10 Best Midjourney Alternatives in 2025

With the constant advancement of AI in image generation, tools like Midjourney are getting famous. Having its ability to produce accurate, artistic, and photorealistic images, Midjourney has become a focal point of innovation for modern digital artists and creators. 

However, the software has some shortcomings - heavy censorship, limited control, and a learning curve being the most prominent. Plus, the fact that you can’t even use it outside Discord can be a deal breaker for many.

So, what’s the way out? Luckily, there are some excellent Midjourney alternatives for you to produce animated, hyper-realistic, and cinematic images. Let’s review them and see which one works best for you.

Part 1: Overview of the Midjourney Platform

Midjourney is smart image generation software designed with beginners in mind. Its user-focused interface lets you create intricate and captivating visuals with basic text descriptions. Blending creative intelligence with technology, Midjourney is a go-to option for content creators, businesses, and marketers.

However, given its overwhelming pricing, Midjourney alternatives have become a favorite for those who want to approach their projects with an innovative touch while staying within budget. 

Key Highlights of Midjourney

• Beginner-Focused Interface: Midjourney’s intuitive interface eases the entire process of image creation, from providing a text prompt to producing images that match your vision. Users can leverage the right features to get the desired outcomes.
• Customization Kit: The platform has several image tailoring features, including style, color pallet, dimensions, etc. These customization options empower brands to build their creative assets.
• High-Resolution Output: Stunning visuals with clear details are key to impressing followers. Midjourney offers HD results, so you can stand out as a creator.
• Batch Processing: Another highlight of Midjourney is its ability to produce multiple images at the same time. This streamlines your workflow and reduces the effort of entering individual prompts.

Part 2: Midjourney Limitations

Despite being efficient and time-saving, Midjourney has a few limitations, like any other image generator. Understanding these drawbacks is significant for you, especially when you are planning to integrate Midjourney alternatives in the workflow.

• Learning Curve: Regardless of an intuitive interface, too many features can make it challenging for users to master everything. Investing time and effort is the only way to overcome this. Plus, Midjourney only works with Discord, and juggling between tools is a common concern.
• Limited Free Features: Midjourney offers almost negligible free features and most useful tools are only accessible for paid users. Hence, anyone wanting to get advanced results will have to buy a subscription package.
• Processing Time: Generating AI images with detailed text descriptions means investing your time in the software. This slows down the process and may impact your workflow, delaying other relevant tasks.
• Output Variability: Despite offering accuracy, there are slight changes in the images produced by Midjourney. It may happen that the generated photo does not meet your expectations and has unnecessary objects or incorrect scenarios.  

Part 3: Top 10 Midjourney Alternatives in 2024

In the world of AI image generators, the advent of Midjourney has brought innovation standards. However, some pitfalls can pull users to look for alternatives. If you are facing challenges regarding productivity or onboarding, here are some Midjourney substitutes you may like.

1. Wondershare Virbo

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4.8/ 5 on G2 and 4.9/ 5 on Capterra

Wondershare Virbo is my best find for Midjourney alternatives. It stands out for its accuracy, ease of use, and fast response. But, it's much more than that. With Virbo, you are free to create almost anything, be it digital art, animations, cartoons, and more. Simply upload a selfie or insert a prompt, choose a desired filter, and let the AI handle the rest.

It even lets you create personalized AI avatars to build brand voices and online personas. Once you are satisfied with the outcome, Virbo lets you export it to your device or transform it into a talking photo. Add background music and voiceovers, and you have creative assets ready in minutes. 

Wondershare Virbo's AI Photo Generator feature revolutionizes the way users create and customize photos. Whether enhancing selfies, landscapes, or pet photos, Wondershare Virbo provides many creative filters and effects to suit every style and occasion. Users can choose from various artistic filters inspired by famous painters or opt for modern digital effects to give photos a unique touch.

First of all, convenience is a major advantage on mobile, allowing users to edit photos anytime, anywhere; Apart from that, the touch operation is more intuitive, allowing users to easily edit photos through the touch screen, further enhancing the user experience.

You can easily convert photos into different formats. With Virbo's AI Photo Generator, users can not only create from existing photos (image to image), but also effortlessly transform their ideas into visuals through verbal text descriptions (text to image). This innovative feature makes it easy and fast to creatively transform and customize photos, even on mobile devices, to meet a variety of creative needs.

Reasons to Choose

• Numerous art styles - anime, cinematic, pixel art, origami, etc.
• Prompts are limited to 300 characters for accurate results.
• Import images from your device to turn them into your desired art style.
• A suite of AI tools - talking photos, montage maker, AI avatar generator, URL-to-video, etc.
• Easily accessible across platforms, including the web. 

Pricing

• Monthly Plan: $19.9 per month
• Yearly Plan - Premium: $21.58 per month (billed annually)
• Yearly Plan - Pro: $16.6 per month (billed annually)

2. Stable Diffusion

4.3/ 5 on G2 and 4.5/ 5 on Capterra

I haven’t been able to find another art generator with this level of customization other than Stable Diffusion. From the art style to the number of generated images, art inspirations, and more, almost everything is in user control. You can even remove parts of images and upscale them - perfect for control freaks. Additionally, it is an open-source tool, so you can run it on your computer and train the models with your business datasets.

