Model reference · open weights

stable-diffusion-xl-1.0

Image unsloth Text→image 1 build Open weights 999 dl/mo

stable-diffusion-xl-1.0 is an open-weight image model from unsloth. stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 (FP32) weighs 7.1 GB; the smallest configuration that runs it is RTX 3060 12 GB.

For self-hosting, compare this build's requirements below with the GPU you plan to rent.

  • stable-diffusion-xl-1.0 is a 2.6B parameter latent diffusion model for text-to-image generation, republished by unsloth with unmodified weights.
  • It uses two fixed text encoders and is intended for research purposes under the openrail++ license.
  • The model can function as a standalone base module or as part of a two-stage pipeline with a refinement model.

Summary of the unsloth/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 model card, 2026-10-01

What it is

Released byunsloth
Released2026-08-06
Parameters2.6B
VRAM7.1 GB for the weights

What it runs on

Memory and cards for stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 (FP32)

7.1 GBweights, file size
5.1 GBbiggest part
5.0 GBworking memory, one 1024² image
537 MBruntime overhead
CardOne imageMemory
RTX 3060 12 GBtight (encoders offloaded)11.6 GB
RTX 4060 Ti 16 GBfits15.4 GB
RTX 3090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 4090 24 GBfits23.4 GB
RTX 5090 32 GBfits31.0 GB
L40S 48 GBfits44.0 GB
A100 80 GBfits78.2 GB
H100 80 GBfits78.1 GB
RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96 GBfits93.8 GB
DGX Spark (GB10) 128 GB unifiedfits107 GB
H200 141 GBfits138 GB
B200 180 GBfits176 GB

From the model card

What unsloth says about stable-diffusion-xl-1.0

Read the model card

Mirror of stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0, republished by Unsloth. The weights are unmodified. See NOTICE and the licence file in this repo for the terms, which are the upstream terms and are unchanged.

SD-XL 1.0-base Model Card

Model

SDXL consists of an ensemble of experts pipeline for latent diffusion: In a first step, the base model is used to generate (noisy) latents, which are then further processed with a refinement model (available here: https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-refiner-1.0/) specialized for the final denoising steps. Note that the base model can be used as a standalone module.

Alternatively, we can use a two-stage pipeline as follows: First, the base model is used to generate latents of the desired output size. In the second step, we use a specialized high-resolution model and apply a technique called SDEdit (https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.01073, also known as "img2img") to the latents generated in the first step, using the same prompt. This technique is slightly slower than the first one, as it requires more function evaluations.

Source code is available at https://github.com/Stability-AI/generative-models .

Model Description

Model Sources

For research purposes, we recommend our generative-models Github repository (https://github.com/Stability-AI/generative-models), which implements the most popular diffusion frameworks (both training and inference) and for which new functionalities like distillation will be added over time. Clipdrop provides free SDXL inference.

  • Repository: https://github.com/Stability-AI/generative-models
  • Demo: https://clipdrop.co/stable-diffusion

Evaluation

The chart above evaluates user preference for SDXL (with and without refinement) over SDXL 0.9 and Stable Diffusion 1.5 and 2.1. The SDXL base model performs significantly better than the previous variants, and the model combined with the refinement module achieves the best overall performance.

🧨 Diffusers

Make sure to upgrade diffusers to >= 0.19.0:

pip install diffusers --upgrade

In addition make sure to install transformers, safetensors, accelerate as well as the invisible watermark:

pip install invisible_watermark transformers accelerate safetensors

To just use the base model, you can run:

from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline
import torch

pipe = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0", torch_dtype=torch.float16, use_safetensors=True, variant="fp16")
pipe.to("cuda")

# if using torch < 2.0
# pipe.enable_xformers_memory_efficient_attention()

prompt = "An astronaut riding a green horse"

images = pipe(prompt=prompt).images[0]

To use the whole base + refiner pipeline as an ensemble of experts you can run:

from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline
import torch

# load both base & refiner
base = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0", torch_dtype=torch.float16, variant="fp16", use_safetensors=True
)
base.to("cuda")
refiner = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained(
    "stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-refiner-1.0",
    text_encoder_2=base.text_encoder_2,
    vae=base.vae,
    torch_dtype=torch.float16,
    use_safetensors=True,
    variant="fp16",
)
refiner.to("cuda")

# Define how many steps and what % of steps to be run on each experts (80/20) here
n_steps = 40
high_noise_frac = 0.8

prompt = "A majestic lion jumping from a big stone at night"

# run both experts
image = base(
    prompt=prompt,
    num_inference_steps=n_steps,
    denoising_end=high_noise_frac,
    output_type="latent",
).images
image = refiner(
    prompt=prompt,
    num_inference_steps=n_steps,
    denoising_start=high_noise_frac,
    image=image,
).images[0]

When using torch >= 2.0, you can improve the inference speed by 20-30% with torch.compile. Simple wrap the unet with torch compile before running the pipeline:

pipe.unet = torch.compile(pipe.unet, mode="reduce-overhead", fullgraph=True)

If you are limited by GPU VRAM, you can enable cpu offloading by calling pipe.enable_model_cpu_offload instead of .to("cuda"):

- pipe.to("cuda")
+ pipe.enable_model_cpu_offload()

For more information on how to use Stable Diffusion XL with diffusers, please have a look at the Stable Diffusion XL Docs.

Optimum

Optimum provides a Stable Diffusion pipeline compatible with both OpenVINO and ONNX Runtime.

OpenVINO

To install Optimum with the dependencies required for OpenVINO :

pip install optimum[openvino]

To load an OpenVINO model and run inference with OpenVINO Runtime, you need to replace StableDiffusionXLPipeline with Optimum OVStableDiffusionXLPipeline. In case you want to load a PyTorch model and convert it to the OpenVINO format on-the-fly,

Quoted from the model card on Hugging Face. The full card is behind the Hugging Face link above.

Running it yourself

Run it on a rented GPU

Rent a machine by the hour. ComfyUI is installed on it. Open ComfyUI through the tunnel: its default workflow loads a checkpoint. Choose this model's file in Load Checkpoint, with the settings its model card gives.

# on your rented machine: pip install diffusers transformers accelerate
import torch
from diffusers import DiffusionPipeline

pipe = DiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained("unsloth/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16).to("cuda")
image = pipe(prompt="a red bicycle on a cobbled street").images[0]
image.save("/workspace/out.png")
Renting a GPU: connect, tunnels, Python
# on your rented machine (the ssh line is on its page in the console)
# get REPO FILE FOLDER: one file into /workspace/models/FOLDER, where ComfyUI loads it from
get() { hf download "$1" "$2" --local-dir /workspace/hf-files && mkdir -p "/workspace/models/$3" && mv "/workspace/hf-files/$2" "/workspace/models/$3/$4"; }

# the model (12.9 GB)
get unsloth/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 sd_xl_base_1.0.safetensors checkpoints
get unsloth/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 sd_xl_base_1.0_0.9vae.safetensors vae

start-comfyui
Renting a GPU: connect, tunnels, ComfyUI
# on your computer, in a second terminal: ComfyUI in your browser at http://localhost:8188
# HOST, PORT and BOOKING are your machine's, from its page in the console
ssh -o HostKeyAlias=axforge-BOOKING -o StrictHostKeyChecking=accept-new -L 8188:localhost:8188 dev@HOST -p PORT
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