What is the best AI image generation tool in 2025? Seven tools compared

Let’s start with the most famous one: OpenAI’s DALL-E 3, integrated into ChatGPT. To use it, you need a ChatGPT Pro subscription ($20 per month). The tool is unique because you can engage in a conversation with ChatGPT to make your imagination come to life.

• Interactive: ChatGPT provides context and explanations for the generated image.
• Recognisable style: Images often have a cartoonish, cohesive look.
• Detail editing: You can adjust specific parts of the image (though it doesn’t always work perfectly).

• Unpredictable outcome: DALL-E sometimes doesn’t always follow instructions.
• Limited images per prompt: The tool only generates one image per prompt.
• Text: Odd characters often appear when the tool misinterprets text instructions.

Leonardo AI was originally developed to create video game assets (digital building blocks of a game), making it suitable for generating consistent visuals, such as multiple illustrations of a character or a brand logo. With the free version, you can enter ±20 prompts, and there’s plenty of freedom in style and content.

• Wide range of styles: Different AI models give access to realistic photos, anime, digital art, etc.
• High quality: Leonardo produces highly detailed and realistic images.
• Prompt enhancement: Built-in AI helps refine prompts for better results.

• Complex interface: The many options can be confusing initially.
• Limited commercial use: Leonardo has fewer restrictions on outputs, so not all are suitable for commercial or child-friendly use.
• Learning curve: Efficient use requires practice, so you may go through tokens quickly.

Firefly is Adobe’s AI tool for image creation, accessible through Adobe applications or in a browser (accessible via Creative Cloud subscription). It’s user-friendly and generates four images per prompt, giving you a selection to pick from.

• Colourful, artistic results: Firefly often generates vibrant images.
• Extensive filters and effects: You can easily adjust colour and style.
• Accessibility: Simple prompts quickly yield good results.

• Over-polished images: Since the model is trained on stock images, visuals can look overly perfect.
• Poor text display: Like DALL-E, Firefly struggles with generating legible text.
• No auto-save: You need to download images or edit them in an Adobe program (Express, Photoshop, etc.).

Stable Diffusion by Stability.AI is an open-source AI model and is used by various image generation tools, including Leonardo. With the right prompts, you can create highly realistic images.

• Realistic images: Results can be impressive, especially with good prompts.
• High control: Adjust style, number of images, and prompt strength.
• Ideal for surreal art: The lighting and details create unique, lifelike images.

• Complex for beginners: The many options aren’t always intuitive.
• Inconsistent quality: Images can lack resolution.
• Anatomical errors: Fingers or faces don’t always look accurate.

Canva is a graphic design platform that recently started offering various AI tools and apps. The platform is mainly used for social media, websites, presentations, promotional material and branding. To generate images, Canva uses DALL-E and Imagen (Google Cloud), among others.

• Text generation: Canva can produce and generate easy-to-read text, usually without writing errors.
• Copy style and background: Copying the style and background from a sample image works very well.
• Logos: This tool focuses on branding, so it can generate logos very well.

• Style not for everyone: The style of the generated image sometimes looks a bit childish or too corporate.
• Weird faces and hands: Especially with the ‘Magic extend’ tool, you often see weird faces or hands.
• Sometimes too literal: When interpreting prompts, the tool is sometimes too literal and sees less coherence between words.

Midjourney was developed by research lab Midjourney, Inc. The tool tries to follow your prompt as closely as possible to create high-quality images. Each prompt generates 4 images. You can use the tool in your browser or via Discord (chat app).

• Beautiful style: Midjourney creates very artistic images and handles abstract prompts well.
• Continuous updates: The tool is regularly updated and maintained by the developers.
• Community: Because it uses Discord, it immediately creates a community and allows you to share ideas with other users.

• Complicated: There are many options and the Discord version is less user-friendly than the browser version.
• Colour too prominent: If you enter a certain colour palette, the tool sticks to it a bit too much.
• Public visibility: Every image you generate is visible to other users.

Sora is OpenAI's video generation tool, but it can also create stunning images. With short or very detailed prompts, you can easily generate short videos or images.

• Good at understanding text: The generated text matches what you prompted. Sora is also good at interpreting your prompt: it can even handle long, detailed descriptions of the scene you had in mind.
• Adheres to style: If you provide a description of your brand style or visual identity, Sora follows it suprisingly well.
• More refined style than DALL-E: Compared to DALL-E, Sora is less cartoony and more artistic (similar to Midjourney).
  

• Slower than other tools: At the moment, image generation takes quite a while compared to other tools.
  
• Fewer built-in style suggestions: Tools like Firefly have various filters or style presets. Sora has a few filters, but if you want to make the most of the tool, you have to accurately describe the scene and the desired style (knowledge of art helps!).
• 2 images per prompt: Sora only generates 2 images at a time, while other tools often generate 4.