A Roundup of Sites for Making AI Images for Free
I'm someone who draws as a hobby. I put together a list of places where you can try AI image generation without spending money.
- Microsoft Designer: Completely free, and the quality isn't bad. But sometimes you get put in a queue.
- Leonardo: You get free credits every day. There are lots of styles, so it's great for finding your taste.
- Playground: They've added a lot of features, but the UI has gotten a bit complicated.
- Local: Stable Diffusion. If you have a good computer, this is the most unrestricted option.
Personally, for light free use, Designer seems like the most hassle-free choice. If prompts aren't working well, specifying a style in advance gives much better results.
5 answers
Designer is honestly pretty solid, I agree. But lately the wait is so damn long that I often run it two or three times and then just shut it off lol.
Well, calling Designer the "safest all-around" option seems like a stretch. Its filters are so strict that requests involving human anatomy or certain styles often just get blocked. From an artist's perspective, Leonardo might actually be more convenient because of its stylistic freedom. It's true that it's one of the more accessible free options, but the conclusion feels a bit premature.
Local really is a GPU battle. If you try it on a 3060 12GB, SD1.5 runs smoothly, while SDXL takes 30 seconds to a minute per image. But since you can install and use all kinds of models and LoRAs, the freedom is on a whole other level—once you get a taste, you won't really go back to free sites. The catch is that just setting it up can eat up a whole day lol. If your PC is mid-range, local is definitely worth a try.
How many credits does Leonardo give per day?
I agree with the prompt tips. For me, specifying the style first and adding things like hands and extra fingers to the negative prompt really cuts down the failure rate. By the way, the Playground UI has definitely gotten more complicated, but the feature that compares multiple models on one screen is still useful, so give it a look. Oh, but I have a feeling that might be old news, since the model lineup seems to have changed quite a bit recently.