The best free AI generators (that are actually free)
What you can genuinely make without paying, medium by medium — and where the free tier's catch is. "Free" below means a real ongoing allowance, not a one-off trial.
Images
- Stable Diffusion — truly free and unlimited if you run it on your own machine; open source, private, no credits. The catch: setup effort and a decent GPU.
- Ideogram, Leonardo.Ai, Adobe Firefly — real recurring free credits (daily or monthly). The catch: caps, and free plans may limit commercial rights.
- ChatGPT (DALL·E) — a small number of images free. Catch: tight limits.
Video
- Luma Dream Machine — the most usable free allowance for image-to-video.
- Pika — free tier for short stylised clips. Catch for both: queues, watermarks or caps on the free plan.
3D & printing
- Meshy / Tripo / Luma Genie — free credits to generate models.
- Slicers are simply free: UltiMaker Cura, PrusaSlicer and Bambu Studio cost nothing at all.
Music & voice
- Suno / Udio — daily free credits for full songs. Catch: no commercial use on free tiers.
- ElevenLabs — free monthly allowance of natural text-to-speech.
Text & code
- Claude and ChatGPT — genuinely useful free tiers for writing and code.
- GitHub Copilot — a free tier for editor autocomplete.
The universal catch: free tiers usually exclude or restrict
commercial use, add watermarks, or cap volume. If you're publishing, selling or printing the result,
read the licence for the exact plan you're on — the FAQ covers the basics.
More: all tools by medium · all guides