There are numerous AI art generators available out there, but very few come close to Midjourney’s capabilities. Having said that, it’s also true that Midjourney is a premium service that costs $10 per month. Yeah, Midjourney has put an end to its freemium model. So, in this article, we list the best Midjourney alternatives that are mostly free and have a powerful text-to-image model. On that note, let’s jump to the list.
1. Google Imagen 3
Google’s Imagen 3 model is by far the best alternative to Midjourney and it’s available for free via Gemini. Google’s AI image generation model was underperforming for quite some time, but with the Imagen 3 model, Google has risen to the top. It’s that good. Be it photorealism or abstract imagery, Imagen 3 can do it all with great accuracy.
Imagen 3 is part of Gemini, so you can use the Gemini chatbot to generate AI images without any cost. It’s available to free users as well. Consider my example, I asked Gemini to create an image of a squirrel in a mountain landscape, and this is what Imagen 3 generated with perfect shadows, depth effect, and animal features.
That said, Google has blocked image generation of humans after the image generation fiasco last year. Apart from that, you can’t edit, inpaint, or outpaint images which is a potential limitation of Imagen 3. Nevertheless, for realistic AI image generation, Imagen 3 stands as a potential alternative to Midjourney.
Pros Cons Powered by Google’s impressive Imagen 3 model No inpainting or outpainting features Photorealistic image generation Can’t generate images of humans Free to use
Platforms: Web, Android, and iOS
Pricing: Free, Gemini Advanced costs $20
2. Flux
Flux is one of the promising open-source alternatives to Midjourney that has grabbed headlines in the AI space. It has been developed by Black Forest Labs, a company formed by ex-Stable Diffusion researchers and engineers. Flux is touted as one of the best image generation models for producing photorealistic images. Just like Midjourney, Flux can produce human images with accurate rendering of hands, fingers, and eyes.
Not only that, it can also render texts accurately. We pitted Flux and Midjourney in a detailed comparison and found that Flux matches and even outperforms Midjourney in many aspects. That said, Flux doesn’t offer a consumer-facing app or website to generate AI images. Its image models — Flux 1.1 [pro], Flux .1 [pro], Flux .1 [dev], and Flux .1 [schnell] — are available via third-party service providers.
So if you want to generate AI images using the Flux model, you can visit fal.ai, Replicate, Hugging Face, or BasedLabs. Note that most of the services are free.
Pros Cons Powered by Flux’s powerful image models No official consumer-facing app or website Open-source and free Accurate text rendering Highly photorealistic image generation of humans
Platforms: Web
Pricing: Free, available via third-party services
3. DALL-E 3
DALL-E 3 ranks among the best Midjourney alternatives and you can use it for free on ChatGPT. It has been developed by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. You can use it to create photorealistic images from descriptions in natural language. The company released DALL-E in 2021, and after a year, it came up with DALL-E 2 in 2022.
Then in 2023, OpenAI announced Dall- E 3 that can produce extremely detailed and accurate images taking into account even nuanced prompts. Now, it is far more accurate and realistic in generating images, and it outputs images in 4x better resolution. The best part is that image generation via DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT is now free for all.
Besides that, DALL-E 3 can understand your prompt, and blend various concepts, styles, and attributes to create a unique image that will surprise you. Overall, I think DALL-E 3 is one of the most powerful text-to-image AI art generators out there, and you should try it in place of Midjourney.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Accurate and realistic visual translation | Has not been updated for long |
| Expand canvas of images | |
| Built on 3.5B parameters |
Platforms: Web, Android, iOS, macOS, Windows
Pricing: Free, ChatGPT Plus starts at $20 per month
4. Stable Diffusion
If there is a text-to-image model that comes very close to Midjourney then it’s Stable Diffusion. Unlike Midjourney, which is a premium and proprietary model, Stable Diffusion is a free and open-source model. Plus, it can be installed even on a local PC having at least 8GB of VRAM. Stable Diffusion is already used by many websites and apps to quickly generate images from text input.
Stable Diffusion is developed on Latent Diffusion Models, Eleuther AI, LAION, OpenCLIP, OpenAI’s ADM codebase, CompVis, and more. The company has released its latest Stable Diffusion 3.5 models (Large, Large Turbo, and Medium) for realistic image generation.
