PaintBench
Image editing models do precise single-answer edits in 20 operations such as geometric transforms, color changes and symbolic edits. Procedural generation gives deterministic checks.
Best model reached 17.1% at launch, per AINews.
In the authors’ words
While current multimodal models are proficient at open-ended visual editing, executing precise single-answer edits remains an important obstacle. To probe this challenge, we introduce PaintBench, a dynamically scalable benchmark targeting 20 fundamental precise visual editing operations across four categories: geometric transformation, structural manipulation, color change, and symbolic reasoning. Procedural generation with configurable complexity enables an effectively infinite, contamination-resistant evaluation suite, and deterministic pixel-level evaluation eliminates reliance on bias-prone judge models. Across 11 image editing models, we find overall low performance, with the current highest-performing industry leader scoring only 17.1% (mIoU). Task decomposition reveals especially challenging operation types (geometric transformation, most structural manipulation, formula-based color change) and model-specific specializations. Fine-grained benchmark diagnostics further show performance degradations induced by scene variations in object count, background complexity, color scheme, and edit-region size. To test generalization of PaintBench scores to applied task performance, we create a procedural, deterministic evaluation for data visualization editing (TinyGrafixBench) and find strong linear correlation with PaintBench scores (R² = 0.91, p < 0.001). Altogether, PaintBench provides a rigorous foundation for measuring and driving progress in precise multimodal visual editing.
- Level
- Everyday Most adults, without training
- Scored
- Checked automatically A program checks the result against an answer key, unit tests or the expected final state.
- Answers
- Open-ended Free-form text, documents, designs or media judged as a whole.
Nano Banana 2 tops the leaderboard with 17.1%
Best score per entry from the benchmark's own leaderboard, read on 2 Nov 2026. Where a model ran with several settings or harnesses, we keep its best. Names in gray aren't in our model list: fine-tunes, agent systems, products and older models. They don't count toward leaders. The best model we track is GPT-Image-2, at 16.3%.
The newest model with a score here came out in Jun 2026, and nobody has tested a newer one. Among the 20 highest-ranked models on the capability index, these have no score yet:
- GPT-6 Astra
- Claude Opus 5.5
- GPT-6.1 Terra
- GPT-6.1 Sol
- and 16 more
- 1 Nano Banana 2 17.1%
- 2 GPT-Image-2 16.3%
- 3
Gemini 2.5 Flash Image Preview (nano-banana) 11.1%
- 4
Qwen-Image-Edit 6.70%
- 5
BAGEL-7B-MoT 5.00%
- 6 FLUX.2 [dev] 4.60%
- 7 FLUX.1-Kontext 3.90%
- 8 LongCat-Edit 3.60%
- 9 FLUX.2 [klein] 9B 3.50%
- 10
HunyuanImage 3.0 0.40%
- 11 InstructPix2Pix 0.30%
| # | Entry | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nano Banana 2 | 17.1% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 2 | GPT-Image-2 | 16.3% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 3 | | 11.1% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 4 | | 6.70% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 5 | | 5.00% | May 2025 | Official leaderboard | |
| 6 | FLUX.2 [dev] | 4.60% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 7 | FLUX.1-Kontext | 3.90% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 8 | LongCat-Edit | 3.60% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 9 | FLUX.2 [klein] 9B | 3.50% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 10 | | 0.40% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard | |
| 11 | InstructPix2Pix | 0.30% | Jun 2026 | Official leaderboard |
2 models have held number one since its release in May 2026
Lab claims count from the day the card came out, independent runs from the model’s release.
Scores over time
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
No lab model card reports it yet
We read the headline results of 479 launch posts from 51 labs, and none of them list this benchmark.
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