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 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 Pixlr GroupStockholm, Sweden1 product across 1 category
Strong fit. A full photo editor in the browser with no install, now with generation and cleanup alongside the ordinary tools.
Free plan
Yes
Ad-supported
Month to month
$2.49/mo
Plus
Billed yearly
$1.99/mo
Plus plan −20%
Watch out: Predates this category and the AI is an addition rather than the foundation. The free tier is ad-supported.
All plans (4)
Plan
Price
What you get
Free
$0
Free tier, ad-supported
Plus
$2.49/mo · $1.99/mo yearly
ad-free, unlimited saves, 80 AI credits a month (960 a year on annual)
Premium
$9.99/mo · $7.99/mo yearly
all image, video and audio models, 4 concurrent generations, 1,000 AI credits a month (12,000 a year on annual), private mode
Ultra
$24.99/mo · $19.99/mo yearly
unlimited fast image generations, 8 concurrent generations, up to 10,000 AI credits a month (120,000 a year), priority queue. The $39.99 and $49.99 figures seen earlier are higher Ultra levels
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 thumbnails?
There is no single answer, which is why this page lists 8 rather than one: Canva Magic Studio, Midjourney, Photoroom, ChatGPT image generation, Adobe Firefly, Ideogram, Clipdrop, Pixlr. 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: Canva Magic Studio, Photoroom, ChatGPT image generation, Adobe Firefly, Ideogram, Clipdrop, Pixlr. 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.
