Recraft launches V4.1 Flash image model
Recraft has released V4.1 Flash, a cheaper, low-latency version of its V4.1 image model, and says its own benchmark puts it ahead of 22 rival fast models.
Recraft announced V4.1 Flash, which it calls "the fastest model on the market" at 1.3 seconds from prompt to image. The company says it costs "a fraction" of V4.1 but did not give a price.
Recraft's own latency table shows a 1.4-second median (p50) and a 1.8-second 95th percentile (p95) for Flash. FLUX.2 klein 9B matches it at the median but trails at the tail with a 2.1-second p95. Z-Image-Turbo (1.8s/2.3s) and FLUX.1 schnell (1.6s/3.6s) come next. Larger models sit far behind: Nano Banana Pro posted 23.3s/41.2s and GPT Image 2 at low quality 16.2s/26.4s.
Recraft ran each model once on the same 100 prompts from Kansas. The prompts covered ads, branding, UI, photography, illustration and fine-art styles. Recraft models went through Recraft's API. FLUX.2 flash, FLUX.2 turbo and two Ideogram v4 variants ran on fal, and the rest on Runware. Provider-default prompt enhancers were left on, so the results reflect provider performance on the test date. Recraft did not reconcile its 1.3-second headline figure with the 1.4-second median in its table.
The quality comparisons are side-by-side images chosen and annotated by Recraft's creative director, not a systematic evaluation.
Recraft also added an Enhance button. It regenerates an image with V4.1 Pro at 2048×2048 and keeps the original composition. It has two levels: "Subtle" and the default "Moderate."