Midjourney vs Dall-E 3 vs Stable Diffusion: which AI image generator is best?

Midjourney vs Dall-E 3 vs Stable Diffusion is a battle of three of the best AI image generators. These are the models that sparked the explosion of AI art in recent years, and they have been making regular improvements, competing to add new tools and to improve the output of their models. However, they’re each very different in terms of their output, what you can do with them and how you access them.

DALL-E 2, the first beta version of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion all arrived within months of each other back in 2022: OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 in April, Midjourney in July and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion in August. But how do they compare today? Below we compare Midjourney vs Dall-E 3 vs Stable Diffusion on image quality, ease of use, features and price. 

Note that the platforms have been improving so fast that comparisons can become out of date very fast. Just today, Stability AI announced the launch of the open model of Stable Diffusion 3 Medium, its most advanced model yet. Also be aware that all three models have been questioned over the ethics and legality of how they were trained. Adobe Firefly is a more commercially safe AI image generator that was trained only on public domain and Adobe Stock images.

Midjourney vs Dall-E 3 vs Stable Diffusion: image quality

The first thing many people will want to know about when it comes to choosing an AI image generator is image quality. In this area, these three AI image generators have been leapfrogging over each other with each update, and which one provides the best quality may depend on what you want from it.

In terms of photorealism, Midjourney has been the most convincing since the release of Midjourney V6, although early examples from Stable Diffusion 3 look impressive. Midjourney also has a more lenient approach to copyright, allowing users to generate images with the likenesses of famous people or IPs. DALL-E 3’s attempts at photorealism tend to look more obviously AI-generated, often with a cartoonish or overly airbrushed look to them.

However, it’s not all about photorealism, and DALL-E 3 has its own strengths. It can produce artistic styles using an image reference, and it tends to demonstrate better adherence to complex prompts. Midjourney can create impressive images from simple text prompts, but it struggles with multiple subjects, often blending them into one and duplicating them. DALL-E 3 is currently more obedient when it comes to sticking to a prompt, especially in cases of long prompts with a lot of detail. 

It’s more possible to create a complex scene with a mixture of foreground and background elements in DALL-3, while Midjourney tends to generate some of the elements and ignore others. DALL-E 3 also tends to be better at generating text at the moment. Stable Diffusion 3 also appears to have good adherence to complex prompts and can handle text well.

Midjourney offers more flexibility when it comes customization and changeable parameters. Its ‘cref’ tag allows the creation of consistent characters with the same facial features and other characteristics across multiple image generations, allowing users to tell stories and put their character anywhere. You can also edit an existing image on Midjourney in the same way you generate a new image.

Stable Diffusion comes in different flavours. Run locally on a laptop, it can provide more control than both of its rivals, allowing the specification of things like specific poses or fabrics.

Midjourney vs Dall-E 3 vs Stable Diffusion: ease of use

One of the most appealing aspects of DALL-E 3 is how easy it is to use. It’s part of Chat GPT4, and this integration means that you can interact with it conversationally and also ask Chat GPT to craft your prompts for you. You tell it what you want to generate, and it will suggest the optimum quote to get DALL-E 3 to generate it. This can help avoid the long process of trial and error that’s often involved in getting the right prompt for the image you want to generate Midjourney or Stable Diffusion. DALL-E 3 is also integrated into Bing, Microsoft‘s search engine, and Copilot, the company’s AI chatbot. This makes it the most easily accessible AI image generator. 

Midjourney takes more work since it takes some time to learn how to craft prompts and the different parameters that you can include. It’s also a bit more hassle to access since you need to create a Discord account. You need to generate 100 images before you’re allowed to generate images directly on Midjourney’s own site. Stable Diffusion is the most complex of all for newbies who aren’t tech savvy. It’s open-source, so it’s free to use, but you’ll need to run it on your own computer (if you have a powerful enough GPU) or through cloud service, or pay for access through a web app like Stability AI’s DreamStudio.

Midjourney vs Dall-E 3 vs Stable Diffusion: pricing

Midjourney has a price of entry running from $10 per month for limited speeds and simultaneous generations all the way up to $120 per month for 60 hr/month of fast GPU time and up to 12 fast jobs at once. 

DALL-E 3 can be used for free via Copilot and Bing, but the results appear to be much better in ChatGPT, which requires a ChatGPT Plus plan for $20 a month. Stable Diffusion is completely free if you can run it on your own computer. However, most cloud-based host sites charge a subscription: ThinkDiffusion offers one hour free but costs $19 per month after that. DreamStudio charges by the image using a credits system. For pricing on Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, including access to Firefly AI tools, see below.