Reasons to Choose

• A range of art styles - hyper-realistic, abstract, and more, to help you with creative expression.
• A collection of template images for creative inspiration.
• Official Discord community with over 300K members and Reddit community with over 500K members offering tutorials, resources, and documentation.
• You can erase parts of the picture from the generated image and upscale its quality.

Pricing

• Basic Plan: $27 per month
• Standard Plan: $47 per month
• Premium Plan: $147 per month

3. DALLE-3

3.9/ 5 on G2 and 4.5/ 5 on Capterra

DALLE-3 is an upgraded version of DALLE-2, an advanced image generator from OpenAI. What makes it stand out as a Midjourney alternative is that it integrates with ChatGPT-4. The conversational text descriptions give you the freedom to tailor the animations however you like. Moreover, it’s easy to use and you do not have to deal with many features. 

Reasons to Choose

• Generates a 3D image from all angles.
• Chat-style prompting with easy-to-follow conversations.
• Brush Select feature that edit the picture with excellent details and artistic nuances.
• Easily accessible from ChatGPT.

Pricing

• ChatGPT Plus: $20 per month
• ChatGPT Team: $25/ user per month

4. Leonardo AI

4.4/ 5 on G2 and on 4.4/ 5 on Capterra

Leonardo is the latest addition to the pool of image generators, and one of the few with a negative prompt option. Apart from the text description, you can also import an existing image as a reference. This guides the AI better in achieving desired results. Not only this, but Leonardo AI can even generate a prompt if you can’t seem to think of one.

Reasons to Choose

• A collection of art styles, such as fashion, cinematic, animated, and more.
• Customization options, including contrast adjustments, aspect ratio, negative prompt, etc.
• Fast image generation.
• Automated prompt enhancement and intelligent adjustments to refine the photo quality.

Pricing

• Basic Plan: $9 per month
• Standard Plan: $49 per month
• Pro Plan: $299 per month
• Contact the sales team for a custom plan.

5. Playground AI

4.8/ 5 on G2 and 4.8/ 5 on Capterra

Playground AI is true to its name. It’s essentially a playground with a collection of features that lets you have fun with AI creations. Its Mixed Image Editing combines real and intelligent tools for a desired outcome. Experiencing a lack of inspiration? Visit the Explore page and see what other creators have been up to. Engage with the community to innovate continuously.

Reasons to Choose

• Collaborative capabilities featuring easy sharing, feedback, and iteration on projects.
• Its real-time rendering ability lets you preview, adjust, and speed up the image generation process.
• You are free to use Playground in Perplexity AI.
• Customization options, including art styles, automatically expanded prompts, negative prompts, and reference images.

Pricing

• Free version
• Pro Design: $12 per month ($144 when billed annually).

6. Adobe Firefly

4.6/ 5 on G2 and 4.6/ 5 on Capterra

Adobe is yet another free Midjourney alternative for digital creators and artists to produce modern artwork. It has a range of customization features that let you personalize the image generation process and build desired assets. What’s better? You can always integrate it with Adobe Creative Cloud for a smooth workflow.

Reasons to Choose

• Cloud storage with collaboration features for teams to work in real-time.
• Extensive training material with tutorials, user guides, community support, etc.
• Customization options, including aspect ratio, content type, structure references, and depth of field.
• Integration with Illustrator, Photoshop, and other Adobe products.
• Generates branding visuals and detailed artwork for marketing campaigns.

Pricing

• Individual Plan: $4.99 per month

7. Photoroom

4.3/ 5 on G2 and 4.8/ 5 on Capterra

Last but not least, Photoroom is another alternative to Midjourney for product photography. It's designed for businesses and advertisers to generate full product profiles and background images with upscale quality. What I really like about Photoroom is its batch creation. Build multiple backgrounds for different product photos and save time from the editor’s already packed schedule.

Reasons to Choose

• Tools to refine different aspects of your photos, such as manual prompts, assisted prompts, art style, picture style, size, aspect ratio, and negative prompts.
• User-friendly interface with context-aware features and templates to process your commands better.
• Community support with detailed documentation and tutorials.
• Collaborative features, including easy sharing, instant feedback, and more.

Pricing

• Pro Plan:  $12.99 per month (1 seat), 89.99 per year
• Teams Plan: $12.99 per month (3 seats included), $89.99 per year
• Enterprise Plan: Customized

8. Craiyon

4.3/ 5 on G2

Craiyon is an open-source alternative to Midjourney. With a simple interface and no credit limit, it is a good starting point for digital creators. Craiyon image generation technology is capable of turning simple prompts into realistic animations. That said, the annoying pop-ups, frequent glitches, and 60-second wait time for free users can be some tradeoffs for users.

