Microsoft MAI-Image-2.6 and MAI-Image-2.6 Flash Now on OpenRouter

What shipped

Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.6 and MAI-Image-2.6 Flash, image generation and editing models served via Azure AI Foundry, are now listed on OpenRouter (September 4, 2026).

What changed

MAI-Image-2.6 creates images from text prompts and supports image-guided editing across multiple aspect ratios; MAI-Image-2.6 Flash is the lower-latency variant built for faster generation. On OpenRouter, both run at a 4K context at per-token pricing: $5 per million tokens for the standard model, $1.75 per million for Flash. They sit in the same catalog as text models, callable with the same OpenRouter API key and billable with the same credits, with provider fallbacks handled for you.

Why a builder cares

If you already route LLM calls through OpenRouter, image generation now lives on the same key, dashboard, and invoice — no separate Azure account or SDK to wire up. The Flash variant's $1.75-per-million price makes on-the-fly image edits cheap enough for interactive pipelines.