Why Is ComfyUI the Strongest? The Open-Source Ecosystem and Future Challenges

Introduction

Hello, this is Easygoing.

Today, I’d like to talk about ComfyUI, the generative AI tool that many of you are already using every day.

ComfyUI Is Currently the Most Widely Used AI Tool

As of February 2026, ComfyUI is the most popular generative AI tool.

Key Strengths of ComfyUI

• Immediate support for the latest models
• Fast and smooth performance
• Extremely high extensibility through custom nodes

ComfyUI’s development pace is incredibly fast — when a new AI model is released, it usually gets supported almost the same day.

Thanks to excellent VRAM management and overall performance optimization, even heavy AI models run smoothly and responsively.

Moreover, the vast number of custom nodes created by the community allows users to build exactly the workflows they want, earning strong support even among professional creators.

It All Started with “Fennec-Eared Characters”

Let’s take a look back at the development philosophy of ComfyUI through comments from its creator, comfyanonymous.

ComfyUI Conference in Shanghai (March 29, 2025)

• People don’t use AI just to make things “easier.”
• ComfyUI is a tool that lets users put in more effort than ever before to create masterpieces.
• ComfyUI is an “unfinished tool” — it only becomes truly powerful once users add custom nodes tailored to their needs.

The development of ComfyUI began in January 2023, when comfyanonymous was deeply immersed in image generation with Stable Diffusion 1.

He started the project specifically because he wanted to create beautiful anime illustrations of characters with fennec ears.

While many AI tools at the time — including Midjourney — were focused on simple prompt-based generation, ComfyUI took a different path: it aimed to empower users who are willing to invest time and effort to produce truly satisfying, high-quality work.

ComfyUI is licensed under the open-source GNU General Public License v3.0 (GNU GPL v3.0), allowing anyone to freely modify it and publish custom nodes.

Thanks to this huge ecosystem of custom nodes, users can create truly unique workflows — which is why ComfyUI became the go-to choice for people seeking one-of-a-kind illustrations.

ComfyUI Runs Smoothly Even with Heavy Models

ComfyUI was designed from the ground up to handle large models efficiently.

Interview on the Latent Space Podcast (January 5, 2025)

• The biggest strength of ComfyUI is its memory management.
• Normal GPU drivers only start paging models to RAM once VRAM is exceeded.
• ComfyUI predicts VRAM usage in advance, splits models intelligently, and controls them to avoid paging entirely — resulting in smooth performance.

Normally, when a model exceeds available VRAM, the GPU begins paging parts of the model to system RAM — but this only kicks in after VRAM is already full, causing severe slowdowns.

By analyzing the workflow ahead of time and predicting VRAM consumption, ComfyUI proactively splits and manages models — avoiding slow paging and allowing users to comfortably run very large models.

The Rise of SDXL Made ComfyUI Explode in Popularity!

When people first tried ComfyUI, many found it difficult to use and considered it a tool for advanced users — so it didn’t spread quickly at first.

But in July 2023, when Stable Diffusion XL was released, ComfyUI’s popularity skyrocketed.

Search trends: ComfyUI vs Stable Diffusion webUI

Model size comparison for image generation AI

Stable Diffusion XL was about 3× larger than the commonly used Stable Diffusion 1.5 at the time, and it required switching between Base and Refiner models — resulting in extremely high VRAM usage.

In the then-dominant Stable Diffusion webUI (A1111), exceeding VRAM caused generation times to balloon several times over, whereas ComfyUI could maintain practical generation speeds even when VRAM was tight. This led many users to accept the learning curve and switch to ComfyUI.

Since SDXL, model sizes have continued to balloon — and ComfyUI’s ability to stably handle models larger than available VRAM is the main reason it enjoys overwhelming support today.

The Birth of Comfy-Org and Fundraising

In June 2023, comfyanonymous joined Stability AI, but left in June 2024 to become a co-founder of Comfy-Org, dedicating himself fully to ComfyUI development thereafter.

Comfy-Org successfully raised over $17 million from investors, hired top talent, and dramatically accelerated development.

Comfy-Org team members

• comfyanonymous: Original developer of ComfyUI
• Dr.Lt.Data: Creator of ComfyUI-Manager, ComfyUI-Impact-Pack, and key figure in the custom node ecosystem
• pythongossss: Developer of ComfyUI-Custom-Scripts

With this structure in place, ComfyUI achieved day-one support for new models — and starting with Flux.1 and later models, it has come to dominate almost the entire market share among AI image tools.

Challenges Facing ComfyUI

So far we’ve looked back at ComfyUI’s history based on interviews with comfyanonymous.

Now, let’s examine the challenges ComfyUI faces going forward.

1. Balancing Open Source with Monetization

As mentioned earlier, Comfy-Org has begun operating as a proper company after receiving investment.

Naturally, investors expect returns — they want to see profits from ComfyUI.

