I Tested 7 Free AI Image Generators. This One’s My Pick.

I have seen untold AI horrors along the journey, so, you’re welcome.

7 min readSep 25

A beautiful woman with curly hair looks up at a fantasy sky with balloons and flowers. This accurately covers what I think of when I consider what it’s like to use free online AI image generators. — Midjourney | Prompt: **CREATORS FEEL THE VIBE OF TRENDS — v 5.2 — s 250** — Image #1 | Creator: @TUTKOVBUDKOV. I liked this picture since it pretty accurately captures how I think of AI image generators. *= affiliate link.

In the dawn of the online AI era, there were tons of free image generator options to create AI generated images for free. Now, most of us have run out of our free 25 Midjourney credits. It’s harder to find places to make free AI art.

Luckily, I have trawled through many (many!) websites and landed on these seven sites that will let you make just about any AI image. Every AI image generator on this list is:

Free (at least you get a certain number of credits to use for free)
Web-based
Easy to use

I’ll use the same prompt (“cat in a cozy treehouse cafe, reading a book. cinematic style”) for each generative AI tool, so you’ll be able to easily compare each art generator for your needs.

The Best Free Online AI Image Generators

Canva: Best art

ai-generated image of a cat in a cozy treehouse cafe. — *Look at this cute lil man! I’d love to be this cat. Credit:* *Canva AI art generator*

I love using Canva* for a lot of my branding needs, so I was excited to see they offer a free online AI image generator.

All you have to do is make an account (for free), write your prompt, and download your image. Then use the image generator to make whatever you need.

Pros:

There are no watermarks or costs for downloading it. It also offers a few suggested image styles. You can easily change the image aspect ratio, though you only get three styles: portrait, landscape, or square.

Cons:

Only three image aspect ratio choices. Also, there’s a cap — as a free user, you’ll only ever get 50 lifetime credits.

Overall:

Great for simple AI art creation. Not a lot of fine-tuning options, though. Also, expensive once you run out of your free generations. Canva Pro costs $14.99 per month to get 500 monthly text-to-image credits.