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SDXL VAE

You can integrate this fine-tuned VAE decoder to your existing diffusers workflows, by including a vae argument to the StableDiffusionPipeline from diffusers.models import AutoencoderKL from diffusers import...

KindVAEBase modelSDXLVersionPublisher@stabilityaiBgrade

Model source

Kind
VAE
File size
319 MB
Base model
SDXL
Version
vdiffusion_pytorch_model
Updated
Oct 4, 2026
Publisher
@stabilityai
Downloads
235.9K
Parameters
3B
Source
Hugging Face

Source description

SDXL - VAE

How to use with 🧨 diffusers

You can integrate this fine-tuned VAE decoder to your existing diffusers workflows, by including a vae argument to the StableDiffusionPipeline

from diffusers.models import AutoencoderKL
from diffusers import StableDiffusionPipeline

model = "stabilityai/your-stable-diffusion-model"
vae = AutoencoderKL.from_pretrained("stabilityai/sdxl-vae")
pipe = StableDiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained(model, vae=vae)

Model

SDXL is a latent diffusion model, where the diffusion operates in a pretrained, learned (and fixed) latent space of an autoencoder. While the bulk of the semantic composition is done by the latent diffusion model, we can improve local, high-frequency details in generated images by improving the quality of the autoencoder. To this end, we train the same autoencoder architecture used for the original Stable Diffusion at a larger batch-size (256 vs 9) and additionally track the weights with an exponential moving average (EMA). The resulting autoencoder outperforms the original model in all evaluated reconstruction metrics, see the table below.

Evaluation

SDXL-VAE vs original kl-f8 VAE vs f8-ft-MSE

COCO 2017 (256x256, val, 5000 images)

ModelrFIDPSNRSSIMPSIMLinkComments
SDXL-VAE4.4224.7 +/- 3.90.73 +/- 0.130.88 +/- 0.27https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/sdxl-vae/blob/main/sdxl_vae.safetensorsas used in SDXL
original4.9923.4 +/- 3.80.69 +/- 0.141.01 +/- 0.28https://ommer-lab.com/files/latent-diffusion/kl-f8.zipas used in SD
ft-MSE4.7024.5 +/- 3.70.71 +/- 0.130.92 +/- 0.27https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/sd-vae-ft-mse-original/resolve/main/vae-ft-mse-840000-ema-pruned.ckptresumed with EMA from ft-EMA, emphasis on MSE (rec. loss = MSE + 0.1 * LPIPS), smoother outputs

Sources

1 source
Hugging FacePrimaryVersion 6f5909a7e596173e25d4e97b07fd19cdf9611c76
huggingface.co/stabilityai/sdxl-vae/tree/6f5909a7e596173e25d4e97b07fd19cdf9611c76

Verified Oct 4

Model artifacts

1 artifact

diffusion_pytorch_model.safetensors

safetensors · 319 MB · SHA-256 1598f3d24932…2341 · Hugging Face

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Source excerpts

3 excerpts

--- license: mit tags: - stable-diffusion - stable-diffusion-diffusers inference: false --- # SDXL - VAE #### How to use with 🧨 diffusers You can integrate this fine-tuned VAE decoder to your existing `diffusers` workflows, by including a `vae` argument to the `StableDiffusionPipeline` ```py from diffusers.models import AutoencoderKL from diffusers import StableDiffusionPipeline model = "stabilityai/your-stable-diffusion-model" vae = AutoencoderKL.from_pretrained("stabilityai/sdxl-vae") pipe = StableDiffusionPipeline.from_pretrained(model, vae=vae) ``` ## Model [SDXL](https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-0.9) is a [latent diffusion model](https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10752), where the diffusion operates in a pretrained, learned (and fixed) latent space of an autoencoder. While the bulk of the semantic composition is done by the latent diffusion model, we can improve _local_, high-frequency details in generated images by improving the quality of the autoencoder. To this end, we train the same autoencoder architecture used for the original [Stable Diffusion](https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion) at a larger batch-size (256 vs 9) and additionally track the weights with an exponential moving average (EMA). The resulting autoencoder outperforms the original model in all evaluated reconstruction metrics, see the table below. ## Evaluation _SDXL-VAE vs original kl-f8 VAE vs f8-ft-MSE_ ### COCO 2017 (256x256, val, 5000 images) | Model | rFID | PSNR | SSIM | PSIM | Link | Comments |----------|------|--------------|---------------|---------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | | | | | | | | | SDXL-VAE | 4.42 | 24.7 +/- 3.9 | 0.73 +/- 0.13 | 0.88 +/- 0.27 | https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/sdxl-vae/blob/main/sdxl_vae.safetensors | as used in SDXL | | original | 4.99 | 23.4 +/- 3.8 | 0.69 +/- 0.14 | 1.01 +/- 0.28 | https://ommer-lab.com/files/latent-diffusion/kl-f8.zip | as used in SD | | ft-MSE | 4.70 | 24.5 +/- 3.7 | 0.71 +/- 0.13 | 0.92 +/- 0.27 | https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/sd-vae-ft-mse-original/resolve/main/vae-ft-mse-840000-ema-pruned.ckpt | resumed with EMA from ft-EMA, emphasis on MSE (rec. loss = MSE + 0.1 * LPIPS), smoother outputs |

Source context: 235944 downloads · 779 likes · Library diffusers · Repo stabilityai/sdxl-vae

Source context: 254307 downloads · 760 likes · Library diffusers · Repo stabilityai/sdxl-vae