Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)

Stability AI's open-weight image models, free for individuals and businesses under $1M revenue.

Free plan + paidSelf-hostableAI image generators

Visit Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)See 5 alternatives

Verified facts: 4 of 4
Alternatives ranked: 5
Approved reviews: 0
Visits sent from here: 0

About Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)

Stable Diffusion is the family of open-weight image models from Stability AI, and the foundation of a huge ecosystem of community fine-tunes, LoRAs and local apps. Current releases centre on Stable Diffusion 3.5 in Large, Turbo and Medium sizes, while older SDXL and 1.5 models remain popular because so many community add-ons target them. You don't use it through one app: you download the weights and run them in a front end such as ComfyUI, Automatic1111, SwarmUI or Draw Things, or call Stability's API. The Stability AI Community License makes the core models free for research, non-commercial use and commercial use by people and organisations under $1M in annual revenue; larger companies need an enterprise licence. Stability itself now focuses mainly on enterprise customers. It suits tinkerers and teams that want models they can run, fine-tune and keep private.

Best for: Tinkerers and small businesses who want to run and fine-tune image models themselves.

What works

Free for most individuals and small businesses
Largest ecosystem of fine-tunes, LoRAs and tools
Runs fully offline on your own hardware

Why people leave

Needs a separate app and a capable GPU
Base models trail the best hosted models on quality
Not an OSI open-source licence; revocable if terms are broken

Top Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) alternatives

See all 5

1
FLUX (Black Forest Labs)
Newer open-weight models with stronger prompt adherence and an API.
66.5
2
ComfyUI
The most flexible free app for running Stable Diffusion models locally.
62.6
3
Civitai
Run community Stable Diffusion models in the browser without a GPU.
59.6
4
Midjourney
Hosted service with better out-of-the-box quality and no setup.
57.2
5
Adobe Firefly
Hosted, commercially safe alternative for companies above the licence threshold.
55.3

Why people left Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)

In reviewers' own words, from reviews of the apps they moved to. These are their opinions, not ours.

No switching stories yet. If you moved away from Stable Diffusion (Stability AI), review the app you switched to and tell us why.

Reviews

No approved reviews yet. How we verify reviewers

Write a review of Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)

Your rating of Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)

Name

Never shown publicly. A work email helps us verify you.

Title

Your review

What did you use it for, and what was good or bad? At least 40 characters.

Did you switch from another app?

Why did you leave it?

How can we verify you use it? (optional)

A GitHub username, your company domain, or say you can send a screenshot. Verified reviews count more.

I received money, credit or a gift for writing this review. (Incentivized reviews are shown but don't count toward rankings.)

By submitting, you confirm you're at least 16 and agree to our terms. Your name, rating, review and the date are published; your email isn't. See our privacy policy.

Stable Diffusion (Stability AI): common questions

Is Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) free?

Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) has a free plan and paid plans.

Is Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) open source?

No, Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) is not open source. Open-source alternatives include ComfyUI.

What platforms does Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) run on?

Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) is available for Self-hosted.

What are the best alternatives to Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)?

The highest-ranked Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) alternatives right now are FLUX (Black Forest Labs), ComfyUI and Civitai. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.

See all 5 Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) alternatives

Stable Diffusion (Stability AI) facts

4 of 4 verified

Licence: Stability AI Community License; Checked Oct 25, 2026stability.ai(opens source in a new tab); “The Stability AI Community License allows for research, non-commercial, and commercial use”
Free use threshold: Under $1M annual revenue; Checked Oct 25, 2026stability.ai(opens source in a new tab); “Any business making under USD $1M annually of revenue, regardless of the source of that revenue, doesn’t need to pay to use or distribute the Core Models.”
Enterprise licence: Required above $1M annual revenue; Checked Oct 25, 2026stability.ai(opens source in a new tab); “Enterprise For enterprise, API providers, and businesses with annual revenue exceeding $1M.”
Self-hosting: Yes, Stable Diffusion 3.5 on your own infrastructure; Checked Oct 25, 2026stability.ai(opens source in a new tab); “Deploy Stable Diffusion 3.5 on your own infrastructure”