Google's Nano Banana tier list: Pro is the chef, 2 is the sous, Lite is the intern with surprisingly steady hands 🍌

Google last week launched Nano Banana 2 Lite, officially gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image, as the entry-level option in its image generation lineup, positioned below Nano Banana 2 and well below Nano Banana Pro. The model produces text-to-image outputs in roughly four seconds, 2.7 times faster than Nano Banana 2, and serves as the direct replacement for the original Nano Banana (gemini-2.5-flash-image). Nano Banana 2 Lite is available through Google AI Studio, the Gemini API, and the Enterprise Agent Platform, and is integrated into consumer products including Search, the Gemini app, NotebookLM, and Google Photos. It works alongside Gemini Omni Flash, Google's new video generation model, through the Interactions API, which supports up to three sequential edits within a single session. The Nano Banana lineup now forms a three-tier structure: Lite for speed and cost, Nano Banana 2 for a quality-speed balance, and Nano Banana Pro for complex professional work.

Pricing places Nano Banana 2 Lite at roughly $0.034 per image at 1K resolution, about half the cost of Nano Banana 2, which runs $0.067 per image at the same resolution. The Lite model competes directly with Seedream 5.0 Lite at $0.031–$0.035 per image, while Reve 2.0 undercuts both at approximately $0.0067 per image via API, though it lacks the deployment breadth of Google's infrastructure. Qwen Image Edit remains a free, open-source option for standard use cases.

In side-by-side testing across five categories using identical prompts, the realism test produced the most visible gap between the two models. Both received the same technically demanding portrait prompt: a cinematic image of a 32-year-old female architect on a rooftop at sunset, wearing a beige trench coat and round glasses, holding rolled blueprints specifically in her left hand, with a defocused city skyline behind her, golden hour lighting with a soft rim light, shallow depth of field simulating a 50mm lens, a vertical 4:5 aspect ratio, realistic skin texture, and subtle film grain. Nano Banana 2 Lite passed the basic test, with the subject correctly dressed and positioned, wearing round glasses, holding blueprints, and standing on a rooftop with a blurred city behind her. However, details diverged from the full model: the subject rendered with only one hand, which appeared oversized relative to the rest of the body, the rim light was barely perceptible, and skin texture held up at thumbnail scale but did not survive close inspection, producing an image resembling a competent stock photo rather than a cinematic portrait.