2024's Comprehensive Guide: Comparing Costs of The Top 4 AI Image Generation Tools

Here’s a list of the top 4 image generation tools in 2024:

1. DALL-E

2. Midjourney

3. Jasper AI 

4. Kendal AI

   
   

For this blog, I will be comparing the pricing of these top 4 image generation platforms. In later articles, I will be writing about the quality of images/art ( where I’ll be using two of the same prompts across all the platforms to compare the outputs), key differentiators, and user experience for each tool above. You can find the articles here. 

Pricing

DALL-E pricing: a bit of a complicated pricing structure across its versions. 

• For DALL-E 2 pricing, the version available to everyone, the model works on credits. The only option is purchasing packs of 115 credits for $15 (the minimum amount you need to start generating). So you can buy 2 packs for a total of $30 which will give you 230 credits and so on. With 115 credits you can generate approximately 460 images. Any time a user hits ‘generate’ or variations’ it counts as 1 credit. The biggest problem here is the lack of flexibility for users when it comes to choosing the amount of credits that would be appropriate for their usage

• DALL-E 3 pricing is a little more straightforward with unlimited access for $20/month via ChatGPT plus. The value that DALL-E 3 provides for this level of pricing, compared to its predecessor, is far superior considering the fact that you get access to an unlimited generation of higher quality images and higher accuracy with access to ChatGPT 4. However, the lack of flexibility for users who don’t require unlimited images and would rather just have 50 images per month and pay a lower amount is lacking. Especially considering, how users already have plenty of other subscriptions knawing away at their monthly budget.

Midjourney pricing: probably has the most complicated pricing plans among the five. How complicated? Well here’s an image from their website with the pricing table 

Midjourney Pricing Plans

• When I first saw this, my mind was struggling to understand what I was getting for each plan. Like fast and relax GPU time? No clue what the implications are on the number of generations it has. 

• After creating an account and then going to the profile section to subscribe to a plan, I saw that for the basic plan you can generate approximately 200 images. But that approximation is only there for the basic plan and thereafter it’s a guess/trial game to figure out how much you can get (see image below). Here’s a Reddit thread of users trying to give their own approximation of how much you receive with each plan.

• Although Midjourney has provided flexibility in terms of pricing plans based on usage it is extremely hard for the average Joe to figure out which plan is the best for them. 

• On top of this, you do have the complicated proration system they have in place when you switch plans, i.e. if you are a basic plan user and switch to a higher plan how much of your “GPU” time carries over. This is how they’ve explained it, “Unused Fast GPU Time is credited towards your account when you choose to upgrade immediately. If a Basic subscriber upgrades immediately without using any GPU time, they receive a $10 credit towards their new plan. If a Standard subscriber upgrades after using 50% of their Fast GPU time, they receive a $15 credit towards their new plan.”

  
  

Jasper AI pricing: the easy one to understand but also the pricier one

• The image/art generation feature of Jasper is one of many offered by the platform. 

• However, no matter which plan you opt for you will receive unlimited art/image generations

• Jasper has segmented their pricing plans into three: Business, Teams, and Creator (see image below)

Jasper AI Pricing Plans

• If a user is just looking to generate art/images for their social media post or website, then the tool compared to the rest is on the pricier side. For someone looking to generate just 30–100 images per month, paying $49/month might be a little too expensive.

Kendal AI pricing: the simplest pricing structure among the four

• As of right now, Kendal AI has two pricing plans: a basic and a power user plan (see image below)

Kendal AI Pricing

• Amongst, the four Kendal AI has the clearest pricing structure showing exactly how much a user can generate for each plan. 

• With the Power Plan, you also get the handy ‘credits rollover’ feature which essentially means that if you don’t end up requesting 80 images per month. You can roll over the unused requests onto the next month and still have them in your arsenal until you cancel your subscription. 

• Kendal AI also has a handy “Content Boost” plan where you can pay a one-time fee of $4.99 and receive 10 image/art generations along with 30 revisions.

Which of these top AI Image generation models have free trials?

• Only two platforms allow users to test the image generation through a free trial: Kendal AI and Jasper AI. 

• Jasper has a 7-day unlimited free trial when you create an account with your card details. You do have to choose one of their three paid plans to begin the free trial, where if you don’t cancel within the seven days you will be charged for the chosen plan. 

• Kendal AI has a free plan where you just need to create an account with no credit card details, and you receive 10 image/art generation requests and 30 post revisions. The caveat here is that the 10 images/art you generate, will have watermarks, of which you have the option to remove five of them. 

• Both DALL-E and Midjourney have discontinued their free trial plans this year. Midjourney has stopped providing its free trial blaming it on “extraordinary demand and trial abuse” as said by David Holz, CEO, on Discord. Do note that for DALL-E, users who signed up prior to the 6th of April 2023 do have access to the 15 free credits.