AI-driven image creation has exploded into the mainstream over the past few years. If you follow social platforms, watch mainstream TV, or flip through magazines, chances are you’ve already seen AI-made visuals—often without realizing it. Whether your goal is to experiment for fun or to incorporate automated image generation into business workflows, the tools listed below are among the strongest choices available.
Do more with ChatGPT — Discover more ways to add AI to your workflows.
I’ve been covering image-generating AI since Google Deep Dream in 2015, and the progress has been remarkable. Rather than rehash debates about artistic value, job displacement, or copyright in training sets, I’ll concentrate on practical performance: today’s text-to-image engines create excellent outputs from both text and image prompts. Spend a few hours with one of these tools and you’ll appreciate the technical achievement—and why their output is so visible right now.
The best AI image generators
- ChatGPT (GPT-4o) for the best AI image generator overall
- Nano Banana for Google users
- Midjourney for artistic results
- Reve for overall prompt adherence
- Ideogram for accurate text
- FLUX for customization and control of your AI images
- Adobe Firefly for integrating AI-generated images into photos
- Recraft for graphic design
How do AI image generators work?
All of these systems translate a text prompt into an image. Prompts can be wildly specific or delightfully absurd: everything from “an impressionist oil painting of a Canadian man riding a moose through a forest of maple trees” to “a photograph of a donkey on the moon” is feasible. I generated the moose painting example with Google Gemini using that exact prompt.
Under the hood, models are trained on millions or billions of image–text pairs so they learn what objects, colors, styles, and even specific artists look like. The most common rendering method now is diffusion, which starts from pure noise and iteratively transforms it into an image that matches the prompt. OpenAI’s newer image efforts use autoregression instead of diffusion—think of it as sculpting a dog-shaped cloud by progressively sharpening and refining the shapes until it resembles a dog.
There are practical limits: the model’s comprehension of your prompt, content filters to prevent plagiarism or NSFW outputs, and the inherent difficulty of rendering very detailed or constrained scenes. Some prompts mentioning named artists are blocked on stricter platforms.
What makes the best AI image generator?
How we evaluate and test apps
Zapier’s app roundups are written by people who test and use software extensively. For this category we spent many hours comparing models, generating images with consistent prompts, and judging the end results along with usability and feature sets. We don’t accept payment for placement. For more about our process, see the full explanation on the Zapier blog.
Top-tier image models are now much better than they were a few years ago, and the best dozen or so are all impressive. So selection isn’t just about raw image quality anymore; it also factors in ease of use, customization options (like upscaling), pricing, and how reliably a tool follows a prompt.
My selection criteria focused on:
- True text-to-image generation (not only portrait-specific apps)
- The core generators themselves rather than platforms that merely host models
- Ease of use, control options, pricing models, and output quality
How to use AI image generation at work
If you’re exploring practical applications, teams are already using these tools to:
- Create hero images for articles
- Make social posts and graphics
- Generate slide decks, storyboards, and personalized visual assets for customers
The list below summarizes the standout features and pricing of the top options.
The best AI image generators at a glance
Best for — Access options — Price — Parent company
- ChatGPT (GPT-4o) — ChatGPT; API — Free with ChatGPT; fewer restrictions with ChatGPT Plus at $20/month — OpenAI
- Nano Banana — Google Gemini; API — Limited availability on free plan; included with Google AI Pro plan at $20/month — Google
- Midjourney — Web app; Discord — From $10/month for ~200 images/month and commercial usage rights — Midjourney
- Reve — Web app — Limited free plan; Pro plan at $20/month with more generations and private images — Reve
- Ideogram — Web app — Limited free plan; from $8/month for full-resolution download and 400 monthly priority credits — Ideogram AI
- FLUX — NightCafe, Tensor.Art, Civitai, APIs — Depends on the platform — Black Forest Labs
- Adobe Firefly — firefly.adobe.com, Photoshop, Express — Limited free credits; from $9.99 for 2,000 credits/month — Adobe
- Recraft — Web app — Free for 30 credits/day; from $12/month for full features — Recraft
Highlights of the top picks
ChatGPT (GPT-4o) — Best overall
GPT-4o produces top-tier images and is extremely straightforward: ask ChatGPT and it generates an image. It uses autoregression, which yields superb adherence to prompts and strong text rendering, but it’s slower and produces a single image per prompt. Image generation is available on ChatGPT’s free tier in limited form; for heavier use you’ll want ChatGPT Plus at $20/month. The API enables integrations (for example, automating image creation from Google Forms via Zapier).
Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash) — Best for Google users
Google’s Nano Banana excels at editing existing photos and is accessible through Gemini. It’s powerful but can miss some prompt details and adds a visible watermark to outputs. Included with Google AI Pro at $20/month for heavier use.
Midjourney — Best for artistic results
Midjourney remains a favorite for highly textured, visually compelling images and now offers a web app in addition to Discord. Note that generated images are public by default. Paid plans start at $10/month.
Reve — Best at following prompts
Launched in March 2025, Reve quickly rose to the top of benchmarking leaderboards for prompt adherence. The free tier provides limited generations; Pro costs $20/month.
Ideogram — Best for accurate text
Ideogram’s 3.0 algorithm reliably renders letters within images and offers features like a Batch Generator and Character creator. A free plan exists; paid plans start at $8/month for more priority credits.
FLUX — Best for customization and open models
Developed by Black Forest Labs—formed after much of the Stable Diffusion team left Stability.ai in 2024—FLUX models (FLUX 1.1 Pro, FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra, FLUX.1 Kontext) are powerful and open, and accessible via platforms like NightCafe and Civitai.
Adobe Firefly — Best for photo integration
Firefly shines when used inside Adobe apps such as Photoshop, where Generative Fill and Generative Expand allow context-aware edits. Firefly Standard starts from $9.99/month for 2,000 credits; Photoshop is available from $19.99/month with 25 generative credits.
Recraft — Best for graphic design
Recraft combines a strong model with tools for consistent style sets, exports as SVG, and collaboration features. Free users get 30 credits/day; paid plans begin at $12/month.
Other noteworthy generators
Leonardo.Ai, Generative AI by Getty, Luma Photon, Playground, and DALL·E 3 (still available as a GPT) are all worth exploring. Several Chinese models such as ByteDance SeedDream 4.0, KlingAI Kolors 2.1, and Qwen Image also exist but can be harder to access.
The legal and ethical implications of AI-generated images
Laws remain unclear. The U.S. Copyright Office’s stance is that AI-only creations lack copyright without significant human input, and courts have largely agreed; Firefly trained on licensed and public-domain content for that reason. Bias remains an issue; models can reproduce societal biases, so human review is essential.
What’s next for AI image generators?
Progress continues fast—models like GPT-4o, Reve, Midjourney, Ideogram, and FLUX are repeatedly improving at rendering complex concepts. If development continues at this pace, these tools could become central to many creative workflows.
Related reading: The best AI productivity tools — The best AI-powered social media management platforms — The best AI photo editors
This article was originally published in March 2023. The most recent update was in October 2025.
Harry Guinness is a writer and photographer from Dublin, Ireland. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Lifehacker, the Irish Examiner, and How-To Geek.