nano-banana-v2 is Google’s lightweight image model with image-to-image edits on the same low-cost protocol surface as the rest of the image tier. The differentiator is the optional source_image field: when present, the model treats it as a reference (style transfer, mask edit, background swap) rather than generating from text alone.
Pricing: $0.022 / image — see the rate card. Failures don’t bill; image-to-image runs at the same per-image rate as text-to-image.
Protocols
Quickstart
generate_image tool passes source_image through automatically when you’ve attached one in the chat.
Capabilities
When to use
- DOSIA “edit this image” requests — main brain attaches the chat image and routes here when permission is granted.
- Background swaps, style transfers, mask edits without the cost of
gpt-image-2. - Cost-sensitive image-to-image pipelines — volume programmatic edits.
- Top-fidelity typography or marketing hero —
gpt-image-2.
Next
gpt-image-2— OpenAI flagship with image-to-image- Multimodal endpoints — overview