Is Flux better than Stable Diffusion?

For raw prompt-following and coherent detail, Flux.1 generally leads, especially with hands and text. But SD 1.5 and SDXL have far larger ecosystems of fine-tunes, LoRAs and ControlNets, which can matter more than base quality for specialised work.

Which Flux model should I use — Dev, Schnell or Pro?

Schnell is fast and free for quick drafts; Dev is the high-quality open-weight option for non-commercial use; Pro is the top-tier API-only model for production commercial work. Pick based on speed versus quality versus licence.

What about licensing for commercial use?

SD 1.5 and SDXL use permissive open licences. Flux Schnell is Apache 2.0 (commercial-friendly), Flux Dev is non-commercial, and Flux Pro is commercial but API-only. Always confirm the current licence before shipping commercial work.

Which runs on modest hardware?

SD 1.5 is the lightest and runs on 4–6GB VRAM. SDXL wants 8–12GB. Flux.1 Dev is the heaviest local model, comfortable around 16–24GB, though quantised builds lower that.

Flux vs SD Model Comparator

Flux vs SD model comparator

Choosing an image model is a trade-off between prompt fidelity, speed, ecosystem, licensing and hardware. Flux.1 leads on out-of-the-box quality and prompt-following; SDXL and SD 1.5 win on community fine-tunes, ControlNets and lightweight hardware. Tell this tool your use case and what you care about most, and it ranks the five options for you.

How the models differ

SD 1.5 — old but unbeaten on ecosystem size. Thousands of LoRAs and ControlNets, runs on almost anything. Lower base fidelity.
SDXL — the mature middle ground: strong quality, huge fine-tune library, reasonable hardware.
Flux.1 Schnell — distilled for 1–4 step speed, Apache-2.0 licensed (great for commercial drafts), slightly less detailed.
Flux.1 Dev — best open-weight quality and prompt-following, but non-commercial licence and heavy on VRAM.
Flux.1 Pro — top quality, API-only, commercial-friendly, no local runs.

Tips

Need ControlNet or a specific LoRA? Check the ecosystem first — that often forces SDXL or SD 1.5 regardless of base quality.
Shipping commercial work? Avoid Flux Dev’s non-commercial licence; use Schnell, Pro, or SDXL.
On a laptop GPU? SD 1.5 or a quantised SDXL will be far happier than Flux Dev.