Nano Banana 2 Lite vs GPT-5
Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •GPT-5 is meaningfully stronger at math (92 vs 0).
- •Nano Banana 2 Lite is open-weights (free to self-host); GPT-5 is paid API only.
Specs comparison
| Nano Banana 2 Lite | GPT-5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | Not announced | ✓400,000 tokens (128,000 max output) |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓Not announced | $1.25 |
| Output / 1M tokens | 33.6 | $10.00 |
| Release date | 2026-06 | 2025-08 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Nano Banana 2 Lite | GPT-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 | - | 74.9% |
| AIME 2025 | - | 94.6% |
| GPQA (GPT-5 pro) | - | 88.4% |
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 if...
- →You want strong reasoning at the lowest frontier-model price
- →Existing GPT-5-based systems that are already tuned and validated
- →General coding, math, and reasoning workloads on a budget