Stable Diffusion was released in 2022 by Stability AI and quickly grew in popularity mostly due to being open-source.
This allowed people to fine-tune the models and create the best Stable Diffusion models that produce specific types of images. However, despite its popularity, that’s still the case today, Stable Diffusion has limitations such as long inference times, detailed prompts, and more.
In 2023, Stability AI released Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL) which is a larger variant of the Stable Diffusion model, with increased capacity and capabilities for generating higher-resolution images.
What is Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL)?
Stable Diffusion XL (SDXL) is the cutting-edge, text-to-image model that’s a predecessor to Stable Diffusion. The model generates hyper-realistic, detailed, and colorful 1024 x 1024 px images.
To attain such impeccable results, SDXL has a whooping 3.5B parameters compared to Stable Diffusion’s 860 million parameters. In addition, SDXL is trained on 1024 x 1024 px which contributes to its highly-detailed, ultra-realistic images.
I especially like that SDXL accepts shorter prompts and still generates impeccable images. With SDXL, you’ll rarely use super long prompts like with Stable Diffusion. You’ll usually get exactly what you want with prompts spanning two or three sentences.
The 10 Best SDXL Models
Below we dive into the best SDXL models for different use cases. These models are capable of generating high-quality, ultra-realistic images of faces, animals, anime, cartoons, sci-fi, fantasy art, and so much more.
Summary: Best SDXL Models
Below find a quick summary of the top 5 best SDXL models.
1. Juggernaut XL: Overall best Stable Diffusion XL model
2. Leonardo Diffusion XL: Best free Stable Diffusion XL model
3. SDXL Dragon Style: Best SDXL for dragon art
4. SDXL Dream Mecha Girl: Best SDXL Model For Anime
5. XL6 – HEPHAISTOS SD 1.0XL: Best SDXL model for NSFW
1. Juggernaut XL: Overall best Stable Diffusion XL model
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | Kandoo AI |
| Type | Checkpoint Trained |
| Base Model | SDXL Lightning |
| Downloads | 400,000 |
Juggernaut XL is easily the best SDXL model I’ve come across. It generates spectacular photorealistic images of people, fantasy, animals, landscapes, horror, and more. It’s a great model for exploring your imagination.
Despite adhering to prompts almost perfectly, I realized it doesn’t adhere to negative prompts strictly. Other than that, here’s a prompt to an image I generated using this model.
Medium shot, Adorable creature with big reflective eyes, moody lighting, best quality, full body portrait, real picture, intricate details, depth of field, in a forest, fujifilm xt3, outdoors, bright day, beautiful lighting, raw photo, 8k uhd, film grain, unreal engine 5, ray tracing
Negative prompt
CGI, Unreal, Airbrushed, Digital
Here’s the resulting image.
2. Leonardo Diffusion XL: Best free Stable Diffusion XL model
Leonardo Diffusion XL is available to use for free on Leonardo.ai. It’s an incredibly versatile SDXL model that I use to generate photorealistic portraits, fantasy images, stock images for blog posts, and other kinds of images.
The only downside is Leonardo Diffusion XL still struggles with getting people’s hands right. Other than that, it’s a perfectly capable model for a variety of tasks.
Here’s a prompt I tried on Leonardo.ai.
close up image of a black woman next to a window with rain droplets, delicate, soft lighting, long curly hair, deep inviting eyes, beautiful, ultrarealistic, 4kHere’s the resulting AI-generated image.
3. SDXL Dragon Style: Best SDXL for dragon art
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | Faeia |
| Type | LORA |
| Base Model | SDXL 1.0 |
| Downloads | 2.5K |
SDXL Dragon Style is mainly trained to generate dragons, however you can use it to generate all sorts of images like other animals. I especially like how it depicts images in a spectrum of bright colors.
Here’s a prompt for an image I generated using this model.
a dragon queen, wearing an ornate scaled gossamer dress, (female:1.1),, highly detailed eyes, (portrait up close:1.2), highly detailed, beautiful lighting, ethereal, mystical, 8k, scales, yellow eyes, vibrant colors, beautiful backlighting
Here’s the negative prompt.
plastic, fake, octane render, neon, 3d, cartoon, anime, sketches, lowres, normal quality,bad anatomy, (monochrome:1.2) fastnegative2, baddream
Here’s the resulting image.
