Model reference · open weights
sdxl is an open-weight image model from Stability AI. sdxl-turbo (FP32) weighs 6.9 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.
Summary of the stabilityai/sdxl-turbo model card, 2026-10-01
What it is
| Released by | Stability AI |
|---|---|
| Released | 2023-11-27 |
| Parameters | 2.6B |
| VRAM | 6.9 GB for the weights |
What it runs on
| Card | One image | Memory |
|---|---|---|
| RTX 3060 12 GB | tight (encoders offloaded) | 11.6 GB |
| RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB | fits | 15.4 GB |
| RTX 3090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 4090 24 GB | fits | 23.4 GB |
| RTX 5090 32 GB | fits | 31.0 GB |
| L40S 48 GB | fits | 44.0 GB |
| A100 80 GB | fits | 78.2 GB |
| H100 80 GB | fits | 78.1 GB |
| RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GB | fits | 93.8 GB |
| DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unified | fits | 107 GB |
| H200 141 GB | fits | 138 GB |
| B200 180 GB | fits | 176 GB |
From the model card
SDXL-Turbo is a fast generative text-to-image model that can synthesize photorealistic images from a text prompt in a single network evaluation. A real-time demo is available here: http://clipdrop.co/stable-diffusion-turbo
Please note: For commercial use, please refer to https://stability.ai/license.
SDXL-Turbo is a distilled version of SDXL 1.0, trained for real-time synthesis. SDXL-Turbo is based on a novel training method called Adversarial Diffusion Distillation (ADD) (see the technical report), which allows sampling large-scale foundational image diffusion models in 1 to 4 steps at high image quality. This approach uses score distillation to leverage large-scale off-the-shelf image diffusion models as a teacher signal and combines this with an adversarial loss to ensure high image fidelity even in the low-step regime of one or two sampling steps.
For research purposes, we recommend our generative-models Github repository (https://github.com/Stability-AI/generative-models),
which implements the most popular diffusion frameworks (both training and inference).
The charts above evaluate user preference for SDXL-Turbo over other single- and multi-step models. SDXL-Turbo evaluated at a single step is preferred by human voters in terms of image quality and prompt following over LCM-XL evaluated at four (or fewer) steps. In addition, we see that using four steps for SDXL-Turbo further improves performance. For details on the user study, we refer to the research paper.
The model is intended for both non-commercial and commercial usage. You can use this model for non-commercial or research purposes under this license. Possible research areas and tasks include
For commercial use, please refer to https://stability.ai/membership.
Excluded uses are described below.
pip install diffusers transformers accelerate --upgrade
SDXL-Turbo does not make use of guidance_scale or negative_prompt, we disable it with guidance_scale=0.0.
Preferably, the model generates images of size 512x512 but higher image sizes work as well.
A single step is enough to generate high quality images.
from diffusers import AutoPipelineForText2Image
import torch
pipe = AutoPipelineForText2Image.from_pretrained("stabilityai/sdxl-turbo", torch_dtype=torch.float16, variant="fp16")
pipe.to("cuda")
prompt = "A cinematic shot of a baby racoon wearing an intricate italian priest robe."
image = pipe(prompt=prompt, num_inference_steps=1, guidance_scale=0.0).images[0]
When using SDXL-Turbo for image-to-image generation, make sure that num_inference_steps * strength is larger or equal
to 1. The image-to-image pipeline will run for int(num_inference_steps * strength) steps, e.g. 0.5 * 2.0 = 1 step in our example
below.
from diffusers import AutoPipelineForImage2Image
from diffusers.utils import load_image
import torch
pipe = AutoPipelineForImage2Image.from_pretrained("stabilityai/sdxl-turbo", torch_dtype=torch.float16, variant="fp16")
pipe.to("cuda")
init_image = load_image("https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/diffusers/cat.png").resize((512, 512))
prompt = "cat wizard, gandalf, lord of the rings, detailed, fantasy, cute, adorable, Pixar, Disney, 8k"
image = pipe(prompt, image=init_image, num_inference_steps=2, strength=0.5, guidance_scale=0.0).images[0]
The model was not trained to be factual or true representations of people or events, and therefore using the model to generate such content is out-of-scope for the abilities of this model. The model should not be used in any way that violates Stability AI's Acceptable Use Policy.
The model is intended for both non-commercial and commercial usage.
Check out https://github.com/Stability-AI/generative-models
Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.
Running it yourself
Rent a machine by the hour. ComfyUI is installed on it. Open ComfyUI through the tunnel, then Templates → SDXL Turbo: it loads ComfyUI's own build of this model, the files above.
# on your rented machine: pip install diffusers transformers accelerate
import torch
from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline
pipe = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("stabilityai/sdxl-turbo", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16).to("cuda")
image = pipe(prompt="a red bicycle on a cobbled street").images[0]
image.save("/workspace/out.png")
# 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 files of the template “SDXL Turbo” (6.5 GB)
get stabilityai/sdxl-turbo sd_xl_turbo_1.0_fp16.safetensors checkpoints
start-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