Hunyuan vs Stability AI (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Stability AI grades higher than Hunyuan: 1.8 against 1.4 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 17, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 · graded Oct 17, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA
Hunyuan grades higher on ease of use. Stability AI grades higher on the free plan and platforms. They get the same grade on value for money and features.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Stability AI
Stable Diffusion image models to self-host or call through an API
Free plan
Which one is for you
Pick Hunyuan if
- Fits if you follow Tencent's model releases and read Chinese
- Makes sense if you want to look at the open-source models rather than make pictures
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want an image generator you can sign up for today
- Not for you if you need English documentation, because the portal is Chinese
- Watch out: Hy Image3.5 is labelled preview and no prices are shown
- Watch out: this is a research portal with several models, not a single image product
Pick Stability AI if
- Fits if you're a developer adding image generation and editing to your own app
- Works for teams who can run open image models on their own hardware or call them on Bedrock or Azure
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you just want to type a prompt and get a picture, as there's no app; Start creating leads to enterprise partnerships
- Not for you if your company makes over $1M a year, as that needs an Enterprise License priced by sales
- Too light for developers who want video by API, as the price list has none; Stable Video Diffusion is self-host only
- Watch out: the API is pay per use at a cent a credit, 2.5 to 8 credits an image and 60 for the Creative Upscaler
- Tight if you have no hardware of your own, as the free license means running the models yourself, and the API start is 25 credits
How we grade them
| 1.4GPAHunyuanWeak | 1.8GPAStability AIWeak | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CThe portal publishes no price, so it sits in the middle by default. | CNothing a person can subscribe to. The models are free to run yourself under $1M yearly revenue, which takes your own hardware, and the API charges $0.025 to $0.08 an image at a cent a credit. There's no plan to set against this category's. |
| Free plan and trial | FThe portal records no free tier or trial. | CThe Community License lets people and companies under $1M a year run the core models free, commercial use included. That needs your own hardware, and the API's free start is 25 credits. |
| Features | DA model family portal rather than an image app. Hy Image3.5 is a preview, alongside language, vision and speech models. | DBuilding blocks only: SD 3.5 models, editing, upscaling, sketch and style control, and 3D. There's no app for a person, and the image page's Start creating link goes to enterprise partnerships, so it needs code or another product to be useful. |
| Ease of use | CThe page is in Chinese with a prompt to switch to an international site, and access terms weren't confirmed. | DNo app and no rating. Using it means calling an API from code or running the models on your own hardware. |
| Platforms and integrations | CA web portal. It lists open-source models and Tencent's own products, but nothing else to connect to. | BAn API plus the models on Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker JumpStart and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, and downloads for your own machines. No phone or desktop app. |
| Best for | a look at Tencent's models, not an app for making images | developers building on open image models |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Hunyuan and Stability AI. How we grade
Where they differ
- Stability AI is self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Hunyuan also covers transcription and chat assistant.
- Stability AI also covers video generation.
In commonWebAI featuresImage generation
At a glance
| Hunyuan | Stability AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Paid | Free plan |
| Starts at | Not published | Not published |
| Free plan | None | Community License: free self-hosted use of the core models, commercial use included, for people and organizations under $1M in yearly revenue. |
| Free trial | None listed | 25 free API credits on sign-up |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Tencent | Stability AI Ltd |
| Price read from | Not confirmed | stability.ai |
| Checked | Nov 12, 2026 | Oct 17, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Hunyuan
- The portal is in Chinese, with a prompt to switch to an international site, so English documentation was not read.
- No prices are shown on the portal; the image model is labelled preview and access terms were not confirmed.
- This is a model family and research portal, not a single image app; the image model is one of several.
Stability AI
- The API is pay per use: 1 credit is $0.01, an image costs 2.5 to 8 credits, and the Creative Upscaler costs 60 credits per image.
- Organizations with more than $1M in yearly revenue need an Enterprise License, priced only through sales.
- The API price list has image, 3D and audio services but no video; Stable Video Diffusion is offered for self-hosting only.
- There is no image app sold to consumers: the image page's "Start creating" link leads to the enterprise partnerships page.
Key features
Hunyuan
- Hy Image3.5 preview
- A visual generation model in preview that Tencent describes as strong at rendering text, varied styles and consistent layouts.
- Hy3 language model
- A mixture-of-experts language model of 295B total and 21B active parameters, with a 256K context window and three thinking modes.
- Hy Vision 2.0
- A vision-language model for understanding images, built on Tencent's HY-2.0 language model and aimed at image-to-text tasks.
- Hy ASR 3.0 preview
- A speech recognition model built on Hy3 that Tencent says covers dialects and varied settings.
- Open-source models and products
- The portal links Tencent's open-source models and consumer products such as WorkBuddy, Yuanbao and ima.
Stability AI
- Stable Diffusion 3.5 models
- Large, Large Turbo and Medium versions of the image model to download and run yourself; Medium is designed to run on consumer hardware.
- Image generation API
- Stable Image Ultra, Stable Image Core, the Stable Diffusion 3.5 family and SDXL, each billed per image in credits.
- Editing API
- Erase objects, inpaint, outpaint, remove or replace a background and relight, and find an object by name to recolor or replace it.
- Upscaling and control
- Creative, Conservative and Fast upscalers, plus sketch, structure and style tools that guide a new image from one you supply.
- Video and 3D models
- Stable Video Diffusion turns text into short clips for self-hosting; Stable Fast 3D and SPAR3D make 3D assets from one image through the API.
- Cloud partners
- The models are also offered on Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker JumpStart and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry, and in NVIDIA-optimized versions.
Plans
Hunyuan
Pricing could not be confirmed. See hunyuan.tencent.com.
Stability AI
Community License$0
Run Stable Diffusion 3.5, SDXL Turbo, Stable Fast 3D and Stable Audio 3.0 on your own hardware; for those under $1M in yearly revenue.
Enterprise LicenseCustom
Commercial use above $1M in yearly revenue, with implementation support; custom model training and consulting cost extra.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Hunyuan or Stability AI?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Hunyuan has no price we could confirm, and Stability AI publishes no starting price.
Which has a free plan, Hunyuan or Stability AI?
As of Nov 12, 2026, only Stability AI has a free plan. Hunyuan does not.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.