01 /TOOLS / stable-diffusion
Stable Diffusion (Stability AI)
situationalThe open-weights classic — the largest community ecosystem of checkpoints and tools.
journal entry · observed by @whysanesanders · verified 2026-08-15
The ecosystem is the product: ControlNet, LoRAs, ComfyUI and thousands of community checkpoints. Base SDXL/SD3 quality is behind FLUX now, but nothing matches the community tooling and tutorials.
Known limitations
- Base models aging against FLUX and newer rivals.
- Company turbulence eroded trust in the roadmap.
- Good results require picking the right community checkpoint, not the raw model.
Facts
- pricing
- freemium
- price note
- weights free under community license; API pay-per-image
- free tier
- yes
- open source
- yes
- api
- yes
- self-host
- yes
- category
- image
Receipts
Same sector — image
DALL-E 3
OpenAI's earlier image model, still reachable via ChatGPT and the API.
image
paid · via ChatGPT Plus $20/mo; API from $0.04/image
API
FLUX (Black Forest Labs)
Open-weights image models from the original Stable Diffusion team.
image
freemium · API from $0.04/image (FLUX1.1 pro); dev/schnell weights free
OSSAPIFREE TIER
Ideogram
Image generator with the strongest text-in-image rendering.
image
freemium · free tier; from $8/mo (Plus)
APIFREE TIER