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By the toolist.ai editors. Researched from vendor pages and hands-on tests published by others, not hands-on tested by toolist.ai. Updated October 19, 2026.
Best image tools
AI image tools are each good at different things, and most start at about $10 to $12 a month: Adobe Firefly Standard costs $9.99 with unlimited standard images, Midjourney Basic $10 for about 800 Fast-mode images, and Leonardo.Ai and Recraft $12. Ideogram Plus costs $20; Zapier's tester found Ideogram put text into images accurately and reliably, where most generators still struggle. Google lists its Nano Banana 2 as free in the Gemini app, and Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month adds the newer Nano Banana 2.1. OpenArt runs 100+ image, video and audio models, mostly from other companies, on one credit balance from $14 a month for 4,000 credits; commercial use starts with Plus at $34. Krea runs its own Krea 2 models and dozens of others on one balance of compute units, with a canvas that redraws live as you type or draw; Basic costs $9 a month for 5,000 units, which Krea counts as 555 Krea 2 Medium images. Magnific, called Freepik until April 2026, pairs a stock library with dozens of image, video and audio models on one credit balance: Premium costs $20 a month for 20,000 credits, and Premium+ at $45 makes generation unlimited on 30+ selected models.
Quick picks
- Adobe Firefly: best for commercially safe AI images inside Photoshop and other Adobe apps
- Ideogram: best for images with accurate, readable text, such as posters and logos
- Krea: best for steering images live and trying many image and video models on one compute balance
- Leonardo.Ai: best for image and video creation with many models and fine control in one app
- Magnific (formerly Freepik): best for stock assets plus many image and video models, with unlimited image generation, on one subscription
- Midjourney: best for artistic, stylized images and concept art
- Nano Banana: best for photo edits by description and text-accurate images in the Gemini app or API
- OpenArt: best for trying many image and video models, with consistent characters, on one credit balance
- Recraft: best for logos, icons and brand graphics as editable vectors
Compared
| Tool | Cheapest paid plan | Price per unit, calculated | Basis | Prices checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Firefly | Firefly Standard ($9.99 a month) | $0.100 per premium image (Firefly Image 4 Ultra) | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
| Ideogram | Plus ($20 a month) | $0.083 per image | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
| Krea | Basic ($9 a month) | $0.016 per image | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
| Leonardo.Ai | Essential ($12 a month) | $1.41 per 1,000 tokens | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
| Magnific (formerly Freepik) | Premium ($20 a month) | – | Researched | 2026-10-19 |
| Midjourney | Basic ($10 a month) | $0.013 per image | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
| Nano Banana | Google AI Plus ($4.99 a month) | – | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
| OpenArt | Starter ($14 a month) | $3.50 per 1,000 credits | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
| Recraft | Basic ($12 a month) | $0.024 per image | Researched | 2026-10-16 |
Listed in alphabetical order: we do not rank tools we have not tested ourselves. Price per unit divides each cheapest plan's monthly price by what it includes. Units differ between tools, so read the unit before comparing two rows.
Also listed, not researched yet: beaniebrand, Chitra Studio, WhimKid.
Filter every tool by price and free plan in the tool directory, or price your own month in the AI cost calculator.
How to choose
- What you make: Midjourney for artistic, stylized images; Ideogram for readable text in posters and logos; Recraft for logos and icons as editable vectors; Adobe Firefly inside Photoshop (Photoshop on web and mobile comes with Firefly Pro, $19.99); Leonardo.Ai for many image and video models in one app; Nano Banana for editing photos by description in the Gemini app or API; OpenArt for trying many image and video models on one credit balance and keeping a character consistent across them; Krea for steering images live on its real-time canvas and trying many models on one subscription; Magnific (formerly Freepik) for stock photos and templates alongside many image and video models on one subscription.
- Price per image, by our calculation: about 1.3 cents on Midjourney Basic (Fast mode, four images per prompt), 1.6 cents on Krea Basic (Krea 2 Medium, by Krea's own count; about 14 cents for Nano Banana Pro), 2.4 cents on Recraft Basic (V4.1) and 8.3 cents on Ideogram Plus at its default High quality (2.5 cents at Low). Leonardo.Ai sells tokens that buy different numbers of images by model, Firefly's standard images are unlimited, and Google states no number of images for its plans (the Gemini API charges $0.0336 for a 1K image from Nano Banana 2.1). OpenArt's credits buy different numbers of images by model, and it states a per-image cost only on its Business plan (40 credits for a Nano Banana Pro image). Magnific's credits also buy different numbers of images by model: by its own table, Premium's 20,000 make 111 Magnific One High 2K images or 266 Nano Banana Pro images.
- Free plans and privacy: Midjourney has no free plan, and its images are public unless you pay for Pro or Mega. Free images on Ideogram, Leonardo.Ai and Recraft are public, and Recraft's cannot be used commercially. Google lists Nano Banana 2 as free in the Gemini app, though free accounts get Nano Banana 2 Lite whenever Gemini answers with Flash-Lite, as it does for most of their prompts; every image made in the app carries an invisible SynthID watermark. OpenArt's free plan is a one-time trial of 40 credits that lasts 7 days, and its output may carry a visible watermark and is for non-commercial use, as is Starter's. Krea's free plan gives 100 compute units a day (about 11 Krea 2 Medium images) with no commercial license. Magnific's free account makes up to 20 AI images a day with its in-house model, for personal, non-commercial use only.
- Refunds: none from Ideogram, and none from Leonardo.Ai for a change of mind; Midjourney only if the account has used under 20 GPU minutes; Adobe within 14 days of the first purchase on most plans; Recraft at its discretion within 30 days of the last payment, and only if no credits were used since (or fewer than 30 ever); Google gives no refund for a partial billing period unless the law requires one; OpenArt gives none except where the law requires; Krea only if you cancel having used under 650 compute units and fewer than 20 generations that month; Magnific within 30 days only if you have not downloaded or generated anything in that billing period.
Read more
- Adobe Firefly review · pricing
- Ideogram review · pricing
- Krea review · pricing
- Leonardo.Ai review · pricing
- Magnific (formerly Freepik) review · pricing
- Midjourney review · pricing
- Nano Banana review · pricing
- OpenArt review · pricing
- Recraft review · pricing
Other categories: avatar video, text to video, editors, clips, script to video, voice, writing, coding. All lists: best-of lists.