# Microsoft AI — MAI-Image-2-Efficient: Flagship Quality, 41% Lower Cost

- Company: Microsoft AI (microsoft.ai)
- Announced: 2026-04-14
- Category: new-model
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: yes
- Group: models
- Source: https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-efficient
- Record: https://forck.live/items/8429-mai-image-2-efficient-flagship-quality-41-lower-cost
- Subject: MAI
- Models affected: MAI-Image-2-Efficient, MAI-Image-2
- Pricing: $5 per 1M text input tokens, $19.50 per 1M image output tokens

Microsoft AI released MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a faster and cheaper text-to-image model. It is priced at $5 per 1M text input tokens and $19.50 per 1M image output tokens, and is available in Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-efficient:

> Meet MAI-Image-2-Efficient .
> 
> Production-ready quality. Built for speed and scale. 22% faster and 4x more efficient 1 . And priced nearly 41% lower — $5 per 1M text input tokens, $19.50 per 1M image output tokens.
> 
> Start building now
> 
> MAI-Image-2-Efficient is available today in Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground 3 .

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