By OpenAISan Francisco, United States3 products across 8 categories
Strong fit. Best for iterating conversationally — describe a change in words rather than re-prompting from scratch.
Free plan
Yes
Included in the free ChatGPT tier with limited image creation
Month to month
$20/mo
ChatGPT Plus
Billed yearly
—
No yearly price published
Watch out: Free tier generation limits are tight, and the free tier is ad supported. There is no separate image plan: you pay for ChatGPT Plus or a Business seat.
All plans (3)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Included in the free ChatGPT tier with limited image creation
ChatGPT Plus
$20/mo
higher quality image creation is part of the plan, not sold separately
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 Google DeepMindLondon, United Kingdom6 products across 6 categories
Strong fit. Generous free access and good instruction-following for edits to photos you already have.
Free plan
Yes
Included in the free Gemini tier with generous limits
Month to month
$4.99/mo
Google AI Plus
Billed yearly
$4.17/mo
$49.99 a year, Google AI Plus plan −16%
Watch out: Editing precision still trails purpose-built photo tools. There is no separate image plan: more usage comes with a Google AI Plus, Pro or Ultra subscription.
All plans (4)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Included in the free Gemini tier with generous limits
Google AI Plus
$4.99/mo
2x the usage limits and 400 GB of storage. Image generation is part of the plan, not sold separately
Google AI Pro
$19.99/mo
4x the usage limits, the Pro model and 5 TB of storage
Google AI Ultra
$99.99/mo
5x the Pro limits and 20 TB of storage. Introductory discounts on Plus and Pro were showing as this was checked
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
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 image generation?
There is no single answer, which is why this page lists 8 rather than one: Midjourney, ChatGPT image generation, Adobe Firefly, Gemini image generation, Grok Imagine, Ideogram, Leonardo.ai, Krea. 4 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?
7 of the 8: ChatGPT image generation, Adobe Firefly, Gemini image generation, Grok Imagine, Ideogram, Leonardo.ai, 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.
