MiniMax releases H3-Image for image generation and editing

MiniMax says H3-Image supports text-to-image generation, reference-based generation and image editing.[2] On Hugging Face, MiniMax describes it as a unified checkpoint for generating images from text and editing one or more reference images.[4] The company says the model can take up to 16 reference images.[2] MiniMax also says it can produce a 4096-by-4096 image in under 10 seconds, and its API documentation lists output areas up to 20 million pixels.[2][5]

MiniMax claims H3-Image is up to five times as fast as mainstream alternatives.[2] Its stated figures vary by mode: Standard is 1.5 to two times as fast, while Highspeed is three to four times as fast.[2] Quantslant’s independent API test reported 22-to-24-second 4K generations, rather than the roughly 10 seconds MiniMax advertised.[6] The figures come from different sources, so teams weighing speed should test the model against their own image sizes and workflow rather than treating the advertised time as a guaranteed result.

MiniMax lists a 4096-by-4096 image at $0.06879, with a discounted price of $0.03439.[3] The 50% discount applies to H3-Image and H3-Image-Highspeed when the delivered image has at least 16.6 million pixels, through November 17, 2026, at 16:00 UTC.[3] MiniMax said launch-week pricing offered 50% off image-generation requests at 4K resolution and above.[2] The company lists H3-Image as available through its API Platform, MiniMax Code and Hailuo AI.[2]

MiniMax says H3-Image generates images of about 16 megapixels across aspect ratios, including 4096-by-4096 square images and 6272-by-2688 images in 21:9 format.[4] Its model card says the model is distilled to six sampling steps and uses no classifier-free guidance.[4] The card lists its size as 68.65 GB and says H3-Image uses the H3 architecture without its audio layers while retaining the MiniMax-H3 text encoder unchanged.[4] The API documentation says transparent backgrounds are not supported.[5] Quantslant reported that the community license restricts use of the weights and outputs in the EU, UK, South Korea and United States.[6]