The 6 Best Midjourney Alternatives to Try (Free & Paid)

Midjourney is a popular text-to-image and image-to-image generator. It’s won art competitions and set copyright precedent – but for all that, it doesn’t have a free plan or even a free trial.

The good news is there are now lots of other apps that are similar to Midjourney, and often better than Midjourney at specific things. So, whether you’re looking for a free alternative to Midjourney, an app with more options, or just something that’s a better tool for your needs, we can find the right app for you.

The Best Midjourney Alternatives

• Leonardo.Ai is the best alternative to Midjourney
• ChatGPT is the best chatbot alternative to Midjourney
• Canva AI is the best alternative to Midjourney for adding AI generated images to other work
• NightCafe is the best alternative to Midjourney with a community vibe
• Flux is the best alternative to Midjourney for customizability
• Google Gemini is the best alternative to Midjourney for video

What is Midjourney?

Midjourney is an AI-powered image generation tool. If you give it a text prompt like “a handsome renaissance artist roaming the streets of Venice,” it will generate an image that matches. You can also use images as part of your prompt, so you can have that artist look suspiciously similar to your Instagram profile picture.

The way Midjourney and other image generators are trained, allow them to understand the difference between Leonardo (renaissance artist) and Leonardo (hero in a half-shell), Lincoln (car) and Lincoln (president), and every other concept you can think of.

As well as generating images, there are a few things that make Midjourney, well, Midjourney:

• Midjourney started out as a Discord app and it’s still really community focused.
• Midjourney has always generated stylish images. You can create your own personal style and tweak things so that the images look the way you want.
• Midjourney allows you to directly edit the images you generate.
• Midjourney can now generate AI videos.

So, now we know what Midjourney can do, let’s look at the best alternatives. And maybe even answer the big question: Is there a better AI than Midjourney?

What to Look for in a Midjourney Alternative?

While Midjourney is well-known, it’s far from the only option for image and video generation and may not always be the best fit. If you want more flexibility, different workflows, and tools better tailored to your needs, it’s worth exploring alternatives.

Some of the big things to look for in a Midjourney alternative are:

• A freemium pricing model. Midjourney doesn’t allow you to trial it without handing over your card details. Don’t worry though, there are now lots of Midjourney free alternatives.
• Control and customizability. Midjourney and other AI image generators don’t always nail things on the first go (or even the fifth go) so you need to have ways to adjust and tweak your results.
• Access to multiple models. Different AI models are better at different things. If you want to be able to create diverse images and videos, you need a tool with multiple models available.
• Commercial use and enterprise features, at least if you want to use the images you generate for any kind of business or collaborate with your coworkers.
• Fast results. Even on the free plan, you don’t want to have to wait 10 minutes to see your images.

Not every option will hit every one of these points perfectly, so focus on the features that mean the most to you.

6 Midjourney Alternatives You can Start for Free

1. Leonardo.Ai

Best alternative to Midjourney for flexibility and advanced features

Leonardo.Ai is the best alternative to Midjourney for people who want flexibility, advanced features and creative control.

It gives you everything you love about Midjourney: You can generate images and videos from text and image prompts, dive deep and edit your generated assets using the powerful Canvas Editor, there’s an active community, and you can use anything you create for commercial purposes—even on the free plan (read more here).

But Leonardo also offers more options and advanced features on top of that. Leo has a great free plan, as well as paid individual and team plans which you can pick and choose between depending on your needs. You can use multiple models, including Phoenix, FLUX, GPT Image 1, and Veo 3. You can even fine-tune your own models to create an image generator that’s tailored to you.

Pricing: Free plan with 150 fast tokens/day; paid plans from $12/month for more tokens, more models, and more features.

2. ChatGPT

Best chatbot alternative to Midjourney

With ChatGPT, generating images is as easy as, well, chatting to a chatbot. Ask ChatGPT to create an image and it will do it using the GPT Image 1 model.

ChatGPT doesn’t offer the same level of flexibility as Midjourney. It only generates a single image at a time. If you want to change something, you have to tell the chatbot what to do – though there is a selection tool to make things easier.

