit is “one output image,” and even then the resolution tier differs. Read the extra column.

Kolors is Kuaishou’s open image model. The model card says the weights are open for academic research and that commercial use means filling in a questionnaire and emailing them. It is not on this preference chart, and we did not find a BytePlus or QwenCloud price for it. Do not borrow a Seedream price and label it Kolors.

How to actually call Seedream from outside China

The Doubao app is not this API. BytePlus ModelArk is the console with the USD table, the free-image column, and the card rules we could read. OpenRouter’s Chinese-lab filter on this site does not include Seedream image ids, so the price table will not show them.

Privacy

A reference photo is a person’s face. Seedream on BytePlus, Qwen-Image on Alibaba’s cloud, and Hunyuan on Tencent are three different data paths, all tied to PRC companies. The open-weight Qwen-Image line on the chart is Apache 2.0 and can be run locally. That is the local guide, not a claim that a hosted “Qwen-Image” button is the same thing.

Related: BytePlus, video comparison, Qwen Chat, free video and image.