Who built it
Vilya Poghosyan
Works at Picsart. Built Model Compass alone during a three-day company sprint in October 2026, as an independent benchmark.
The sprint asked for something live, public and measurable in three days. "Which AI model should I use for this?" came up constantly, and nobody was answering it with measurements. So this site does: 17 models (12 image, 5 video), 12 tasks, 96 prompts, one method for all of them.
The code that scores, ranks and routes is ordinary open-source machine learning. The method page explains it in plain words; the data page has every number.
Disclosure
This is not an official Picsart page. Picsart did not commission it, review the rankings or pay for it, and nothing here speaks for the company.
The author works at Picsart, and the links open Picsart's AI Playground, so Picsart may benefit when you follow them. Five things keep that from bending the results:
- the same prompts at default settings for every model;
- a judge that never saw model names;
- spelling checked by a program;
- people spot-checking the judge;
- all data published, so you can check or rerun it.
The site recommends the model that ranks first for your task, often a premium one. It does not rank by price and is not paid per click. A cheaper alternative is named only when you ask. It must rank in the top three, keep at least half the winner's chance of ranking first, and overlap the winner's error bar.
Labels and credit
Every image and clip on this site was made with Picsart AI models in Picsart's AI Playground, one output per prompt, as the method page describes. Each carries the Picsart AI label in its corner, so it stays marked as AI-generated wherever it is copied. We do not retouch outputs; what the model gave is what you see.
Model names and logos belong to their makers. Benchmark data is released under CC BY 4.0; the data page has the attribution line.
Suggest a task or model
Missing a task people need, a model you can pick in Picsart that is not in the table, or a prompt the router gets wrong? Tell us. A task needs a clear job ("thumbnail for a cooking video") and ideally the single-purpose tools already selling it. A model must be selectable in Picsart's AI Playground.
Spotted a wrong number? Name the file and row on the data page and we will check it against the raw files.
What comes next
- New models get tested the day Picsart launches them, same prompts, same judge, so "is it better?" gets an answer with numbers.
- More prompts per task, because they tighten every error bar.
- More video prompts per task. Video is live with 5 models, but each video task is below the 8-prompt gate today, so its result is marked early and the all-video ranking is the stronger signal.