Midjourney vs Photopea
Pricing
Midjourney: From $10/mo (no free tier)
Photopea: Free with ads, Premium $5/mo
Description
Midjourney: AI image generator that produces high-quality visuals from text prompts
Photopea: Free browser-based image editor that supports PSD, XD, Sketch, and AI files (no install, no account needed)
Pros
- Image quality is consistently the best among AI generators, especially for stylized and artistic output
- V6 model handles text in images, complex scenes, and photorealistic styles well
- $10/month Basic plan gives ~200 images, which covers most content needs
- Opens real PSD files with layers intact, the only free tool that does this reliably
- Runs entirely in the browser with no signup, no download, no waiting
- Supports an absurd range of formats: PSD, XD, Sketch, AI, WEBP, SVG, PDF
Cons
- No free tier: you have to pay before you can try it
- Images are public by default on Basic and Standard plans. Privacy requires the $60/month Pro plan
- Limited control over exact compositions: you describe what you want and hope it interprets correctly
- Ad-supported free tier shows banner ads that can distract during work
- Performance drops with large files (200MB+) since everything runs client-side in the browser
- Built by one developer: bus factor of one for a tool you might rely on
Details
Midjourney generates images from text descriptions, and it does it better than most alternatives. Tell it “minimalist SaaS landing page hero illustration, purple gradient” and you get something you can actually use. The quality gap between Midjourney and free alternatives like DALL-E 3 is noticeable, especially for anything stylized or artistic.
The catch for solo founders: there is no free tier, and privacy costs extra. On the $10/month Basic plan, your prompts and images are visible to other users on the Midjourney website. If you are generating images for a product and do not want competitors seeing your creative direction, you need the $60/month Pro plan for stealth mode. For blog headers, social media graphics, and marketing materials where privacy does not matter, the Basic plan at roughly 5 cents per image is hard to beat.
Photopea is what you reach for when someone sends you a PSD file and you do not have Photoshop. It opens in a browser tab and handles Photoshop files with layers, masks, and effects intact. It also opens Sketch, XD, and Illustrator files, which makes it the universal translator of design file formats.
Built and maintained by a single developer, Ivan Kutskir, Photopea earns roughly $1M per year from ads alone. The $5/month premium removes ads and gives you higher-resolution export options. For solo founders who need occasional image editing but cannot justify Adobe’s $23/month Photography plan, this covers 90% of what Photoshop does at a fraction of the cost, or free.
Verified