4. SDXL Dream Mecha Girl: Best SDXL Model For Anime
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | YUEYUEAI |
| Type | LORA |
| Base model | SDXL 1.0 |
| Downloads | 1K |
SDXL Dream Mecha Girl will blow away anime fans. It generates photorealistic Mecha anime girls in incredible armor with vibrant colors.
Here’s a prompt I used on this model.
(masterpiece, top quality, best quality, official art, beautiful and aesthetic:1.2),(1girl),extreme detailed,colorful,highest detailed.red,White,Blue,Chest,Abdomen,Snowflakes falling,(whole body:1.5),a face,(Only one face.:1.1),Pink Mecha
Here’s the negative prompt.
badhandv4,(ng_deepnegative_v1_75t) easynegative,watermark,website,characters
Here’s the resulting AI-generated image.
5. XL6 – HEPHAISTOS SD 1.0XL: Best SDXL model for NSFW
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | Afroman4peace |
| Type | LORA |
| Base model | SDXL 1.0 |
| Downloads | 1K |
XL6 – HEPHAISTOS SD 1.0XL is the best Stable Diffusion XL model for generating realistic sci-fi characters, scenes, landscapes, and more.
The model is also NSFW-friendly. If you want to bring your Sci-fi story, game, or script to life, this is the model for you.
Here’s a prompt you can try on this SDXL model.
cinestill of a horror clown is riding a viking horse, horse armor, runes, knotwork, neon, cyberpunk city, victorian outfit, steampunk horse, high quality photography, 3 point lighting, flash with softbox, 4k, Canon EOS R3, hdr, smooth, sharp focus, high resolution, award winning photo, 80mm, f2.8, bokeh
Here’s the resulting image.
6. Real Cartoon XL: Best SDXL model for Cartoons
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | 7whitefire7 |
| Type | Checkpoint |
| Base model | SDXL 1.0 |
| Downloads | 38K |
Real Cartoon XL is easily the best SDXL model for generating cartoons. I like how the model closely follows prompts to create exactly what I want.
It has a full model (13GB) and a pruned version (6GB) for those who don’t have a lot of space on their computers.
I took it for a spin using the following prompt.
style of Tsutomu Nihei,(incredibly absurdres, (high resolution:1.18), intricate detail, (masterpiece:1.1), (highest quality:1.1), absurdres) BREAK (1girl, solo, portrait, white hair, orange eyes, long hair, detailed eyes)
Here’s the negative prompt.
easynegative,(badv2:0.8),(badhandv4:1.18),(bad quality:1.3),(worst quality:1.3),watermark,(nsfw),(cleavage),(blurry),(child)Here’s the resulting image.
7. Anime Art Diffusion XL: Best SDXL model for Anime
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | Lykon |
| Type | Checkpoint |
| Base model | SDXL 1.0 |
| Downloads | 21K |
Anime Art Diffusion XL is the best SDXL model for Anime. It’s trained on multiple famous anime artists such as Sam Yang and Wlop.
The creator has enabled users to run the model on Civitai by pressing the create button. I like the beautiful, drawn anime characters and landscapes it generates from short prompts.
I also found it follows prompts closely. Here’s a prompt I used to generate an image with this model.
beautiful age 18 girl, (anime screencap), blue hair, freckles, sexy, beautiful, dslr, 8k, 4k, natural skin, textured skin, pixiv, depth of field, cinematic compotision, best lighting,
Here’s one of the resulting AI-generated images.
8. DreamShaper XL: Best SDXL model for Realism
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | Lykon |
| Type | Checkpoint |
| Base model | SDXL Turbo |
| Downloads | 275K |
DreamShaper XL is a multi-purpose SDXL model designed to generate high-quality images of anything you can imagine. It’s one of the most downloaded models on Civitai.
I like how realistic images look without the artificial, airbrush-y, look other models use on images. DreamShaper XL can fool you into thinking an image is real.
