# LongCat-Image > LongCat-Image is an open 6-billion-parameter text-to-image model from Meituan's LongCat team, released on 5 December 2025 under the Apache 2.0 licence. It is bilingual (Chinese and English) and built for text inside images: put the words you want in quotation marks and it renders them character by character. A companion LongCat-Image-Edit model handles edits. On Kenerate AI it runs in the browser for 45 credits per image or edit. URL: https://kenerateai.com/models/meituan-longcat/longcat-image Publisher: Kenerate AI (https://kenerateai.com) Last updated: 20 October 2026 ## Key facts - Official name: LongCat-Image - Hugging Face ID: meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image - Maker: Meituan LongCat team - Released: 5 December 2025 - Type: Diffusion · text to image + edit - Size: 6B parameters - Licence: Apache 2.0 - Languages: English and Chinese - On Kenerate: 45 credits per image or edit - Sizes on Kenerate: 8, up to 1536×1536 ## Steps 1. Open the model — Go to /app/image and pick LongCat Image (the button on this page selects it for you). Sign in free to get started. 2. Write the prompt, text in quotes — Describe the scene in English or Chinese and put every word that should appear in the image in quotation marks, e.g. a shop sign that reads "Night Market". 3. Pick a size, or upload a photo — Choose one of 8 sizes up to 1536×1536 for a new image, or upload one picture and describe the change to edit it. Fix the seed to compare prompt tweaks. 4. Generate and check the lettering — Each image or edit costs 45 credits. Zoom in on the text; if a word is off, shorten it or move it into its own quoted phrase and run again. ## In depth ### The quotation-mark rule LongCat-Image reads quoted text differently from the rest of the prompt: anything inside single or double quotes — English or Chinese quote marks — is encoded character by character [1][2]. That is how it gets small and rare Chinese characters right. Practical rules: - Quote every word that must appear in the image, and nothing else. - One short phrase per quote — a title, a sign, a price — beats a quoted paragraph. - Say where the text goes and how it looks: “a red neon sign above the door that reads "Open Late"”. ### Running LongCat-Image locally vs online Locally you install Diffusers from source (or the ComfyUI nodes) and need about 17 GB of VRAM with CPU offload, 18 GB for the Edit models [2]. The model card's example uses 50 steps and guidance 4.0 at 1344×768 [1]. On Kenerate nothing is installed: pick LongCat Image, choose a size or upload a photo, and pay 45 credits per result. ### Why a 6B model The technical report argues that a compact 6B diffusion model can match much larger 20B-plus mixture-of-experts models on text rendering and photorealism, while using less memory and running faster [3]. Meituan also released mid-training checkpoints and its training toolchain, so researchers can fine-tune from LongCat-Image-Dev [2][3]. References: [1] meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image — Hugging Face model card: https://huggingface.co/meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image [2] meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image — GitHub: https://github.com/meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image [3] LongCat-Image Technical Report — arXiv 2512.07584: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07584 ## FAQ Q: What is LongCat-Image? A: LongCat-Image is an open-source text-to-image model from Meituan's LongCat team, released on 5 December 2025. It has 6 billion parameters, understands Chinese and English, and is tuned for photorealism and for rendering text inside images. The weights are on Hugging Face as meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image under Apache 2.0. Q: Is LongCat-Image free? A: The weights are free under Apache 2.0, but you need a GPU with about 17 GB of VRAM (with CPU offload) to run them. On Kenerate, LongCat Image is a paid model at 45 credits per image or edit, from one-time credit packs with no subscription. New accounts get 25 credits on sign-up, and the free plan includes Qwen Image 3.0 and Flux 2 Dev. Q: How do I make LongCat-Image render text? A: Put the exact words in single or double quotation marks — English "…" or Chinese “…” both work. The model card says quoted text switches on character-level encoding, and that text quality drops a lot without quotes. Keep each quoted phrase short and say where it goes: on a sign, a label or a poster title. Q: LongCat-Image vs LongCat-Image-Edit vs Dev — what's the difference? A: LongCat-Image makes images from text. LongCat-Image-Edit changes an existing image from an instruction, and LongCat-Image-Edit-Turbo (February 2026) is a distilled Edit model about 10 times faster. LongCat-Image-Dev is a mid-training checkpoint meant for fine-tuning, not for everyday use. On Kenerate, LongCat Image covers both text to image and single-image edits. Q: Is LongCat-Image on Hugging Face? A: Yes. Meituan publishes it at huggingface.co/meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image, alongside LongCat-Image-Edit, Edit-Turbo and Dev. The code and training toolchain are at github.com/meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image, and it works in Diffusers (LongCatImagePipeline) and ComfyUI. Q: LongCat-Image vs FLUX — which is better? A: They aim at different things. LongCat-Image is a 6B bilingual model whose strength is text, especially Chinese characters. FLUX.2 [klein] Base 9B is an open 9B model with up to 3 reference images for edits, and it is far cheaper on Kenerate (4.5 credits vs 45). Run the same prompt on both to see which suits your image. Q: Is LongCat-Image the same as LongCat Avatar? A: No. Both come from Meituan's LongCat team, but LongCat-Image makes still images, while LongCat Avatar turns a photo and a voice track into a talking video. Kenerate runs LongCat Avatar, LongCat Avatar 1.5 and the two-speaker LongCat 1.5 Duo in its talking-avatar tool. Q: Can I use LongCat-Image online without a GPU? A: Yes. Kenerate AI runs it in the browser as LongCat Image — no download, Diffusers setup or 17 GB GPU. Pick it in /app/image, write a prompt and choose one of 8 sizes up to 1536×1536, or upload a photo to edit. It costs 45 credits per image. Q: Can I use LongCat-Image images commercially? A: The model weights are Apache 2.0, which allows commercial use of self-hosted copies under that licence's terms. Images you make on Kenerate follow Kenerate's terms of service. Check any brand names, logos or real people in your prompt separately. ## Related pages - Open source AI image generator: https://kenerateai.com/open-source-ai-image-generator - Qwen-Image-3.0: https://kenerateai.com/models/qwen/qwen-image-3 - ERNIE-Image: https://kenerateai.com/models/baidu/ernie-image - FLUX.2 [klein] 9B Base: https://kenerateai.com/models/black-forest-labs/flux-2-klein-base-9b - AI talking avatar: https://kenerateai.com/ai-talking-avatar - All models: https://kenerateai.com/model ## Sources - meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image — Hugging Face model card: https://huggingface.co/meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image - meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image — GitHub: https://github.com/meituan-longcat/LongCat-Image - LongCat-Image Technical Report — arXiv 2512.07584: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07584