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Nano Banana 2.1 now available on AI Gateway

Google's Nano Banana 2.1 image generation and editing model is now available on Vercel's AI Gateway under the model ID google/gemini-nano-banana-2.1, Vercel announced. The release improves on earlier Nano Banana models with product recontextualization, mask- and ink-based editing, and factuality, rendering photorealistic skin tones, intricate materials, sharp lighting, and coherent backgrounds at the latency and cost of a Flash-tier model. Developers can call Nano Banana 2.1 through the AI SDK, the OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions API, or the open-source AI CLI from Vercel Labs, with generated images returned in result.files.

by read1 min views1 publishedOct 6, 2026

Nano Banana 2.1 from Google is now available on AI Gateway. It improves image generation and editing over earlier Nano Banana models.

This release targets product recontextualization, mask- and ink-based editing, and factuality. Product recontextualization places an existing product in a new scene. Mask- and ink-based edits change only the region marked by a mask or by strokes drawn on the image. Factuality is how accurately images depict real-world subjects.

The model renders photorealistic skin tones, intricate materials, sharp lighting, and coherent backgrounds at the latency and cost of a Flash-tier model.

Call it through the AI SDK or the OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions API, or the AI CLI. AI CLI is an open-source command-line tool from Vercel Labs for generating text, images, video, and audio from your terminal. It runs on AI Gateway, so any Gateway model ID works with -m.

Use `google/gemini-nano-banana-2.1` as the model name. Generated images are returned in `result.files`:

Try Nano Banana 2.1 in the [model playground](https://vercel.com/ai-gateway/models/gemini-nano-banana-2.1).

AI Gateway provides a unified API for calling models, tracking usage and cost, and configuring retries, failover, and performance optimizations for higher-than-provider uptime. It includes built-in custom reporting, Zero Data Retention support, budgets for API keys, routing rules, and more.

AI Gateway reflects provider pricing with no markup and does not charge a platform fee on inference, including on Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) requests.

You can view all image models available on AI Gateway.

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