I have used Stable Diffusion multiple times in the past, and it has been very fast at generating images. The latest SD 3.5 model has also fixed human artifacts and now renders hands, eyes, and fingers accurately. Put simply, Stable Diffusion is a capable text-to-image model and you should definitely check it out.
Pros Cons Open-source Not free entirely Powerful capabilities Trained on a large dataset
Platforms: Web
Pricing: Free, available via third-party services
5. Ideogram
Unlike general AI image generation models that can do it all, Ideogram has been developed to generate legible text accurately. For generating logos, posters, and realistic images with texts, Ideogram is simply the best Midjourney alternative out there. Free users get 10 credits per week and you can use those credits to generate slick logos and posters.
Ideogram recently introduced its Canvas feature that brings AI image editing. You can magically fill selected areas of images, extend them, edit your existing images, and more. Basically, you have all the inpainting and outpainting features on Ideogram. To sum up, you should definitely use Ideogram for texts, posters, and logo generations over Midjourney.
Pros Cons Best for texts, logos, and posters Not a general image model Canvas for AI image editing Edit existing images
Platforms: Web, Android, iOS
Pricing: Free 10 credits per week, Paid plan starts at $7 per month
6. Adobe Firefly
In the digital graphics industry, Adobe is one of the foremost companies to have built a great suite of software. And now, in this AI age, Adobe is leaving no stone unturned to innovate and compete with other image-generation models. In an attempt to rival Midjourney, Adobe has released its own creative AI model called Firefly.
It has a number of tools for text-to-image generation, image expansion, vector recoloring, text effects, inpainting, sketch-to-image, and more. However, most of the tools are still in development, but Adobe has already released the Text to Image tool, and currently, it’s free to all users.
Just like Midjourney, you can enter the prompt in natural language, and it will output four images in different variations. You can choose the content type such as Art, Graphic, Photo, or None. There are also other options like choosing color, tone, lighting, composition, and more. Overall, in my testing, I found it to be fast at generating images and did a decent job at creating landscapes and other concepts. However, for human subjects, it’s not very photorealistic like Midjourney.
Pros Cons In-house text-to-image model by Adobe Still a work-in-progress Has promising features like image expansion and sketch-to-image Free for now
Platforms: Web
Pricing: Free
7. Bing Image Creator
In case you are unaware, Microsoft has integrated AI image generation into Bing AI Chat, besides the standalone website. You can now generate images with a natural prompt in the Bing Chat interface. However, you must use the “Creative” mode to trigger the Bing AI Image Creator. It’s powered by OpenAI’s DALL- E 3 and 2 models, and there is seemingly no limit on creating images on Bing Chat. Basically, it exists as a free service in Bing Search.
That said, after the first 25 image generations per day, you don’t get quick output results and you need to wait for the final image. Sure, it’s not good at generating human faces, and the quality is a notch lower than Midjourney, but overall, it does a good job at quickly creating AI images even on an abstract concept. So if you are looking for a free alternative to Midjourney, you can very well give Bing Image Creator a shot.
Pros Cons Best free AI image generator Limited customization options Powered by DALL- E 3 and 2 Integrated with Bing Chat
Platforms: Web, Android, iOS
Pricing: Free
8. Leonardo.Ai
Leonardo.Ai is a hot new text-to-image generation model that is being compared to Midjourney right now. After being in beta for a while, it’s now open to all with access to its in-house models and some proprietary models as well. It has also introduced Alchemy in beta where you can customize the image with presets, change the resolution, adjust contrast and do a lot more.
Leonardo.Ai has been primarily developed to generate game assets, be it environments, buildings, items, helmets, and more. The company has brought multiple artistic tools to quickly generate production-ready visual assets. However, it can be used for any creative tasks.
