FLUX vs Stable Diffusion vs Midjourney vs Ideogram
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
FLUX
Black Forest Labs' image and video models: open weights plus a pay-as-...
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Stable Diffusion
Open-weight image models you can run, fine-tune and ship on your own h...
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Midjourney
Prompt-to-image generator known for its aesthetics, now on V8.2
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Ideogram
Image models built around legible in-image text, now with open weights
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| RECATOOLS Score | 8.3 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 7.6 / 10 |
| Capability | ||||
| Value for money | ||||
| Ease of use | ||||
| ASEAN readiness | ||||
| API quality | ||||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Subscription | Freemium |
| Free tier | Apache 2.0 weights (FLUX.2 klein 4B, FLUX.1 schnell); FLUX 3 Image Klein and Action free for firms under $5M annual revenue | Self-hosted weights free under the Community License below US$1M annual revenue; 25 free API credits for new accounts | No free plan; a limited trial exists only in the niji·journey mobile app | 30 credits a week for accounts signed in with Google, Apple or Microsoft; free images are public |
| Paid from | From $0.008 per image (FLUX 3 Image Klein API); video from $0.03 per second | $0.025 per image via the API (SD 3.5 Flash, 2.5 credits at $0.01 each) | $10/month (Basic), or $8/month billed annually | $15/month (Plus, billed yearly at $180) or $20 month to month |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Users | Widely available via third-party API providers | Widely adopted open-source model; no official central user count | ~20m users (early 2026) | 1m+ users |
| Founded | 2024 | 2022 | 2022 | 2023 |
| Maker | Black Forest Labs | Stability AI | David Holz | Yuheng Li, Jiahui Yu, Qifeng Chen, Huiwen Chang |
| Verdict | FLUX is one of the strongest model families to build on, and since July 2026 it is more than an image model: FLUX 3 adds video with native audio and an open robotics model, while FLUX 3 Image Klein is a small open-weight... |
Stable Diffusion is still the image family to pick when you need to run, fine-tune and control the model yourself: SDXL and SD 3.5 run on your own GPUs, the API is cheap per image, and the licence is free for most indivi... |
Midjourney is still the tool designers reach for when the look of an image matters most. V8.2 sharpened aesthetics and personalisation, the new edit model handles instructions, references, inpainting and outpainting, and... |
Ideogram is the image generator to reach for when the words in the picture matter. Typography, headlines and packaging copy come out readable far more often than with general-purpose models, and 4.0's JSON prompts with b... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.