What are Custom Nodes?

Other software might call them "mods" or "plugins": they're basically plugins that add features ComfyUI doesn't have out of the box.

They can add support for AI models you can't use by default, pack complex processing into a single node, or even just make the design look cooler. They're one of the things that make ComfyUI so powerful.

Risks of Custom Nodes

They're very handy, but keep in mind that the more you install, the more likely you are to run into trouble.

  • Nodes conflict with each other and cause errors
  • The author stops updating it, and it breaks on newer ComfyUI
  • It might contain malicious code (the chance isn't zero)

Of course, plenty of techniques can't be used without custom nodes, so we'll install them as needed. Just don't forget that "the fewer, the better".

Installing Custom Nodes

Normally, you install them from ComfyUI Manager.

Using ComfyUI Manager (Recommended)

  1. Install ComfyUI Manager
    • If ComfyUI Manager is not installed yet, please refer to ComfyUI Manager to install it.
  2. Click Manager in the menu
  3. Click Custom Nodes Manager
  4. Search for the node name in the search bar
  5. Click Install (latest is usually fine for the version)
  6. Click Restart to restart ComfyUI

Installing Manually

Do this when a node isn't in Manager, or when you want the latest development version.

  1. In a terminal, go to the ComfyUI/custom_nodes folder
  2. Download the repository with git clone
    cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/username/repository-name.git
  3. Install libraries if necessary
    # venv
cd path/to/ComfyUI
venv/Scripts/activate
cd custom_nodes/custom_node
pip install -r requirements.txt

# portable version
cd path/to/ComfyUI/custom_nodes/custom_node
../../../python_embeded/python.exe -s -m pip install -r requirements.txt
  4. Restart ComfyUI

Custom Nodes to Install Right Away

We mostly build with the default nodes, but some things you'll need every day just aren't there, so please install these.

Useful Nodes

ComfyUI Native vs Wrapper

You don't really need to remember this, but custom nodes broadly come in two types.

1. ComfyUI Native

As I touched on in What is ComfyUI?, ComfyUI's real strength is its optimization, which lets AI models run comfortably even on home PCs.

Custom nodes built on this core are called ComfyUI native, and they get the full benefit of those strengths.

2. Wrapper

These are nodes that wrap external code so it runs on ComfyUI.

They're often made to run things like research code on ComfyUI more or less as is. They're often not well optimized, and tend to be unstable: heavy, or prone to errors.

Of course, many techniques are only available through wrappers, and many implementations do their own optimization. Be deeply grateful to the developers, but it's best to treat them as something for testing.