There are several AI art generators available for public use, but only a few come close to the level of what Midjourney offers. Midjourney’s deep learning algorithm is undoubtedly the best in picking up text prompts to create an image from scratch.
But unfortunately, Midjourney is a premium service. Midjourney no longer provides a trial usage plan, and any user that wants Midjourney-generated photos must pay 10 USD per month as part of the cheapest subscription plan.
This might not be a viable option for many users trying out an art generator for the first time. So here in this article, we have included the top 10 alternatives of Midjourney that you can try if Midjourney’s subscription plan seems a bit too much for you.
Best Midjourney Alternatives in 2023 (free & paid)
1. Stable Diffusion
Stable Diffusion is the closest free alternative to Midjourney. But unlike Midjourney, Stable Diffusion is a free and open-source model. Anybody can install it on their PC if they have at least 8GB of VRAM.
Stable Diffusion is already used by different apps that generate images from text via API integration. It is developed on Latent Diffusion Models, Eleuther AI, LAION, OpenCLIP, OpenAI’s ADM codebase, CompVis, and more.
The generated images on Stable Diffusion need to be included behind Midjourney in terms of quality. Still, things are improving with the latest Stable Difussion XL Beta release. Stable Diffusion still struggles a lot in rendering human eyes, hands, and fingers correctly. But if human portraits are not required, Stable Diffusion is an excellent Midjourney alternative.
Stable Diffusion is available to download as a software/application on a PC.
Price: Free
| Pros | Cons |
| Open Source | Human hand and eye rendering is not accurate |
| Large dataset used for training |
2. DALL-E 2
The following AI art generator in the list is Dall-E 2. It is a product from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. So you can rest assured that it produces one of the best outputs you can imagine within seconds.
Dall-E came into existence in 2021; the year after, in 2022, we had the Dall-E 2. Dall-E 2 improved the quality of images generated, with the output images having four times higher resolution than what we saw with the original Dall-E.
Unlike Stable Diffusion is not entirely free. It is better than Midjourney, though, as you get 15 free credits for generating 15 results for free. But post that, and you must buy credits to keep using Dall-E 2.
Price: 15 credits free. $15 for more credits.
| Pros | Cons |
| Accurate and realistic | Expensive |
| Expansion of image canvas |
3. Leonardo.Ai
Leonardo.Ai is a text-to-image art generator that is released recently. Only early bird access is available for this tool; only a few select users can use its full potential. The tool is still under development.
However, you can use its Discord server to check out its image generation capabilities.
Leonardo.Ai is currently the best when it comes to generating production-ready visual assets. You can train your AI model here and create images per your preference and supported environment. This tool takes care of Stable Diiffusion’s shortcoming, which is dealing with the eyes of humans. It does an excellent job at that.
This tool is available for use as a web platform. You just need to visit the official site or Discord server to use its services for free, at least for now.
Price: Free but only with early bird access.
| Pros | Cons |
| Potraits generation better than others | Limited access to early bird users |
| Train your own model |
4. Bing Image Creator
Bing image creator works with the Dall-E model running in the background as an integration. All you need to do is use the “Creative” mode trigger to initiate the image generation model and enter anything whose picture you want to generate. And this is all possible directly from Bing AI chat.
And the limit on image generation is endless as there is no cap on image generation. It is an entirely free Bing Service.
The problem with Dall-E exists here, as well as the user needs help to create quality images similar to Midjourney, and it especially struggles with human image generation. However, it is an excellent choice if you are looking to generate abstract art.
Although the generation is limitless, the speed considerably declines after the initial 25 images per day. After the 25 images, the user must wait in a queue to get the pictures.
You can use this as an app, or you can use the web platform. The choice remains with you.
Price: Free
| Pros | Cons |
| Bing Chat Integration | Customization options are limited |
| Powered by Dall-E |
5. Adobe Firefly
Adobe is a leader when it comes to the digital graphics industry. From image editors and video editors to graphic designing tools, Adobe has it all. And now, when everyone is getting on the AI wagon, Adobe plans to stay caught up. They have released their very own image-generating tool called the Adobe Firefly.
Adobe is working on several AI tools for text-to-image generation, image expansion, vector recoloring, text effects, inpainting, sketch-to-image, and more. All the other tools other than text-to-image generator are not yet released, though. Only the text-to-image generator, Firefly, is out now, and it is free for all users.
