Which AI to pick
for the job in front of you

OpenArt

Many models in one window, with a generous free tier

$7per month

Fifty free credits a day with no watermark — the most open entry in a job where the rest either stamp the image or charge at the door

• Several models in one interface
• Custom characters you can train
• Storyboards and consistent series

Photoroom

A backdrop for a product shot on a phone

$7.5per month

Drops a phone-shot product into a generated scene and processes a whole catalogue export at once rather than card by card

• Background removal and scene replacement
• Batch processing for a catalogue
• A phone app, not only a website

Midjourney

The most recognisable look in the field, and not one free prompt

$10per month

The only service in the top ten with no free tier at all, and still the highest-grossing image generator of the lot

• A recognisable house style
• Style reference and transfer between works
• Stealth mode only from the $60 plan

Recraft

A generator that hands back SVG, not a bitmap

$12per month

Produces real vectors: an icon or logo opens in an editor and is edited by nodes instead of being redrawn

• SVG output rather than raster
• Train a house style on your own work
• Free output lands in a public gallery

Topaz Labs

Upscaling and restoration that runs on your own machine

$19per month

Processes on your own machine rather than someone’s server, so the originals never leave — the only service here that does

• Upscale photo and video without losing detail
• Restore old and noisy shots
• Processing runs locally, nothing uploaded

Ideogram

Text in the image that you do not have to redo

$20per month

Renders legible words and whole signs inside an image — the task every generator before it stumbled on

• Signage and captions without mangled letters
• Templates for logos and covers
• Free tier: ten slow generations a week

Reface

Face swapping out of a Kyiv lab

—on request

Grew out of a Kyiv research team and was first to put face swapping into a mass-market app, long before every editor had the feature

• Face swap in photos and short video
• Phone app
• The service publishes no price list

Evoto

Retouching an entire shoot in one pass

—on request

Copies one frame’s retouching settings across a whole shoot, so an eight-hundred-shot wedding goes through in a batch

• Batch portrait retouching
• Copy settings across the whole shoot
• Background and sky replacement

FaceApp

The oldest mass-market app for editing a face

—on request

Shipping since 2017 and still on the revenue list — a rare case of a mobile app outliving two waves of industry fashion

• Age, smile and hairstyle edits
• Phone app
• The service publishes no price list