Here’s a prompt I used on the model.
masterpiece, best quality, cinematic film still, realistic, portrait, solo, white mecha robot, cape, science fiction, torn clothes, glowing, standing, robot joints, mecha, armor, cowboy shot, (floating cape), intense sunlight, silver dragonborn, outdoors, landscape, nature highres, 4k, 8k, intricate detail, cinematic lighting, amazing quality, wallpaper <lora:aesthetic_anime_v1s:1.1>
Here’s the resulting image.
9. SDXL Science Fiction Style: Best SDXL model for Sci-Fi
SDXL Science Fiction Style is yet another model for generating high-quality science fiction images.
It’s been trained on 1,500+ science fiction images ranging from cyborgs, robots, aliens, planets, space, and more.
You can run and test the model directly on Civitai. Here’s a prompt I used.
space dog in a mecha suit, futurisitic, cyberpunk,
Here’s one of the generated images.
10. WildCardX-XL: Best SDXL model for Fantasy Art
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Creator | Mr_fries1111 |
| Type | Checkpoint Merge |
| Base model | SDXL 1.0 |
| Downloads | 8K |
WildCardX-XL is trained on high-quality images and merged with other top SDXL models. As a result, it generated incredible images of faces, people, sci-fi, animals, fantasy, and others.
Unfortunately, it’s no longer possible to run the model on-site on Civitai. However, if you’d like to see the quality of WildCardX-XL, here’s a prompt I tried.
high quality, face portrait photo of 30 y.o european man, wearing black shirt, serious face, detailed face, skin pores, cinematic shot, dramatic lighting
Here’s the negative prompt.
(worst quality, low quality, normal quality, lowres, low details, oversaturated, undersaturated, overexposed, underexposed, grayscale, bw, bad photo, bad photography, bad art:1.4), (watermark, signature, text font, username, error, logo, words, letters, digits, autograph, trademark, name:1.2), (blur, blurry, grainy), morbid, ugly, asymmetrical, mutated malformed, mutilated, poorly lit, bad shadow, draft, cropped, out of frame, cut off, censored, jpeg artifacts, out of focus, glitch, duplicate, (airbrushed, cartoon, anime, semi-realistic, cgi, render, blender, digital art, manga, amateur:1.3), (3D ,3D Game, 3D Game Scene, 3D Character:1.1), (bad hands, bad anatomy, bad body, bad face, bad teeth, bad arms, bad legs, deformities:1.3)
Here’s the resulting image.
SDXL Turbo vs SDXL Lightning
Besides SDXL Base, SDXL models come in different varieties as shown below. However, as of this writing, SDXL Base 1.0 remains the popular choice for creating LoRAs.
1. SDXL Turbo
SDXL Turbo is a more advanced and capable model compared to SDXL Base. It uses more advanced techniques such as Adversarial Diffusion Distillation (A.D.D) to greatly reduce the time it takes to generate an image while maintaining high-quality output.
According to tests run by Stability AI, it takes SDXL Turbo 4 steps to generate an image that takes SDXL Base 50 steps.
2. SDXL-Lightning
SDXL-Lightning is a new method (rather than a model) proposed by BteDance to generate high-quality images in a few steps.
The method was influenced by SDXL Turbo and LCM-LoRA in an effort to address the limitations of these models.
It’s good to note, that SDXL Turbo and SDXL-Lightning do not require negative prompts or CFG value since they are already included in the training.
The Best SDXL Models
SDXL has proved to be a significant step up in the text-to-image generation industry. This is thanks to the explosion of high-quality checkpoint models such as Juggernaut XL, DreamShaper XL, Leonardo Diffusion XL, and much more.
With recent developments of models such as SDXL Turbo and methods such as SDXL-Lightning, it’s now faster and easier (short prompts) to generate high-quality images in a fraction of the time.
FAQs: 10 Best SDXL Models
Below find frequently asked questions on the best SDXL models.
1. Is SDXL free?
Yes, SDXL weights are available to download, generate images, and train for free.
2. Can Stable Diffusion XL generate high-resolution images?
Yes, Stable Diffusion XL is a 3.5B parameter model trained on 1024 x 1024 px images using cutting-edge techniques to generate high-resolution images.