FREE Midjourney Alternatives in 2024: With Image Samples and Tool Comparison
Check out the Midjourney free alternative that you must try out in 2024. While Midjourney AI has made it to the headlines for its amazing image generation capabilities, there are many other alternatives available. For the purpose of exploring the capabilities of other image generation AI tools, we will be using the prompt “a dystopian city with red atmosphere, machines and weapons, army of robots” to compare the result produced by each of these tools. As the article progresses, we will also discuss free ai image generator similar to Midjourney.
In this article, we will be exploring the Midjourney alternative that can be used for generating images. Some of these tools allow free image generation while others have limit on free usage. Before exploring other tools, let us take a look at how to use Midjourney using the same prompt.
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Table of Contents
Key Highlights
Here is a detailed table comparing the features of Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Playground AI, Lexica AI, and Adobe Firefly:
Feature | Stable Diffusion | Midjourney | Playground AI | Lexica AI | Adobe Firefly |
Pricing | Free and open-source | Paid ($10/month) | Free and open-source | Free and open-source | Free |
Free images | 25 | 25 | 1000 images/ day | 100 images/month | Free |
Paid images | (999 – Unlimited) | 200/ month | 2000/day | 7000 fast generation/month 3 parallel fast-generation Unlimited slow generation |
Unlimited |
Speed | Fast | Slow | Fast | Fast | Slow |
Customization | Limited | Extensive | Limited | Limited | Extensive |
Licensing | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Not specified | CC BY-SA 4.0 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Not specified |
Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux | macOS, Windows | Windows, macOS | Windows, macOS | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android |
Minimum system requirements | 8GB of VRAM | 16GB of VRAM | 8GB of VRAM | 8GB of VRAM | 16GB of VRAM |
Supported languages | English | English | English | English | English |
Prompts | Up to 2048 characters | Up to 2048 characters | Up to 2048 characters | Up to 2048 characters | Up to 2048 characters |
Output formats | PNG, JPG | PNG, JPG | PNG, JPG | PNG, JPG | PNG, JPG |
Training data | ImageNet, WikiArt, Artbreeder | DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s CLIP, JPG-300M | ImageNet, WikiArt, Artbreeder | ImageNet, WikiArt, Artbreeder | DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s CLIP, JPG-300M |
Availability | Publicly available | Closed beta | Publicly available | Publicly available | Publicly available |
Images Created Using Midjourney
Midjourney is an AI platform that allows users to explore their imagination and create and unique images from text descriptions or prompts. It routinely releases new model versions to improve efficiency, coherency, and quality. This model excels at interpreting natural language prompts, supports higher resolution, and advanced features like repeating patterns. It is known for its high coherency and the ability to generate significantly more realistic imagery. Here, we can see the following two versions of the same prompt.
1. Using Version 5.1
2. Using Version 5.2
Let's explore some paid and free alternative to Midjourney in the next section.
Midjourney Alternatives That You Can Try
Here, we will look at the top Midjourney alternative tools that can be used for generating images.
1. Adobe Firefly
One of the best AI-based image-generative tools that can be a competing Midjourney free alternative tool is Adobe Firefly. Using this tool, you can perform multiple actions from generating an image to include additional elements in your image using generative fill. We will first select the Text to Image generative AI tool.
We will now add our prompt.
There will be a number of image suggestions amongst which you can pick the one that is as per your requirement. You also have the option to generate the image in a customized aspect ratio include landscape, portrait, square and widescreen.
Here is one of the full-scale versions created using Adobe Firefly’s Text-to-Image tool:
2. Playground AI
One of the free Midjourney alternative is an image-generation website called Playground AI. It can be considered as a good free Midjourney alternative. This generative tool uses both DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion 1.5 and 2.0 for generating images based on textual prompts. A user can create upto 1000 images per day with free commercial license every day. Below-given image is a screenshot of the website’s dashboard.
Let us now learn how to use this website to generate images. Here, we have added the prompt.
We can move this box to further create and extend the image. If we keep the same prompt, then the image will be created in a similar way. This step can be repeated again and again to expand the image.
You can change the prompt guidance as well as quality & details. By changing the prompt guidance, you can ensure that your image is generated closely to your prompt guidance. By improving the quality & details, one can make the image sharper and clearer.
Here is the image generated using Playground AI:
Another useful feature of Playground AI is to use reference images for inspiration. Here, we can create an image related to this reference image.
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3. Lexica
This Midjourney alternative is a generative tool that helps in creating images based on your prompts. The free version allows limited image generation. Let us see how you can generate images using Lexica AI. First of all, you need to sign up. After that, you can either search images based on your prompts. Another option is to generate images based on your prompts in Lexica.
Now, we will use the ‘Generate’ option to create images based on the prompts.
Here is one of the versions of the image generated using Lexica AI:
The tool comes with the feature to outpaint these images.
As you keep on outpainting the generated image, the image view will expand and you will be able to view the image in a broader perspective. Let us see another shot after using the ‘outpaint’ option.
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4. Craiyon
‘Craiyon’ is another AI-based image-generation tool. Using this tool, you can generate images as art, photo, or a drawing. Let us use the same prompt as we used earlier to see the result.
After processing your prompt, it will give you several options as shown below.
Here, you can click any of the images and upscale it as shown below.
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5. Stable Diffusion
This open-source model allows creators to use its capabilities to build platforms for generating images. Several versions are available.
5.1 Online
It is a free Midjourney alternative that is quite popular among users. It can be used for generating images from text prompts. This model can be installed on local PCs with at least 8 GB VRAM. Let us try generating an image using Stable Diffusion. First, click on ‘Get started for Free”.
The following results are generated using this prompt:
Here is one of the final versions:
5.2 ClipDrop-Stable Diffusion
It is the most recent and advanced model which is a great Midjourney alternative, that is exclusively available on the Clipdrop website. This free Midjourney alternative can generate high-quality images at 768×768 resolution, and it can be used to create images from a variety of text prompts, including descriptions, styles, and even other images.
Based on the prompt, it has generated multiple variations.
Here is one of the full scale version of the generated image.
6. Dall-E With Bing
Dall-E is another Midjourney alternative that comes enabled within Bing that you can use for creating images. However, you are not allowed to create copyrighted images or images of politicians and public figures. Every account gets up to 100 credits to generate images for free. New users are allowed 25 boosted generations for Image Creator. Each search uses 1 credit. Your credits get reset every week. Once your credits are used, you will still be able to generate images but it will be slower than before.
7. Dall-E With ChatGPT
Dall-E can now be used with ChatGPT. This is available with GPT-4. Ir is similar to Midjourney except the quality of the generated images is not as high as Midjourney. You just need to give the prompt and it will create the image. Let us consider the image created by Dall-E in ChatGPT.
8. Leonardo AI
Leonardo AI is one of the emerging competitors for Midjourney AI. This tool allows image generation with 8 credits. In the free version, every user gets 150 credits.
9. Sora
Not only Sora AI is a good free alternative to Midjourney. This is a text-to-video generator but it is also capable of generating images. At present, it is not available to the public for use. However, it is capable of generating images. It is capable of generating images of variable sizes upto 2048 x 2048 resolution. Let us take a look at the sample images that it has created.
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