Midjourney

Midjourney is the most artistically capable AI image generator, known for producing stunning, painterly results. Originally a Discord bot, now also available via web interface. Plans start at $10/month (no free tier). V8 (alpha, March 2026) made generation about 5x faster than V7, added native 2K output with --hd and noticeably better text rendering. Strong points include style references (--sref) for consistent aesthetics across a project and character references (--cref) for character consistency. The community on Discord is the best way to learn advanced prompting techniques. Best for: concept art, marketing visuals, book covers, album art, and any project where aesthetic quality matters more than literal prompt adherence.