Ideogram vs Midjourney vs Adobe Firefly vs Stable Diffusion
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Ideogram
Image models built around legible in-image text, now with open weights
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Midjourney
Prompt-to-image generator known for its aesthetics, now on V8.2
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Adobe Firefly
Adobe's AI studio for image, video and audio, wired into Creative Clou...
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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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| RECATOOLS Score | 7.6 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 7.8 / 10 | 8 / 10 |
| Capability | ||||
| Value for money | ||||
| Ease of use | ||||
| ASEAN readiness | ||||
| API quality | ||||
| Pricing | Freemium | Subscription | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | 30 credits a week for accounts signed in with Google, Apple or Microsoft; free images are public | No free plan; a limited trial exists only in the niji·journey mobile app | Free plan with daily generations across image, video and audio, refreshed every day; includes models such as Nano Banana and Luma Ray3.14 | Self-hosted weights free under the Community License below US$1M annual revenue; 25 free API credits for new accounts |
| Paid from | $15/month (Plus, billed yearly at $180) or $20 month to month | $10/month (Basic), or $8/month billed annually | S$13.39/month incl. GST (Firefly Standard, 2,000 credits, Singapore pricing) | $0.025 per image via the API (SD 3.5 Flash, 2.5 credits at $0.01 each) |
| Has API | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | 1m+ users | ~20m users (early 2026) | ~41M Creative Cloud subscribers; Firefly used to generate 22B+ assets by April 2025 | Widely adopted open-source model; no official central user count |
| Founded | 2023 | 2022 | 2023 | 2022 |
| Maker | Yuheng Li, Jiahui Yu, Qifeng Chen, Huiwen Chang | David Holz | Adobe Inc. | Stability AI |
| Verdict | 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... |
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... |
Firefly is the natural choice for anyone already in Creative Cloud: Generative Fill and other standard image features are unlimited on every paid plan, one credit pool covers Adobe's apps, and the model menu now includes... |
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... |
| 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.