In May 2025, external API node services were launched, allowing paid access to external models such as Google’s Nano Banana and OpenAI’s GPT-Image.

Then in November 2025, the Comfy-Cloud β service began, enabling users to rent powerful cloud GPUs to run ComfyUI.

Being able to run external web services directly inside ComfyUI workflows is a huge benefit for users — but at the same time, it risks driving many competing online services out of business.

If Comfy-Org continues aggressively expanding paid services at the current pace, there is growing concern that eventually the core of ComfyUI itself might become closed-source and monetized.

2. Lock-in with Z-Image and Flux.2

As of February 2026, Z-Image and Flux.2 are widely regarded as the most promising next-generation image generation AI models.

ComfyUI officially supported both models from the very day they were released.

However, the versions published by Comfy-Org include breaking changes that prevent them from being loaded correctly in other generative AI tools.

Comparison: Original Z-Image vs. Comfy-Org version

• Original (Tongyi-MAI version)
• Comfy-Org version

Comparison: Original Flux.2 [klein] 4B vs. Comfy-Org version

• Original (Black Forest Labs version)
• Comfy-Org version

The main goal of these modifications is faster processing, but because the structures differ, models fine-tuned or adjusted in ComfyUI cannot be directly loaded into other AI tools.

It is said that ComfyUI now holds overwhelming market share among next-generation image generation tools including Z-Image and Flux.2 — and indeed, most models published on Civitai and Hugging Face today are ComfyUI-exclusive formats.

While it is technically possible to analyze the structure and write scripts to restore the original format, ComfyUI’s format has effectively become the industry standard — further strengthening its dominance over AI tools.

3. Risk That Custom Nodes May Become Unusable

Next, let’s look at the custom nodes that form the backbone of ComfyUI.

Two major updates are approaching that will affect a large number of custom nodes.

3-1. Update to Nodes 2.0

On December 5, 2025, the Nodes 2.0 beta — a major refresh of ComfyUI’s UI — was implemented.

Features of Nodes 2.0

How to enable Nodes 2.0

Nodes 1.0 (current)

Nodes 2.0 (new version)

In traditional ComfyUI, the workflow was rendered as one single canvas drawing. In Nodes 2.0, each node is rendered as a separate element.

This improves extensibility for node design, but because the implementation is more complex, performance decreases.

The transition to Nodes 2.0 is a breaking change, and nodes that relied on the old canvas rendering method will no longer function.

rgthree-comfy will not support Nodes 2.0

rgthree-comfy is the second most downloaded custom node in ComfyUI — extremely popular.

Custom node download rankings in ComfyUI

Message when loading rgthree-comfy

[rgthree-comfy] ComfyUI's new Node 2.0 rendering may be incompatible with some rgthree-comfy nodes and features, breaking some rendering as well as losing the ability to access a node's properties (a vital part of many nodes). It also appears to run MUCH more slowly spiking CPU usage and causing jankiness and unresponsiveness, especially with large workflows. Personally I am not planning to use the new Nodes 2.0 and, unfortunately, am not able to invest the time to investigate and overhaul rgthree-comfy where needed. If you have issues when Nodes 2.0 is enabled, I'd urge you to switch it off as well and join me in hoping ComfyUI is not planning to deprecate the existing, stable canvas rendering all together.

The author of rgthree-comfy, rgthree, has publicly stated that he has no plans to support Nodes 2.0 due to performance degradation and loss of functionality in many of his nodes.

3-2. Will Nodes v3 eliminate even more custom nodes?

ComfyUI is currently moving toward Nodes v3 (v3 schema).

Although the naming is a bit confusing, Nodes v3 (v3 schema) is completely different from Nodes 2.0 — it involves a major change to the node structure itself.

Nodes v3 aims to separate custom node Python logic from the ComfyUI core and enable more efficient use of multiple GPUs.

While this will reduce conflicts between custom nodes, it is not backward compatible with v1/v2 — meaning all custom node code must be rewritten.

For the time being, v1/v2 and v3 will coexist, but when support for v1/v2 eventually ends, a large number of custom nodes will be eliminated.

Summary: ComfyUI’s Challenges

• ComfyUI has monopolized next-generation generative AI tools
• That monopoly makes it an attractive acquisition target for investors
• Balancing major feature refreshes with compatibility

In this article, we looked back at the secrets behind ComfyUI’s dominance and considered the challenges ahead.

From watching interviews with comfyanonymous, he doesn’t come across as a stereotypical “genius” engineer — rather, he seems like a sincere, dedicated developer who simply wanted to create beautiful anime illustrations.

It’s remarkable that he and the Comfy-Org team, working together with the community, have built what is now the dominant tool for next-generation AI creation.

However, the economic value is now enormous. The key question moving forward is: how far can Comfy-Org resist capital-driven enclosure and truly protect the open-source nature of the project?

I plan to keep watching closely.

Thank you so much for reading until the end!