You can even train your own AI model and create images for your personalized environment. What stood out to me the most is that Leonardo.Ai is also good at generating human faces without any blemish in the eyes. So if you are interested in a powerful text-to-image model like Midjourney, Leonardo.Ai is a great alternative.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Best for generating game assets | After 150 image generations, you need to subscribe |
| Character portraits are quite good | |
| Custom dimension support |
Platforms: Web
Pricing: Free up to 150 images, Paid plan starts at $10 per month
9. Blue Willow by LimeWire
Blue Willow is an interesting alternative to Midjourney that amassed more than 300 million users on its Discord server in just a few months. It’s free to use for up to 20 images. Blue Willow has now been acquired by LimeWire and you no longer need to join its Discord server to generate AI images. People are using Blue Willow to create logos, characters from comics, digital artwork, landscapes, graphic concepts, and more.
I tried some prompts, and it generated some decent images. But talking about realistic scenes, well, Blue Willow falls short of Midjourney. Nevertheless, for any kind of digital art or graphics, Blue Willow does an excellent job. Though, what I liked the most about this tool is that it generates images within a minute despite the large user base, which is cool. To sum up, Blue Willow is a promising free alternative to Midjourney and you should definitely give it a try.
Pros Cons Surprisingly good at generating human faces Free users can only generate 20 images Free to use; no limitation Very fast
Platforms: Web, Android, iOS
Pricing: Free
10. Fotor AI Image Generator
Fotor is an online photo editor, but recently it released its own AI image generator. You can enter text prompts with various details and it will recreate the image using your description. The best part is that it has also launched an image-to-image AI photo generator. Apart from that, you can define your style including Photography, Conceptual art, Anime, Cartoon, Oil painting and more.
Furthermore, there are standard options like customizing the aspect ratio, the number of images to generate, further editing, and more. As for the availability, well, Fotor AI offers 5 credits to free users. After exhausting it, you need to buy the Pro plan which costs $2.66 per month. All in all, the generated images are quite good and it comes very close to Midjoruney in conceptual arts.
Pros Cons AI image generator is pretty capable Needs to create an account Good for conceptual art Only 5 free credits Further image editing
Platforms: Web, Android, iOS
Pricing: Free
11. NightCafe
Again, NightCafe is not an image model itself, but a website service that lets you access multiple text-to-image models. It supports Stable Diffusion (the latest SDXL 1.0 model too), DALL-E 2, CLIP-Guided Diffusion, VQGAN+CLIP, and Style Transfer. If you want to create masterpieces modeled on old artworks, you can choose Style Transfer; you can pick CLIP-Guided Diffusion for artistic images; and pick VQGAN+CLIP to generate beautiful sceneries.
Then, there are Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 models for next-generation image synthesis. Having said that, the website is not entirely free to use. You only get 3 free credits on sign up, and you have to pay or earn credits through social campaigns to use other advanced models. Simply put, NightCafe is another service that you can try to compare various image models.
Pros Cons Very capable text-to-image model Not entirely free Stable Diffusion and DALL·E available Multiple limitations Best for creating old masterpieces
Platforms: Web
Pricing: Free up to 3 credits, Paid plan starts at $4.79/ month
12. Lexica
Lexica is an AI-image generator website that has finetuned its own image model based on Stable Diffusion. Its next-generation model is Aperture v3.5 and it’s great at creating portraits. It also acts as a search engine for Stable Diffusion-generated images. You can use it to generate 100 AI images per month without paying any charge. And for $10 a month, you can generate as many as 1000 images in a month.
Anyway, moving to image generation, you can use its Lexica Aperture v3.5 or v2 model and choose dimensions up to 768 x 1152. In my brief usage, Lexica performed pretty well and came up with high-quality images. If you want to use an AI image generator like Midjourney for free, this Stable Diffusion-powered Lexica model is a promising place to start.
Pros Cons Effortless to use A little slow to generate images 3 models are available Generate 100 images per month for free
Platforms: Web
Pricing: Free up to 100 images/month, Paid plans start at $10/month
So these are the top Midjourney alternatives that you can use to generate incredible AI images. Besides some foundational models like Imagen 3, Flux, Stable Diffusion, and Dall- E 3, some companies have also built their own in-house models so check them out for different styles and variations.
Apart from that, in our step-by-step guide to using Midjourney, we’ve explained how you could leverage the potential of its powerful text-to-image model. Let us know which Midjourney alternative surprised you in the comment section below.
