SDXL vs SD 1.5 vs Flux — Which Model Should You Use?

The one-line answer

• Fast, cheap, endless LoRAs → SD 1.5.
• General purpose default → SDXL.
• Best prompt fidelity + typography → Flux.

The rest of this post is why.

SD 1.5 — the veteran

Released in 2022 and still shockingly relevant. Runs on a potato GPU, generates in a couple of seconds, and has the largest LoRA ecosystem of any model on the planet. If you need a very specific style — a particular artist, a particular character — there's a 90 % chance an SD 1.5 LoRA already exists for it.

Weaknesses: hands, text, anatomy at complex poses. Native resolution is 512×512; upscaling to 1024 needs extra steps.

SDXL — the workhorse

Native 1024×1024, dramatically better composition and anatomy than 1.5, and a healthy LoRA scene of its own. Slower than 1.5 but not by much on modern GPUs. This is the model Imagoat ships as its default because the quality-per-credit is unbeatable.

Best for: product shots, portraits, general concept art, marketing imagery.

Flux — the newcomer with a killer feature

Flux (Dev and Pro) reads prompts more like a large language model than the older diffusion models. It handles longer, more descriptive prompts gracefully and — critically — it can actually render legible text in images. That's a first for open models.

Trade-offs: heavier compute, licensed for research on Dev (Pro is commercial), fewer LoRAs (yet), less stylistic flexibility.

Use Flux when: you need text in the image, complex multi-subject scenes, or long descriptive prompts.

The right mental model

Don't think of these as competitors — think of them as tools with different sweet spots. Imagoat exposes them side-by-side so you can spend 1 credit on an SDXL draft and 5 credits on a Flux Pro final only when you're sure.

Credit costs on Imagoat

• SDXL Standard — 1 credit
• SDXL High Quality — 2 credits
• Flux Dev — 3 credits
• Flux Pro — 5 credits