Midjourney
Midjourney still produces the most immediately attractive images of any generator, and it is still the least programmable. Buy it if you are art-directing by eye; look elsewhere if a machine has to call it.
Pros
- Default aesthetic quality is still the reason people pay for it
- Style and character references keep a look consistent across a set
- Image-to-video arrived natively rather than through a bolted-on partner
Cons
- No official public API, and unofficial wrappers breach the terms of service
- GPU-hour metering makes cost per image hard to predict, and video burns roughly 26x a still
- Images are public by default until you reach the $60 Pro tier
- No free trial since 2023, so evaluation costs $10