They will definitely start charging users once it becomes more popular, though. So until then, use it to your heart’s content. It produces results that are on par with Midjourney as well. But Midjourney’s human image generation is slightly better than the Adobe Firefly. But they will certainly get there, given Adobe’s presence in the graphic designing industry.
This tool is available for use only on the web platform.
Price: Free, but only the Beta version is available.
| Pros | Cons |
| Adobe’s text-to-image in-house model | Still needs work in terms of bugs. |
| Customization options |
6. Blue Willow
Blue Willow is another great alternative to Midourney, and it has been popular since its launch. In a short period of time, it has been able to amass more than 300 million users on its Discord server, and the best thing is that it is complete. You just need to enter your text into the server, and the tool will do its task.
And the image generation time is quite impressive too. It hardly takes a minute to generate the images based on the text. But where this tool struggles is with realistic scenes. Midjourney is still best at generating realistic images.
However, Blue Willow is an excellent free tool for users who want to create logos, characters from comics, digital artwork, landscapes, graphic concepts, and more.
This tool is available for use on Discord.
Price: Free
| Pros | Cons |
| Quick Generation Time | Requires Discord |
| Good at generating human portraits |
7. InstantArt
InstantArt uses 25 text-to-image models to generate the images, and it can create any image you want quite promptly within minutes. It includes powerful AI models like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney V4, Anything V3, Wifu, SynthWavePunk, IconsMI, and more.
You just need to enter a prompt for the type of image you want, add anything as a negative that you do not want to see on the generated image and choose the model among the 25 available for use.
The model selection cannot be set to automatic as well. InstantArt wants you to choose to model, and this could be the perfect tool for users who wish to try out the different models in one place.
You can also select the image dimension, offering a maximum size of 768 x 512. And the best thing about this tool is that it lets you use Midjourney V4 for free.
Price: Free
| Pros | Cons |
| 25+ image models | Throws error often |
| Midjourney V4 available for free |
8. NightCafe
Similar to InstantArt, NightCafe is also not a model in itself. In reality, it is basically a website service that lets you access and use multiple text-to-image models from one place. This includes Stable Diffusion (including the latest Stable Diffusion XL Beta model), DALL-E 2, CLIP-Guided Diffusion, VQGAN+CLIP, and Style Transfer.
But unfortunately, this is not entirely free to use. Since the models mentioned here are all advanced and the latest premium models, you will have to pay a chunk to use NightCafe to provide these models. On joining up, you get three free credits, after which you can either pay or run social campaigns to get more credits. Every generation will take up credit. So the number of free images you want to generate will be limited here.
This tool is available for use as a web platform.
Price: 3 Credits for free. Post that 5.99 USD per month subscription plan is required.
| Pros | Cons |
| Based on Stable Diffusion and Dall-E | Not entirely free to use |
| Best in terms of retro images |
9. Lexica
Lexica is an image generator based on Stable Diffusion, but it uses its own modified version. Lexica can be used for free to generate 100 images a month. But to generate more than 100 images, you will have to pay some money. More specifically, an additional 10 USD will get you a total of 1000 images in a month. This is on top of the 100 free images you get monthly.
There are different versions of Lexica available for use, and you can choose between the V3 or V2 models to get your high-quality images. Among all the tools mentioned in the article, Lexica comes out as the best in terms of quality, handling both graphical images and images containing humans.
This tool is available as a web platform for now.
Price: Free up to 100 images. Post that 10 USD for 1000 image generation.
| Pros | Cons |
| 100 image generation for free | Only two model versions available |
| Modified Stable Diffusion model |
10. Playground AI
Playground AI is another AI image generator that uses the Stable Diffusion and Dall-E model to create 1000 images daily for free. But the Dall-E model is not available for use with a free account. Additionally, the generation time also gets longer after the initial 50 images.
There are limitations in terms of image dimensions as well. You can only generate images with dimensions of 515 x 512 or 768 x 768.
But despite these shortcomings, it is still an excellent choice as a Midjourney alternative due to its quick generation time. Playground AI is also the only tool on this list that allows you to create sensual or NSFW art. For now, the tool is available for use as a web platform.
Price: 1000 images per day for free. 15 USD per month subscription plan to use the tool without limitations.
| Pros | Cons |
| Generate 1000 images for free per day | Many limitations for free users |
| Quick generation time |