GPT Image 2.5 vs GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst

Specs side by side

Price per unit and per clip

Prices exclude taxes and are charged from your prepaid USD balance. Failed generations cost nothing.

GPT Image 2.5 (the Flare tier on Jantaris) and GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst take exactly the same inputs and in my test produced near-identical frames. Flare is faster and cheaper; according to OpenAI, Sunburst holds consistency better across long chains of edits and refines detail. For everyday graphics I would use Flare and keep Sunburst for covers, print and visuals revised over many rounds.

Key differences

• Purpose. GPT Image 2.5 is the faster tier for daily work. GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst is the tier for precise editing and long edit chains, and it is slower.
• Speed. In my test on another provider, Flare at high quality averaged 18 s per image and Sunburst 28 s. At max it was 38 s against 78 s.
• Price. On Jantaris Sunburst costs more per image. Both have a flat price that does not depend on quality, size or number of references.
• Shared. Prompts up to 32,000 characters, up to 16 reference images, sizes 1024x1024, 1536x1024, 1024x1536 or auto, quality from low to max.

When to pick GPT Image 2.5 (Flare)

• A series of blog or social graphics.
• Quick creative variants before choosing a final one.
• Thumbnails and post covers where speed matters.
• Short in-image text: in my test a sign with four accented Polish letters came out right at every quality level.

When to pick GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst

• A cover or poster for print where every detail counts.
• A visual the client revises in stages, where the product or character must not drift.
• Portraits with hands: the best hands in my test came from Sunburst at max.
• Successive edits of a packshot with the same packaging.

Cost in practice

On Jantaris Sunburst costs about 1.33 times as much per image as Flare. That is worth noting, because OpenAI bills both tiers at the same token rates and in my test they used exactly the same number of tokens. On Jantaris the price does not rise with quality, so max costs nothing extra, it just takes longer. In a long revision cycle what matters is the cost of an approved image, not of a single call: if Sunburst saves you one round, it comes out cheaper. Rates: $0.0432 per image and $0.0575 per image; the rest on /pricing.

Results from my GPT Image 2.5 test (Polish blog, five prompts): Sunburst 8.7/10 at high and 8.8 at max, Flare 8.5 and 8.6. In four of five prompts both produced the same composition; Sunburst won on details. Comparison with other models: GPT Image 2.5 vs Nano Banana Pro vs FLUX.2.

FAQ

GPT Image 2.5 or Sunburst: which is better?

Sunburst is marginally better on detail; Flare is clearly faster and cheaper. For most graphics the quality gap is small, so I start with Flare.

Are Sunburst and Flare two different models?

OpenAI ships them as two API models. In my test they produced almost the same frames, which looks like a shared base with more work done in Sunburst. That is my reading, not a vendor statement.

How much does an image at max quality cost?

The same as at any other quality: $0.0432 per image for Flare and $0.0575 per image for Sunburst.

Which is better at editing photos?

OpenAI positions Sunburst for it. Note that in my five-changes-at-once edit test Sunburst disturbed the rest of the frame more than Nano Banana Pro did.

Vendor examples

Official examples from the model vendors, not our generations.