Honestly, if you're doing stickers for coffee shops, you gotta be really careful about print resolution because low-res AI junk looks like trash once it's actually on a cup. Midjourney is amazing but yeah, those credits disappear way too fast when you're just learning. I would suggest checking out Adobe Express Premium Plan first. It is around 10 bucks a month and the AI features are powered by Firefly, which is way safer for commercial work since they train it on licensed stuff... you wont get hit with copyright issues later. Plus you get actual design tools alongside the AI which Canva lacks for pro print work. Another one I have used is Leonardo.ai Artisan Subscription. You might want to consider their free tier first though because it gives you daily tokens that reset every 24 hours. Its great for testing ideas without spending a dime. Just be careful with the upscaling... make sure to use their universal upscaler or the stickers will look muddy in person. I'd suggest always doing a test print at home before sending files to a client. Commercial licensing is the biggest hurdle so always read the fine print before you sell anything. Let me know if you need help with the vectorizing part of the process, its kinda tricky.

You might want to consider the technical requirements for 300 DPI print quality. I would suggest using Leonardo.ai Free Tier 150 Daily Credits basically to refine your prompts without wasting your budget. Make sure to use Vectorizer.ai Pro Plan Annual to convert those images into vectors so they dont look blurry on coffee cups. TL;DR: Use Leonardo for free credits and a vector tool for print-ready files.

Adding my two cents here since I've been down this road with a small local bakery recently. Honestly, I'm super satisfied with how I've got my workflow set up now. I was so worried about blowing my budget on credits too, especially when I was just messing around and getting weird distorted artifacts. It feels like a gamble sometimes and I hate wasting cash when I'm just trying to learn the ropes. I've been using Ideogram AI Plus Subscription lately and it's basically the only thing that gets text right for stickers without a bunch of manual cleanup. If you want a Seattle coffee shop vibe with actual legible words, that's the way to go. No complaints on my end, it just works well and stays within that budget you mentioned. Their basic tier is pretty cheap too. Since you're worried about resolution for printing—which is a very valid concern—I really suggest grabbing Upscayl Desktop Open Source Image Upscaler. It's totally free and runs right on your computer so you aren't fighting with cloud limits just to make an image bigger. I've used it for a bunch of sticker runs and they always come out crisp. It's a much safer bet than just hoping Canva handles the pixels right. Just take it slow and dont feel like you need a massive sub right away... it takes a minute to find what works for you.

Been using this for years, no complaints

Unfortunately, most of the budget-friendly tools have been pretty disappointing lately when it comes to actual print-ready output. There have been so many issues with aggressive compression artifacts that just look messy once you're actually printing on vinyl. Before I go too deep into the technical side tho, what style are you actually aiming for? Are we talking minimalist vector-style icons or more like complex, hyper-detailed illustrations? That determines which model is actually worth your time. If you have a decent PC with a dedicated GPU, you really should just run Stability AI Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 locally using ComfyUI. It costs literally nothing and the 1024x1024 base resolution is miles ahead of the older models. If you need something cloud-based, SeaArt AI Monthly Subscription is around 15 bucks and is way more powerful than Microsoft Designer Free Plan. While Microsoft's tool is free, it is not as good as expected because it lacks the control you need for commercial stickers. SeaArt lets you use specialized LoRAs for specific art styles, which is basically essential if you want your stickers to look like a cohesive set instead of random AI junk... just keep an eye on your credit usage there too.