In my experience, if you're looking for technical flexibility without the Midjourney price tag, I'd suggest Leonardo.ai. They give you 150 tokens daily for free, and honestly, the quality of their Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 implementation is top-tier for blog headers. It’s way more cost-effective since you only pay if you really need to batch-process. Another option you might want to consider is Playground AI. Their free tier is seriously generous—around 50 images a day—and their "Canvas" editor is basically a lifesaver for social media layouts. Just be careful with the resolution limits on the free plans though, as they sometimes cap the upscaling. But yeah, for "good enough" quality that doesn't break the bank, these two are the hidden gems. Make sure to test the different "Alchemy" settings on Leonardo if you want that extra polish. gl!

So basically the consensus is that Leonardo.ai is the top choice for those free daily tokens, but I feel u on the Midjourney drain. Honestly, I tried Canva Magic Media for blog headers recently and it was... not as good as expected. Kinda disappointing quality tbh. If you want better value, here is what I would check out:
1. Playground AI is lowkey the best hidden gem. Their free tier is super generous (way more than most) and the quality is solid for social media posts.
2. For a literal 'pay as you go' model, Fal.ai lets you run Stable Diffusion XL for fractions of a cent. It is way cheaper than a monthly sub if you only use it occasionally!
3. Krea.ai is also great for quick, high-quality headers without a massive bill. Anyway, it sucks that everything is becoming a subscription, but those should save you some serious cash!! gl

Any updates on this?

Building on the earlier suggestion about the daily credits, I've gotta say I'm way more satisfied with a few other tools lately. Most of my social media graphics come from these now because they work well without that massive Midjourney price tag.

• Ideogram 2.0 Free Tier is the winner for me right now. You get a handful of images a day for free, and its text rendering is actually usable for blog headers... no more weird garbled letters.
• Tensor.art Pro Subscription is another one. It's basically the same engine as Stable Diffusion but way easier to use online. Its super cheap, like 5 bucks a month, which is a total steal compared to most.
• Try Krea.ai Real-time Generator for quick stuff. Their real-time generation is kinda mind-blowing and they have a very solid free tier for casual users right now. I dont really have any complaints with these tools. They save me a ton of money and the quality is more than enough for what I need. Definitely give them a shot tho before dropping more cash on a big sub.

Honestly, I've been doing some market research on this lately because I'm also a bit of a newbie, but I *love* looking at the data behind these different brands. It basically feels like the market is shifting toward these massive hubs that are trying to undercut the big names on price-per-image. I've been tracking a few that haven't been brought up yet: * SeaArt.ai is a massive value play. They give you around 150-200 'energy' credits every single day for free, and their model library is huge. It feels a bit more technical, but the cost-to-compute ratio is honestly hard to beat.
* Microsoft Designer is what I use for quick social media posts. It uses DALL-E 3 for free if you have a Microsoft account. You don't get much control over the specs, but for zero dollars, it's a solid brand to stick with.
* Ideogram is the one I'm testing for blog headers. Their free tier gives you a daily allowance, and they are basically the best at rendering actual text in the images. I'm still trying to figure out which interface is the most efficient to work in... what do you guys think the best model to use is for?