The text discusses alternative generative AI platforms to Midjourney, outlining the characteristics and key features of eight options: Artbreeder, NightCafe Studio, StyleGAN, RunwayML, DeepArt, TensorArt, DALL-E, and VQGAN+CLIP. Each platform offers unique strengths, pricing details, and user-friendly features, providing a comprehensive overview of Midjourney alternatives with varying capabilities.
“`html
Looking for alternatives to Midjourney?
We’ve done a lot of research across the internet to bring all of the resources to one place. The goal was simple: to find other generative AI platforms that could accomplish tasks with similar effect and quality to Midjourney.
What Makes a Good Midjourney Alternative?
Anytime image generation programs are mentioned on the web, the two most commonly brought up generators are Stable Diffusion (also known as SDXL) and Midjourney.
While SDXL is often talked about, by far the most commonly recommended and used is the Midjourney, with over 16 million registered users and counting. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s also very expensive, at $24 per month for an annual fee (the basic plan offers just enough to experiment but not to actually use the service in its totality).
Sitting behind a paywall, it can be frustrating for new users who are interested in experimenting to decide if the program is worth the buy-in.
Midjourney has a number of characteristics that have made it uniquely successful as an art generator. Factors such as high prompt flexibility, human and photo-oriented realism, powerful versatility, and a user-friendly interface make the platform highly desirable, so a good alternative will meet some of these qualifiers.
Above all of these features, though, the trait that makes Midjourney such a desirable generator is that it combines all of these things into one program. Users can create art with many different styles, they can do it easily, they can do it fast, and it requires minimal training. In other words, everything is catered to the user to make image creation easy.
Best Midjourney Alternatives
Here are our top recommendations for alternatives to Midjourney.
1. Artbreeder
Artbreeder is a web-based generative AI platform that specializes in the community-based part of the art generation, specifically offering creation and subsequent manipulation of images. It’s freely accessible online, offering a collaborative, user-friendly experience that’s not locked behind a paywall.
Artbreeder possesses a high degree of flexibility in image generation, especially in blending and morphing different styles and features. While it excels in creating diverse and oftentimes surreal images, it can also create and develop more realistic, human-oriented visuals, with a distinctive emphasis on collaborative work.
Key Features:
- Collaboration: Artbreeder encourages users to share and modify artwork.
- User-Friendly: A front-end platform means easy access for all users.
- Image Manipulation: Artbreeder’s system allows for extensive manipulation of images, offering a more customizable experience.
- Visual Capabilities: From surreal to realistic, Artbreeder can generate a wide range of image types.
Pricing:
- Free Version: 3 credits per month, earn additional credits by participating in the community
- Starter: $8.99/month for 100 credits per month, Google drive sync, privacy controls, and custom genes
- Advanced: 18.99/month for 275 credits per month + previous additional features
- Champion: 38.99/month for 700 credits per month + previous additional features
2. NightCafe Studio
Created in Australia by AI developer Angus Russell, NightCafe Studio is a cloud-based platform that offers its services online. Based on multiple generative models and made flexible by nature, NightCafe is notable for its ability to produce both realistic and artistically styled images.
Key Features:
- Versatile Styles: NightCafe Studio provides a wide range of artistic styles that aren’t always available on other platforms.
- Prompt Creativity: A robust algorithm ensures that textual prompts are executed seriously to output high-quality images.
- Accessible and User-Friendly: By being cloud-based, NightCafe Studio is accessible to a wide range of users, regardless of their hardware capabilities.
Pricing:
- AI Beginner: $5.99/month for 100 credits per month
- AI Hobbyist: $9.99/month for 200 credits per month
- AI Enthusiast: $19.99/month for 500 credits per month
- AI Artist: $49.99/month for 1400 credits per month
3. StyleGAN
Developed by a team of special researchers at Nvidia, StyleGAN (short for Generative Adversarial Network) is an open-source generative AI program that is designed to be trained on custom datasets of images. It’s available on GitHub for free but requires a powerful GPU to run and lots of time to train.
Key Features:
- High Customizability: StyleGAN gives a high degree of authority to users to create the precise images they want.
- Model Stability: StyleGAN is reliable and gives users less trouble with numerous GAN issues related to training and output stability.
- Disentangled Features: Unlike many image generators, StyleGAN can make different variables of an image (pose, facial expression, identity) separable.
