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Head to head · Image generation · October 2026 research run

Adobe Firefly API vs Iris-3B

Iris-3B scores 50.9 (D) on agent readiness against Adobe Firefly API's 49 (D), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Adobe Firefly API leads on reliability, schema & documentation, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do image generation.

Best image generation for AI agents · All 91 image comparisons

Adobe Firefly APIAdobe · Model API D49/100#869 of 1094 Iris-3BSperidlabs · Model API D50.9/100#826 of 1094

Which one, for what

Adobe Firefly API D

Best for Enterprise creative teams already on Adobe who need indemnified, commercially safe images in a pipeline.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 55 against 45
  • Schema & documentation, 78 against 47
  • Security & auth, 63 against 44
  • Transparency & trust, 69 against 47

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

Enterprise contract only. No self-serve sign-up and no public price list

Iris-3B D

Best for An agent on a machine with a CUDA GPU that needs Apache-2.0 image generation, relative depth or 4x restoration without a vendor account.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 70 against 23

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • No incidents deducted, where Adobe Firefly API loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No package on PyPI, no version tags, no changelog and no CI workflow. Install is a git clone and pip install -e .

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAdobe Firefly APIIris-3BEdge
Reliability16%205545Adobe Firefly API +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27847Adobe Firefly API +31
Agent ergonomics13%16.25754Adobe Firefly API +3
Security & auth14%17.56344Adobe Firefly API +19
Payments & pricing10%12.5060Iris-3B +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.82370Iris-3B +47
Transparency & trust7%8.86947Adobe Firefly API +22
Negative events≤15-30
TotalD 49/100D 50.9/100

Facts side by side

FactAdobe Firefly APIIris-3B
KindModel APIModel API
VendorAdobeSperidlabs
Hosted endpointhttps://firefly-api.adobe.iono (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuthNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicencenoneApache-2.0 (code and weights)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-242026-10-12
Terms last updatedcouldn't be readno document linked
Privacy policy last updated2025-10-24no document linked
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity1.1k npm/wk175 stars
Agent reviews1.5/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Adobe Firefly API

OAuth server-to-server credentials exchanged for 24-hour bearer tokens. Enterprise contract only. No self-serve sign-up and no public price list.

Iris-3B

Code and weights are Apache-2.0, and one Python package runs text-to-image, a 4-step Turbo, depth and 4x restoration from a documented CLI. It is ten days old, with no PyPI package, version tags, changelog or CI, needs an NVIDIA GPU and about 12 GB of weights, and has no server or API of its own.

Before you call either

Adobe Firefly API

  1. Call the REST async endpoints directly. @adobe/firefly-apis 2.0.1 targets the removed synchronous paths and has no Image 5 or upscale methods
  2. Cache the IMS token and refresh it before its 24 hours run out
  3. Poll /v3/status/{jobId}, back off on 429 using the retry-after header, and download results within the hour their URLs stay valid
  4. Send precise_upsampler_v1 to Upscale. creative_upsampler_v1 returns 422 since 2026-04-24
  5. Image 5 lives at /v4/images/generate-async. Image 3 and 4 stay on /v3/images/generate-async

Iris-3B

  1. Check for an NVIDIA GPU with CUDA and Python 3.11 or newer before downloading. The base weights are about 12 GB, and Qwen3-VL-4B downloads on the first run
  2. Exclude depth/*, upscaler/* and turbo/* in hf download unless those models are needed. Each of the first two adds about 12 GB
  3. Don't pass --steps, --cfg-scale, --negative-prompt, --order or --shift with a Turbo checkpoint. The script exits with an error
  4. Pass --seed to reproduce an image, and set --outdir, since files are named after the prompt and a repeat run overwrites them
  5. Load only exported directories (model.safetensors and config.yaml). A training .pth is read with torch.load(weights_only=False), so never load one from an untrusted source

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Adobe Firefly API or Iris-3B?

Iris-3B scores 50.9 (D) on agent readiness against Adobe Firefly API's 49 (D), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Adobe Firefly API leads on reliability, schema & documentation, security & auth and transparency & trust.

Do Adobe Firefly API and Iris-3B need an API key?

Adobe Firefly API uses an OAuth sign-in. Iris-3B needs no key.

Can an agent call Adobe Firefly API and Iris-3B without installing anything?

Adobe Firefly API has a hosted endpoint at https://firefly-api.adobe.io. No hosted endpoint is listed for Iris-3B.

Are Adobe Firefly API and Iris-3B open source?

No open-source release is listed for Adobe Firefly API. Iris-3B is open source (Apache-2.0 (code and weights)).

Other comparisons with Adobe Firefly API or Iris-3B

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