By AdobeSan Jose, United States1 product across 1 category
Built for this. Trained on licensed material and sold with indemnification, which is the whole point if you ship client work. Sits inside Photoshop and Illustrator.
Free plan
Yes
Small monthly credit allowance
Month to month
$9.99/mo
Firefly Standard
Billed yearly
—
No yearly price published
Watch out: Weakest as a standalone generator; its value is the integration and the legal cover. Full use needs a Creative Cloud plan.
By IdeogramToronto, Canada1 product across 1 category
Built for this. The one that renders readable text inside an image, which almost nothing else does reliably. That makes it the choice for anything with words in it.
Free plan
Yes
Free tier with a daily generation allowance
Month to month
$20/mo
Plus
Billed yearly
$15/mo
$180 a year, Plus plan −25%
Watch out: Narrower than the general generators once you move past typography. Its pricing page has refused or 404ed on three separate runs.
All plans (5)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free tier with a daily generation allowance
Plus
$20/mo · $15/mo yearly
1,000 credits a month, private generation, unlimited slow credits, priority top-ups at $4
Pro
$60/mo · $42/mo yearly
3,500 credits a month, batch generation, quality export
Team
$30/mo · $20/mo yearly
1,500 credits a user a month, central billing
Enterprise
Custom
private custom models and API volume discounts. API usage is priced separately
By CanvaSydney, Australia2 products across 2 categories
Built for this. Fine-grained control over style and consistency across a set, with a generous daily free allowance to work through.
Free plan
Yes
150 fast tokens a day
Month to month
$12/mo
Essential
Billed yearly
$10/mo
Essential plan −17%
Watch out: Owned by Canva since July 2024, so its future is tied to a design suite rather than to itself. Its pricing page refused automated reading three times.
All plans (6)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free plan, 150 fast tokens a day
Essential
$12/mo · $10/mo yearly
8,500 fast tokens a month
Premium
$30/mo · $24/mo yearly
25,000 fast tokens a month
Ultimate
$60/mo · $48/mo yearly
60,000 fast tokens a month
Team Starter
$24/mo
25,000 fast tokens a seat plus 75,000 shared
Team Growth
$48/mo
60,000 fast tokens a seat plus 180,000 shared. Custom team plans and an API tier are priced separately
By MagnificMalaga, Spain1 product across 1 category
Built for this. The upscaler that adds detail rather than smoothing it, and the one people use on a render that is right but too small.
Free plan
Yes
Free tier with a small daily credit allowance, which upscaling exhausts quickly
Month to month
$20/mo
Premium
Billed yearly
$14.50/mo
Premium plan −28%
Watch out: Adding detail means inventing it, so faces and text change. One subscription now covers generation and upscaling from a shared credit balance that upscaling drains fast.
All plans (6)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free tier with a small daily credit allowance, which upscaling exhausts quickly
Premium
$20/mo · $14.50/mo yearly
20,000 credits a month (240,000 a year with rollover on annual), about 133 images or 21 videos a month, Spaces and 250M stock assets
Premium+
$45/mo · $33.75/mo yearly
unlimited generations, 45,000 credits a month (600,000 a year on annual), about 300 images or 47 videos a month
Pro
$110/mo · $82.50/mo yearly
112,500 credits a month (1.5M a year on annual), with a 300,000-credit option that adds Nano Banana Pro
Business
$69/mo · $55/mo yearly
90,000 credits a month shared across the team (1.08M a year on annual), no training on your data
Two things separate these and both are on every card.
Fit
Whether a tool is built for this job, a strong fit for it, or
able to do it without that being its focus.
Free plan
Whether there is a tier you can keep using rather than a
trial that expires.
The order
Fit first, then a free plan, then alphabetical. There is
no score, no weighting we decline to publish, and nothing on this site a company can buy.
Questions
What is the best ai for designers?
There is no single answer, which is why this page lists 9 rather than one: Figma AI, Adobe Firefly, Midjourney, Canva Magic Studio, Photoroom, Ideogram, Leonardo.ai, Magnific, Krea. 6 of them are built for this kind of work rather than able to do it. Start with a free one.
Which of these have a free plan?
8 of the 9: Figma AI, Adobe Firefly, Canva Magic Studio, Photoroom, Ideogram, Leonardo.ai, Magnific, Krea. Free means a real free tier you can keep using, not a trial that expires.
How was this list chosen?
By hand, from the 750 products this site tracks, and it is checked against the catalogue on every build — a product renamed or removed breaks the build rather than quietly disappearing from here. Nothing on this site can be paid for: no listing, no position, no wording.
