Generative AI is growing in potential and utility by the week as companies continue to outdo each other. What started as creating clever images from a quick text prompt has evolved into generating full-length movies and animating previously static images.
However, when it comes to free tools, there are some great options for creating AI images. Recently, OpenAI announced that free ChatGPT users will be able to create images in DALL-E for the first time, but only two per day.
Others, like the ones on this list, are more generous with their free offerings, but as always, you'll have more options if you're willing to open your wallet (you can check out our guide to the best overall AI image generators for that).
So whether you're looking for a quick image to generate a few laughs in group chat, or want to test out some ideas to help you make a purchasing decision on a paid plan, here's our pick of the best free AI image generation tools.
Best Free AI Image Generator Overall
Not only is Leonardo our pick for the best overall AI image generator, but its generous free tier also makes it a great choice for newcomers.
Leonardo offers free plan users a set of tokens to use to generate AI images, and the free plan has no expiration date. This means you won’t need to subscribe after a month or so, or keep changing your email address (we’ve all done it).
The fact that Leonardo is free is one thing, but that's not what justifies its use. While you'll need to purchase a premium subscription for some features, it's still a great tool for almost any project.
It will be slower without paying, and Leonardo.Ai owns the rights to what you create, but for a quick image here or there, it's well worth your time.
Freepik may not be the AI image generation tool everyone is talking about, but it should be. The app is easy to use, but the free version allows you to generate 20 images per day.
If you wanted, that could be 7,300 images per year for free, built from over 140 million stock images, with fast generation too.
You can even scale a few images a day for free if you have the credits, and flexible payment options mean you can get 7,000 AI credits for just £7 a month, meaning you don't need to pay the “whole hog” of £32 a month if you need something more.
Craiyon is a little different from the other options on this list because it's almost the other way around: the base product is free and the paid tiers enhance it, rather than the free version being a watered-down version of the product.
There are some drawbacks, of course. Expect watermarks, for example, while you can pay to remove limitations like ads and higher priority, but without spending a single cent, you can get 9 free images at once.
Paid members of course help keep the lights on, and it’s worth noting that plans start at just $5 per month. There’s also a handy background removal tool that you can use without restrictions and without a subscription.
Offering all the benefits of ChatGPT's DALL-E 3 but with a powerful free tier, Microsoft Copilot Designer offers 15 image generations per day.
The premium plan adds additional app integrations into Microsoft 365 and faster performance, but even without paying, it's an impressive tool — not just for creating images, but also for adjusting images.
Whether it's extracting specific elements from an image, adjusting color saturation, or replacing elements entirely, it's incredibly malleable.
Google's ImageFX is a free AI generation tool from scratch, built on the next-gen Imagen 3 model. It offers relatively realistic images from a quick text prompt, and there are no limitations – so you can create to your heart's content.
Why is it a little lower on this list? In our testing, it's a simple platform that can only generate square images. It's an experiment rather than a product, but the underlying technology will be integrated into Gemini and other products in the future, so this is a chance to see what's likely to come soon.
Google will also be able to keep your interactions for up to a year and a half, which is worth considering.