MAI (Microsoft AI) is the family of foundation models Microsoft develops itself. They are hosted and billed through Azure's Microsoft Foundry (formerly Azure AI Foundry) and distributed Azure-first. They sit alongside OpenAI models (via Azure OpenAI) as a separate family that Microsoft develops and serves itself. Specific prices are shown in the table below; the goal is to give enterprises more choice on cost, licensing and data sovereignty.
Latest models (September 2026)
The two newest families confirmed on the microsoft.ai blog. Both can be tried via Microsoft Foundry / MAI Playground.
🖼️ MAI-Image-2.6 / MAI-Image-2.6-Flash (image generation) — Sep 4, 2026
Microsoft's strongest image models. They add multi-reference image editing (compose people, products, styles and scenes from multiple images), web grounding, dynamic aspect ratios, and support up to 1.5K resolution. MAI-Image-2.6 targets maximum precision/quality; MAI-Image-2.6-Flash delivers comparable quality for latency-sensitive, high-throughput workloads. Per Microsoft's announcement (as of Sep 4, 2026), MAI-Image-2.6 is No. 2 on Arena for both text-to-image and image editing, and No. 1 on Artificial Analysis for image editing. Microsoft reports 2.6-Flash is 2.8× faster and 72% more efficient than GPT-Image-2-Medium. Both are in Public Preview.
🎙️ MAI-Transcribe-2 (speech recognition) — Sep 3, 2026
Microsoft's blog title positions it as the "fastest, most accurate and cheapest speech recognition model in the world." Priced at $0.10 / hour (a limited-time offer through the end of the year). It is No. 1 on FLEURS across 60 languages (avg WER 5.2%) and No. 2 on Artificial Analysis's AA-WER leaderboard (2.0%). Microsoft cites speeds (via Artificial Analysis) of 10× GPT-Transcribe, 7× Scribe v2, and 5× Gemini 3.5 Transcribe. Features include speaker diarization, word-level timestamps, keyword biasing, verbatim/clean transcription styles, code switching and automatic language identification.
Sources: Pushing the quality-cost frontier with MAI-Image-2.6 (2026-09-04) · MAI-Transcribe-2 (2026-09-03)
Model pricing (Azure Foundry, verified)
From the Microsoft Azure "Foundry Models pricing (Microsoft section)" in US dollars. Prices are USD per 1M tokens; image and speech models use special units — see notes. Verified 2026-09-09.
| Model | Input / 1M | Cached Input / 1M | Output / 1M | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAI-Thinking-1 | $2.00 | $0.20 | $8.00 | Reasoning |
| MAI-Cyber-1 Flash | $0.60 | $0.06 | $3.50 | Cyber security (MDASH) |
| MAI-DS-R1 | $1.35 | — | $5.40 | DeepSeek R1 family (Regional $1.485/$5.94) |
| MAI-Image-2 | $5 | — | $33 | Image generation (Global) |
| MAI-Image-2-Efficient | $5 | — | $19.50 | Image generation (41% lower cost) |
| MAI-Image-2.5 | Text $5 / Image $8 | — | $47 | Image generation |
| MAI-Image-2.5 Flash | Text $1.75 / Image $1.75 | — | $19.50 | Image generation (fast) |
| MAI-Image-2.5 Pro | Text $5 / Image $8 | — | $106 | Image generation (high quality) |
- MAI-Image-2.6 / 2.6-Flash (announced 2026-09-04) are not yet in the verified Microsoft Foundry pricing table, so no specific price is listed here. They are in Public Preview; confirm in Foundry before contracting.
- MAI-Code family (MAI-Code-1-Flash / 1.1-Flash) are also absent from that table, so pricing is omitted.
- MAI-Voice family (MAI-Voice-1 / 2 / 2-Flash) are officially served via Azure Speech in Foundry Tools and billed via speech meters, not tokens (so not in this table).
Primary source: azure.microsoft.com/.../ai-foundry-models/microsoft/ (verified 2026-09-09)
How to use (API / access)
MAI models are primarily deployed and called via Azure AI Foundry / Microsoft Foundry. Some can also be tried in MAI Playground or via OpenRouter.
