Model reference · open weights

sdxl

Image stabilityai Text→image 1 build Its own licence terms 880k dl/mo

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.

  • SDXL-Turbo is a 2.6B parameter generative text-to-image model developed by Stability AI.
  • It synthesizes photorealistic images from text prompts in a single network evaluation using Adversarial Diffusion Distillation.
  • The model is intended for both non-commercial and commercial usage under an other licence.

Summary of the stabilityai/sdxl-turbo model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released byStability AI
Released2023-11-27
Parameters2.6B
VRAM6.9 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for sdxl-turbo (FP32)

6.9 GBweights, file size
5.1 GBbiggest part
5.0 GBworking memory, one 1024² image
537 MBruntime overhead
CardOne imageMemory
RTX 3060 12 GBtight (encoders offloaded)11.6 GB
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GBfits15.4 GB
RTX 3090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GBfits31.0 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 Stability AI says about sdxl

Read 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.

Model Details

Model Description

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.

  • Developed by: Stability AI
  • Funded by: Stability AI
  • Model type: Generative text-to-image model
  • Finetuned from model: SDXL 1.0 Base

Model Sources

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).

  • Repository: https://github.com/Stability-AI/generative-models
  • Paper: https://stability.ai/research/adversarial-diffusion-distillation
  • Demo: http://clipdrop.co/stable-diffusion-turbo

Evaluation

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.

Uses

Direct Use

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

  • Research on generative models.
  • Research on real-time applications of generative models.
  • Research on the impact of real-time generative models.
  • Safe deployment of models which have the potential to generate harmful content.
  • Probing and understanding the limitations and biases of generative models.
  • Generation of artworks and use in design and other artistic processes.
  • Applications in educational or creative tools.

For commercial use, please refer to https://stability.ai/membership.

Excluded uses are described below.

Diffusers

pip install diffusers transformers accelerate --upgrade
  • Text-to-image:

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]
  • Image-to-image:

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]

Out-of-Scope Use

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.

Limitations and Bias

Limitations

  • The generated images are of a fixed resolution (512x512 pix), and the model does not achieve perfect photorealism.
  • The model cannot render legible text.
  • Faces and people in general may not be generated properly.
  • The autoencoding part of the model is lossy.

Recommendations

The model is intended for both non-commercial and commercial usage.

How to Get Started with the Model

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

Run it on a rented GPU

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")
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 files of the template “SDXL Turbo” (6.5 GB)
get stabilityai/sdxl-turbo sd_xl_turbo_1.0_fp16.safetensors checkpoints

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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