Reasons to Choose

• Customization options, including image style, negative prompt, influence color, and lighting.
• Unlimited images with no credit limits.
• User-friendly interface that works with basic text prompts.
• You can buy a printed T-shirt of your created image.

Pricing

• Supporter: $10 per month (billed annually)
• Professional: $20 per month (billed annually)
• Custom quotes for enterprises

9. Image Creator

4.3/ 5 on G2 and 3.9/ 5 on Capterra

Previously known as Bing Image Creator, the Copilot Image Creator is Microsoft’s own technology. Similar to ChatGPT, it is powered by DALLE-3 and has a conversational style. The Image Creator is incredibly easy to use and produces animated photos. You are free to generate four images at a time and integrate them into your existing Microsoft-oriented workflow.

Reasons to Choose

• Four images per prompt with a conversational prompt style.
• Like DALLE-3, it specializes in animated art.
• Integration into the Microsoft ecosystem to ensure a smooth workflow.
• Easily accessible from the web

Pricing

 Free to use

10.  Freepik Pikaso

4.7/ 5 on G2

Freepik Pikaso works like stock photo platforms with a wide collection of templates and a text-to-image generator. However, what makes it stand out is its unique sketch-to-image technology. Simply draw what you want and it will convert your doddle into a photo on the canvas right next. Users can also use negative prompts to name things they want to exclude from the generated image.

Reasons to Choose

• A sketch-to-image feature to turn your creation into stunning sketches. It has an Imagination Slider to refine the images.
• Customization tools, such as color adjustments, image styles, and lighting.
• Quick Enhance and Upscale Tool to improve the quality of the generated images.
• Background remover and drag-and-drop editing toolkit.

Pricing

• Essential Plan: $24.50 per month ($294 billed annually)
• Premium Plan: $12 per month ($144 billed annually)
• Premium Plus Plan: $5.75 per month ($69 billed annually)

Part 4: How to Choose the Best Midjourney Alternative?

There you have it - the best Midjourney alternatives, free and paid. But, not having any experience with these tools can puzzle one about the choice. Worry not!

I have used all the above-mentioned image generators, so you don’t have to. In this section, I will be discussing their results, prompt personalization, convenience, and type of image generated. So, let’s get in.

For this purpose, I will be using the following prompt for all the generators to ensure fair evaluation.

Create an image of a person with a strong determined attitude, forest fire background, close-up shot, realistic.

Wondershare Virbo

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Our team uses Virbo for most of marketing’s assets - AI avatars, talking photos, image ads, and more. My experience with the photo generator was quite impressive. First off, it lets me choose art filters and styles that immediately enhance the visual details. The results had a combination of both airbrush and realistic elements. Plus, the response was quick and the accuracy to prompt is incredible.

Leonardo AI

Leonardo truly excels at bringing the airbrush finish to its photos. It lets you adjust different aspects of the ratio, from the get-go. The aspect ratio, size, and negative prompts help personalize the process for desired results. It can even generate four images per prompt, though the wait time could kill you.

Stable diffusion

I find Stable Diffusion very similar to Leonardo AI in the way that it brings air-brushed and intense colors to the image, with the only exception that it’s easier to use. You get to add a negative prompt and select the aspect ratio of the image. Apart from this, you don’t have much control over the outcome. Hence, the generated images can sometimes be poles apart.

Adobe firefly

The Adobe Firefly free version is the easiest tool in this list and a great starting point for beginners. Like the previous two generators, you are free to choose between the aspect ratio, content type, etc. Adobe even lets you choose the art style, as I have chosen realism in this image. The only deal-breaker is the big watermark, which is understandable, given the company’s strict AI-use policy. 

Playground AI

Here is the image I generated using Playground AI. This tool works a little differently, which can immediately make you a little confused. Secondly, you don’t necessarily have control over the output, as it only lets you apply the prompt on the available templates. That said, I like the hyper-realistic hints in the visuals. 

Image creator

The Copilot image generator is my favorite option if I am having fun with creations. Its conversational style and ease of use make the experience much more likable. Plus, I tried several regenerations, and every time, the results were pretty accurate. However, it might not be the best if you want hyper-realism.

Craiyon

Using Craiyon was easy but the image quality was a bit of a disappointment. The blurry background with no facial details seems like a common thing. It generated around nine images per prompt, yet each had a blurring effect and missing nuanced elements. However, given that it’s completely free, beginners might benefit from it.

Freepik

Freepik Pikaso is the last image generator I used. The image quality is amazing, it is easy to use, and the details are accurate to the prompt. I was pleasantly surprised by the hints of realism in the results. Plus, the prompt personalizations are a cherry on top for getting the right art piece.

Conclusion

AI image generators are a way for marketers, advertisers, and digital artists to stand out in the crowd. Hence, finding one that truly delivers is significant. Using hyped-up tools like Midjourney might seem like a solution to all problems at first, but you gradually realize that it’s not for everyone. Make sure to consider your skillset, experience, and intent during the selection of your Midjourney alternative.