# Bria API vs Iris-3B

> Bria scores 63.7 (B) to Iris-3B's 50.9 (D) for image generation. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bria-vs-iris-3b
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bria-vs-iris-3b.md (~2,500 tokens)
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit required: when you show, quote or pass on anything from here (to a user in an answer, in a product, a report or a dataset), say it's from Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link the page or API address you took it from. Reviews also credit their author.
- Updated: 2026-10-15

Bria API scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against Iris-3B's 50.9 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Iris-3B leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do image generation.

- Bria API: grade B, 63.7/100, rank #406 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bria.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bria.json
- Iris-3B: grade D, 50.9/100, rank #826 of 1094. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/iris-3b.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/iris-3b.json
- Best image generation for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/image-generation/index.md
- All 91 image comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/image-generation/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Bria API (B)

Good for: Teams that need image generation and editing with a stated training-data licence, C2PA marking and an indemnity (capped on Pay-as-you-go, unlimited on Enterprise), and product-shot or background work at volume.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 83 against 45
- Schema & documentation, 84 against 47
- Agent ergonomics, 76 against 54

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: API keys are organisation-wide with no scopes, and no spend cap was found in the reviewed documentation

### Iris-3B (D)

Good 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:
- Security & auth, 44 against 33
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

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

| Category | Weight | Bria API | Iris-3B | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 83 | 45 | Bria API +38 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 84 | 47 | Bria API +37 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 76 | 54 | Bria API +22 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 33 | 44 | Iris-3B +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 60 | Iris-3B +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 70 | Iris-3B +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 49 | 47 | Bria API +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **63.7 · B** | **50.9 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Bria API | Iris-3B |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Bria AI | Speridlabs |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://engine.prod.bria-api.com/v2` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Apache-2.0 (code and weights) |
| Tools exposed | 18 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-04 | 2026-10-12 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read |  |
| Popularity | 341 npm/wk, 3.9k PyPI/wk | 175 stars |

## Verdicts

**Bria API.** Per-image prices, 100 free calls without a card, OpenAPI files and Markdown docs make a first call quick, and the terms warrant that customer content is not used for training. Keys are organisation-wide with no scopes, and the API has no changelog or deprecation policy.

**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

### Bria API

1. Send the key in the `api_token` header, not as `Authorization: Bearer`. Only `/v2/image/verify` and `/v2/video/verify` work without it
2. Expect `202` with `request_id` and `status_url` from v2 endpoints. Poll `GET /v2/status/{request_id}` every 1 to 2 seconds, or pass `sync: true`
3. Status polls count towards the per-endpoint limit (10 a minute on Free, 60 on Pay-as-you-go), so prefer `webhook_url` for batches
4. Download results promptly. Image URLs expire after 3 days by default, and legacy `/v1/product/*` results after 1 hour
5. Do not resend a failed `POST` blindly. There is no idempotency key, and the SDKs retry status polls only

### 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, Bria API or Iris-3B?

Bria API scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against Iris-3B's 50.9 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Iris-3B leads on security & auth and payments & pricing.

### Do Bria API and Iris-3B need an API key?

Bria API takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Iris-3B needs no key.

### Can an agent call Bria API and Iris-3B without installing anything?

Bria API has a hosted endpoint at https://engine.prod.bria-api.com/v2. No hosted endpoint is listed for Iris-3B.

### Are Bria API and Iris-3B open source?

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


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bria-vs-iris-3b.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bria-vs-iris-3b.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "bria", "b": "iris-3b"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare bria iris-3b`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bria.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/iris-3b.json

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