- Microsoft Foundry (ai.azure.com/catalog/models): pick a MAI model from the catalog and deploy it by model ID. Auth is Azure (API key / Entra ID, similar to Azure OpenAI).
- MAI Playground (playground.microsoft.ai): try models in the browser without an API key. Examples:
playground.microsoft.ai/chat?model=mai-image-2-6-flash/?model=mai-transcribe-2. - MAI-Transcribe-2 (speech): officially via Azure Speech MAI-Transcribe docs (REST / SDK). On OpenRouter the model ID is
microsoft/mai-transcribe-2. - Image generation (MAI-Image-2.x): deploy as a text-to-image / image-editing model in Foundry. Multi-reference editing and web grounding are supported by the MAI-Image-2.6 generation.
- Reasoning (MAI-Thinking-1): a reasoning model; note the cheap cached-input rate of $0.20.
⚠️ Exact request formats and parameters differ by model and may change, so always consult the official documentation (Learn / the specific Foundry model page). This guide intentionally does not include concrete API request bodies, as those were not verified against a primary source.
MAI release timeline
Dates from the microsoft.ai blog, key highlights.
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| ~Sep 2025 | “Two in-house models” and “Introducing MAI-Image-1” (MAI-Image-1 debuts in LMArena top 10) |
| 2026-04-02 | “Announcing 3 new world class MAI models” = MAI-Image-2 / MAI-Transcribe-1 / MAI-Voice-1 (available in Foundry) |
| 2026-04-02 | MAI-Image-2-Efficient (flagship quality, 41% lower cost) |
| May 2026 | MAI-Transcribe-1.5 / MAI-Code-1-Flash announced |
| 2026-06-02 | Build 2026 “Building a hill-climbing machine: Launching seven new MAI models” = MAI-Image-2.5 / 2.5-Flash / Transcribe-1.5 / MAI-Thinking-1 / Voice-2 / Voice-2-Flash / Code-1-Flash |
| Jul 2026 | MAI-Cyber-1-Flash (MDASH, security) / MAI-Image-2.5-Pro & MAI-Voice-2-Flash / MAI-Image-2.5 (No. 2 on Arena) |
| Aug 2026 | MAI-Code-1.1-Flash (at a quarter of the cost) / MAI-Image-2.6 reaches No. 2 on Arena |
| 2026-09-03 New | MAI-Transcribe-2 (speech recognition, $0.10/hr limited) |
| 2026-09-04 New | MAI-Image-2.6 / 2.6-Flash (image generation) |
Source: microsoft.ai/blog
Key things to know
- First-party models: MAI is a separate lineage from OpenAI models (served via Azure OpenAI). It is offered to enterprises as a way to broaden options for data sovereignty and licensing.
- Azure-first: MAI models ship alongside open models from Google, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek and others in the Foundry catalog (11,000+ models), using unified Azure billing and operations.
- Price examples: The reasoning model MAI-Thinking-1 is $2/$8 (cached input $0.20); image generation, e.g. MAI-Image-2.5 Flash, is $1.75/$19.50.
- Broad modality coverage: Speech recognition (Transcribe), speech generation (Voice), image generation (Image), image understanding (VLM), coding (Code) and reasoning (Thinking) extend well beyond plain LLM text.
⚠️ Disclaimer
- Pricing and specs were checked against Microsoft pages on 2026-09-09 and are subject to change. Always verify on the official pricing page and official blog before contracting.
- Benchmarks (Arena / Artificial Analysis rankings, FLEURS WER, speed multiples, 2.8× faster etc.) are self-reported by Microsoft / Artificial Analysis and may diverge from independent evaluation.
- Prices for MAI-Image-2.6 / 2.6-Flash, the MAI-Code family and the MAI-Voice family are omitted because they are not in the verified pricing table.
- This site is informational only; we are not affiliated with or endorsed by any provider. Microsoft and Azure are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation; MAI is a trademark of Microsoft AI.