For all that, ChatGPT has a lot going for it. It’s available for free and it’s really good at taking an image prompt and converting it to some other style. It was responsible for the Studio Ghiblification craze from a few months ago. And, of course, it comes with all ChatGPT’s other abilities.

Pricing: Free plan with limited access to image generation; paid plans from $20.

3. Canva AI

Best Midjourney alternative for adding AI generated images to other work

Tools like Midjourney are often just the first step in a creative workflow. You generate an image, but then you need to do something with it, whether it’s sharing it to social media, adding it to your funny birthday card design, or incorporating it in your slide deck.

With Canva, you can skip the hassle of switching apps. You can generate an image and add it to any of the millions of templates available, all from the Canva app. You can also use Canva’s image editing tools to directly make changes which can be pretty handy.

Pricing: Free plan with limited image generation; paid plans from $15/month.

4. NightCafe

Best Midjourney alternative with a community vibe

If you want that chaotic community feeling, NightCafe is the best Midjourney alternative. It gives you access to a variety of models, including Flux and Google Imagen 4, as well as countless fine-tuned community models designed to create everything from dark portraits to antique watercolors.

As for the community: there are daily competitions and you get rewards for using the app regularly. You can follow other creators, and like and comment on their images. You can also see what prompt, model, and settings they used, so it’s a great way to get inspired.

Pricing: Daily free credits, and they’re given out as rewards for consistent use. Credit packs from $6/month or $8 once off.

5. Flux

Best Midjourney alternative for customizability

Flux is a family of open models from Black Forest Labs that includes FLUX1.1 Pro, FLUX1.1 Schnell, FLUX1.1 Dev, and FLUX.1 Kontext. While you can try them using the playground on Black Forest Lab’s site, you’re more likely to see them in other apps like NightCafe and Leonardo. (If you’re not sure what image model an app is using, there’s a good chance it’s based on Flux.)

Flux’s big advantage is how customizable it is. Because they are open models, the licensing terms are incredibly permissive. Anyone can fine-tune a Flux model to customize it or use the API to add image generation to their app or website.

If there’s any downside to Flux, it’s that it’s hard to write about because it’s available in so many places in such different ways. It’s a good tool, but it’s challenging to make specific statements about things such as the user interface, feature set and presets.

Pricing: Varies wildly depending on where you use it, but you can check it out for free on Black Forest Lab’s site. (And on Leo.)

6. Google Gemini

Best Midjourney alternative for video

Google Gemini is Google’s chatbot, but it’s also a way to use Google Imagen (a text-to-image and image-to-image model) and Google Veo 3 (a text-to-video, image-to-video, and video-to-video model).

Imagen 4.0, the latest version, is considered a strong image model and a capable ai image generator alternative to Midjourney – but Veo 3 is the real stand out. It’s capable of producing incredibly realistic video footage from a text prompt. Just check out the demo videos, the results speak for themselves.

While you can access Veo 3 through Gemini, it isn’t the best way to do it. The better way is either through Google’s Flow app, or a fully-featured third party tool like Leonardo. They make it easy to use Veo 3 to create clips, whole scenes, and even short films. The big catch is that Veo 3 only has a limited free trial. If you’re serious about using it, you’ll need to sign up for a paid Google AI plan. (Or consider a more affordable alternative like Leonardo.Ai.)

Pricing: Free plan with limited image generation; paid plans from $20/month with Imagen 4, Veo 3, and lots of other AI features in Google apps.

Which Midjourney Alternative is Right for You?

If you found this article wondering if there’s a free alternative to Midjourney​, then hopefully this list has answered your question with a resounding yes. There are plenty of great alternatives to Midjourney and the hardest part is choosing between them.

The good news is that every app on this list has a free plan or a free trial. You don’t have to commit to just one tool, instead try out every app to see if it’s a good fit.

With that said, if you’re only going to try one app, Leonardo.Ai is a great place to start. It’s got all of Midjourney’s core features, plus it lets you use GPT Image 1, Flux, and even Veo 3 – as well as Lucid Origin, Leo’s most advanced AI image model. It offers a lot of power and flexibility at an affordable price. And there’s a free plan.

Try Leonardo.Ai for free today