Nano Banana 2 Lite vs GPT-5.5
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •GPT-5.5 is meaningfully stronger at coding (93 vs 0).
- •Nano Banana 2 Lite is open-weights (free to self-host); GPT-5.5 is paid API only.
Specs comparison
| Nano Banana 2 Lite | GPT-5.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | Not announced | ✓1,050,000 tokens (128,000 max output) |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓Not announced | $5.00 |
| Output / 1M tokens | 33.6 | $30.00 |
| Release date | 2026-06 | 2026-04 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Nano Banana 2 Lite | GPT-5.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Arena.ai Text-to-Image Leaderboard | Ranked #5 | - |
| Text-to-Image Elo Score | 1251 | - |
| Single-Image Editing Elo Score | 1308 | - |
| Multiple-Image Editing Elo Score | 1294 | - |
| SWE-bench Verified | - | 82.6% |
| SWE-bench Pro | - | 58.6% |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts and independent benchmark aggregators.
Which should you choose?
Choose Nano Banana 2 Lite if...
- →When cost-per-sample is the primary constraint
- →For workflows requiring 100+ images per session
- →When generation latency must be under 5 seconds
- →For rapid prototyping and exploration
Choose GPT-5.5 if...
- →Complex professional coding, data analysis, and multi-tool agentic workflows
- →Long-document or large-codebase tasks needing a 1M+ context window
- →You want OpenAI's recommended default frontier model for new projects