- Cutting-Edge Photorealism: StyleGAN is a groundbreaking tool in the space of AI art generation.
Pricing:
- StyleGAN is free, but the program requires a powerful computer to run. If you don’t have access to one, you likely need to pay to run it on a remote GPU. Accessing Google’s GPU via Colab Pro is available starting at $9.99 per month.
4. RunwayML
RunwayML was released as a versatile and user-friendly generative AI platform specializing in video creation (under its ‘Gen 1’ and ‘Gen 2’ models). It’s a cloud-based service that offers generous capabilities to a wide range of users without the need for high-end computing power.
Key Features:
- Wide Range of Models: RunwayML offers a variety of machine learning models for different creative needs.
- User-Friendly: An intuitive and accessible platform gives users the ability to dive straight into working with the AI, regardless of background or experience.
- Text-to-Video: From realistic imagery to abstract designs, RunwayML caters to a wide array of artistic preferences.
Pricing:
- Free: 125 credits with limited features and short video creation
- Standard: $8.99/user/month, 625 credits per month, up to 16 seconds video, and a range of other features
- Pro: $28/user/month, 2250 credits per month, up to 16 seconds video, more storage than standard
- Unlimited: $78/user/month, infinite creations, unlimited video generations, Pro storage plan (500 GB)
5. DeepArt
DeepArt is an innovative AI art generation platform that stands out in the realm of artistic transformation of images. Like most of the platforms on this list, DeepArt is available to a broad audience because it’s a front-end software that can be accessed directly on its website and requires no special hardware or training time.
Key Features:
- Style Transformation: DeepArt’s main usage is artistic stylization.
- Ease of Use: A front-end website means that DeepArt is a no-code solution.
- Free Usage: There are no hidden fees or requirements to pay – what you see is what you get.
Pricing:
- DeepArt is freely accessible through its website, with no need for powerful computing resources or contracts. There is no upgradeable plan either.
6. TensorArt
TensorArt is an innovative generative AI art tool available for use online. It’s hosted on a user-friendly platform, making it easily accessible without demanding high-end hardware, suitable for a broad range of users.
Key Features:
- Prompt Flexibility: TensorArt excels in interpreting a wide range of prompts to produce diverse imagery.
- Technological Foundation: TensorArt has strong capabilities in image conceptualization and generation, allowing users to tweak multiple variables and create one-of-a-kind art.
Pricing:
- Free Version: 100 credits/day
- Pro (30 day): $9.90 for 300 credits per day, more advanced upscaling capabilities, more customization, and more features
- Pro (90 day): $14.90 (same as 30-day pro plan, but for 3 months)
7. DALL-E
DALL-E was an emergence from the same company behind the AI program Chat GPT. Made available for use through a user-friendly web interface, DALL-E produces creatively diverse and imaginative images.
Key Features:
- Prompt Flexibility: DALL-E excels in turning a wide array of textual descriptions into visual art.
- Access: Its online platform makes it accessible without the need for intensive computing resources.
- Imaginative Outputs: DALL-E is adept at creating both imaginative and photorealistic images.
Pricing:
- Credit Purchases: Pay-as-you-go, charging $15 for 115 prompts ($0.035 per image)
- Chat GPT 4.0: Purchase OpenAI’s premium program for $20 per month, and get access to DALL-E for free (40 generations per three hours).
8. VQGAN+CLIP
VQGAN+CLIP is an open-source advanced AI art generation tool available on platforms like GitHub. It can be customized with various datasets, though it demands substantial computing resources and some technical know-how to utilize effectively.
Key Features:
- Rich Detailing: VQGAN+CLIP’s most noteworthy capability it it’s deep, intricate detailing.
- Artistic Versatility: VQGAN+CLIP naturally adds a more creative flair to the generation process than Midjourney or StyleGAN.
- Prompt Interpretation: VQGAN+CLIP can interpret complex textual prompts that other generation softwares may not be capable of understanding, giving a higher skill ceiling to the prompt engineering side of the process.
Pricing:
- Like StyleGAN, VQGAN+CLIP requires significant computational power, and running it might necessitate access to more advanced hardware or cloud computing resources. This generally involves a paywall for users, so again, the tradeoff of more flexibility and power is met with some cost of operation. Colab Pro is available starting at $9.99 per month.
“`
