Model reference · open weights

flux.1-lite

Image Freepik Text→image 1 build Non-commercial 6k dl/mo

flux.1-lite is an open-weight image model from Freepik. flux.1-lite-8B (BF16) weighs 26.3 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 4090 24 GB.

  • Flux.1 Lite is an 8.2B parameter text-to-image model developed by Freepik and published as Freepik/flux.1-lite-8B.
  • It is a distilled version of the FLUX.1-dev model that uses 7 GB less RAM and runs 23% faster while maintaining bfloat16 precision.
  • The model operates with a guidance scale between 2.0 and 5.0 and 20 to 32 inference steps, and it is available under an "other" licence.

Summary of the Freepik/flux.1-lite-8B model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released byFreepik
Released2024-12-30
Parameters8.2B
VRAM26.3 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for flux.1-lite-8B (BF16)

26.3 GBweights, file size
16.3 GBbiggest part
5.0 GBworking memory, one 1024² image
537 MBruntime overhead
CardOne imageMemory
RTX 3060 12 GB … RTX 4060 Ti 16 GBdoes not fit
RTX 3090 24 GBtight (encoders offloaded)23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GBtight (encoders offloaded)23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GBfits (encoders offloaded)31.0 GB
L40S 48 GBfits44.0 GB
A100 80 GBfits78.2 GB
H100 80 GBfits78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GBfits93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unifiedfits107 GB
H200 141 GBfits138 GB
B200 180 GBfits176 GB

From the model card

What Freepik says about flux.1-lite

Read the model card

We are thrilled to announce the release of Flux.1 Lite, an 8B parameter transformer model distilled from the FLUX.1-dev model. This version uses 7 GB less RAM and runs 23% faster while maintaining the same precision (bfloat16) as the original model.

🔥 UPDATE 🔥: We have released a new version of Flux.1 Lite 8B. This version is trained with a new dataset and achieves better results than the previous alpha version. The main changes include:

  • Distillation for a broader range of guidance values (2.0-5.0)
  • Distillation for a broader range of number of steps (20-32)
  • More diverse dataset with longer prompts

Text-to-Image

Flux.1 Lite is ready to unleash your creativity! For the best results, we strongly recommend using a guidance_scale between 2.0 and 5.0 and setting n_steps between 20 and 32.

import torch
from diffusers import FluxPipeline

torch_dtype = torch.bfloat16
device = "cuda"

# Load the pipe
model_id = "Freepik/flux.1-lite-8B"
pipe = FluxPipeline.from_pretrained(
    model_id, torch_dtype=torch_dtype
).to(device)

# Inference
prompt = "A close-up image of a green alien with fluorescent skin in the middle of a dark purple forest"

guidance_scale = 3.5
n_steps = 28
seed = 11

with torch.inference_mode():
    image = pipe(
        prompt=prompt,
        generator=torch.Generator(device="cpu").manual_seed(seed),
        num_inference_steps=n_steps,
        guidance_scale=guidance_scale,
        height=1024,
        width=1024,
    ).images[0]
image.save("output.png")

Motivation

Inspired by Ostris findings, we analyzed the mean squared error (MSE) between the input and output of each block to quantify their contribution to the final result, revealing significant variability.

As Ostris pointed out, not all blocks contribute equally. While skipping just one of the early MMDiT or late DiT blocks can significantly impact model performance, skipping any single block in between does not have a significant impact over the final image quality.

ComfyUI

We've also crafted a ComfyUI workflow to make using Flux.1 Lite even more seamless! Find it in comfy/flux.1-lite_workflow.json.

The safetensors checkpoint is available here: flux.1-lite-8B.safetensors

Try it out at Freepik!

Our AI generator is now powered by Flux.1 Lite!

🔥 News 🔥

  • Dec 30, 2024. Flux.1 Lite 8B new trained model is publicly available on HuggingFace Repo.
  • Oct 23, 2024. Alpha 8B checkpoint is publicly available on HuggingFace Repo.

Citation

If you find our work helpful, please cite it!

@article{flux1-lite,
  title={Flux.1 Lite: Distilling Flux1.dev for Efficient Text-to-Image Generation},
  author={Daniel Verdú, Javier Martín},
  email={dverdu@freepik.com, javier.martin@freepik.com},
  year={2024},
}

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

Running it yourself

Run it on a rented GPU

Rent a machine by the hour. ComfyUI is installed on it. Open ComfyUI through the tunnel and load the workflow from the model's card on Hugging Face; choose this model's file in its loader.

# on your rented machine: pip install diffusers transformers accelerate
import torch
from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline

pipe = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("Freepik/flux.1-lite-8B", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16).to("cuda")
image = pipe(prompt="a red bicycle on a cobbled street").images[0]
image.save("/workspace/out.png")
Renting a GPU: connect, tunnels, Python
# on your rented machine (the ssh line is on its page in the console)
# get REPO FILE FOLDER: one file into /workspace/models/FOLDER, where ComfyUI loads it from
get() { hf download "$1" "$2" --local-dir /workspace/hf-files && mkdir -p "/workspace/models/$3" && mv "/workspace/hf-files/$2" "/workspace/models/$3/$4"; }

# the model (15.2 GB)
get Freepik/flux.1-lite-8B flux.1-lite-8B.safetensors diffusion_models

start-comfyui
Renting a GPU: connect, tunnels, ComfyUI
# on your computer, in a second terminal: ComfyUI in your browser at http://localhost:8188
# HOST and PORT are your machine's, from its page in the console
ssh -L 8188:localhost:8188 dev@HOST -p PORT
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