Midjourney pioneered conversational image generation, but paid access and availability issues spurred competitors. Leading alternatives offer advanced creative abilities for free or lower cost:
Stable Diffusion – provides an open-source text-to-image engine that users can run locally or access through third parties. Output quality trails Midjourney in some areas but shows promise matching it.
DALL-E 2 – generates highly accurate photorealistic images. As an OpenAI product, capabilities resemble Midjourney but with higher resolution. Offers a free tier.
Leonardo – focuses on game asset creation with environmental generation, buildings, items, and more. Also handles human portraits well. Currently in early access.
Bing Image Creator – leverages integrated DALL-E capabilities for free conversational image generation through Bing search and chat. Fast but limited customization and quality.
Adobe Firefly – provides enterprise-grade tools for text-to-image, image expansion, recoloring, inpainting, and more. Initial capabilities show promise standing with other leaders.
Additional Notable Alternatives
Blue Willow – offers a popular free Discord-based image generation bot with decent quality across art, graphics, logos, and more. Very fast response times.
Fotor – features sophisticated control around image styles and composition. 5 free credits before paid tiers. Integrates generated images into further editing.
NightCafe – accesses models like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 from a single interface. Focused on artistic creations. Free tier with paid upgrades.
Lexica – fine-tuned its own Stable Diffusion-based model for quality results. 100 free monthly images before paid plans. Also indexes Diffusion images.
Playground AI – uniquely provides 1,000 free daily images leveraging Stable Diffusion, albeit with some quality restrictions. Quick generation speeds.
Summary
For those priced out of Midjourney but wanting similar creative firepower, alternatives analyzed here like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 lead the pack in offering advanced image generation freemium access.