Freepik Evaluation: A Swiss Military Knife of the Greatest AI Artwork Instruments—For Low-cost – Decrypt

Whereas numerous firms struggle on your AI subscription {dollars}, one platform has quietly scooped up almost each main AI picture and video mannequin obtainable right this moment.

Freepik—sure, that inventory picture website you have in all probability used earlier than—has remodeled itself right into a inventive Swiss Military knife which may simply prevent lots of in charges.

Regardless of its identify, Freepik isn’t free. However its subscription proposition is cheap: Why pay $240 yearly for ChatGPT, $144 for Runway, $96 for MidJourney, $219 for Eleven Labs and a number of other extra subscriptions when Freepik bundles all of them collectively for considerably much less—beginning at round $69 a 12 months.

Digital creators have been juggling a number of AI instruments, burning money and time switching between platforms—and that’s the issue Freepik is attempting to resolve.

“When the generative AI development emerged, we realized we may develop our mission,” Joaquin Cuenca, Freepik’s CEO, advised Decrypt. “Now, as an alternative of simply providing inventory content material, we adapt to what our customers want, letting them make one thing distinctive.”

“The core enterprise is similar—serving to creators make nice designs. It’s simply the ‘how’ that we modified,” he stated.

Freepik serves over 60 million guests a month, together with cinematographers, artists, designers, but in addition a rising neighborhood of newbie creators and AI fanatics that joined the platform as a result of it provides them the whole lot they wish to strive, he stated.

We put the service by way of its paces to see if it’s pretty much as good as the excitement claims.

TL;DR It’s.

Freepik hands-on

Freepik’s method straight addresses a persistent ache level for content material creators who’ve historically been compelled to keep up a number of subscriptions throughout varied platforms to entry the total spectrum of AI capabilities.

The platform is powerful, nevertheless it has so many choices that it may be overwhelming for newcomers.

It’s an all-in-one hub that requires a little bit of familiarization for customers to really feel comfy. The entrance website alone has 9 menus, with dozens of submenus, providing rather a lot to discover and work by way of.

For this assessment, we targeted on the AI options and can solely briefly point out a number of the extra vital non-AI instruments.

Picture Technology

The platform affords a powerful array of picture technology capabilities by way of a number of distinct fashions, together with state-of-the-art fashions like Google’s Imagen 3, Flux 1.1, and Ideogram.

The platform lacks help for different closed-source fashions like ChatGPT’s new picture generator, Reve, Recraft, MidJourney, and SD3.5 Massive, which, regardless of not being pretty much as good as Flux, can be a reference within the open-source neighborhood.

Nonetheless, Freepik Mystic produces pictures on par with MidJourney and the remainder of the perfect fashions out there.

Mystic 2.5, Freepik’s homegrown model of Flux 1.1, demonstrates explicit energy in inventive interpretation and surprising composition.

Throughout testing, it constantly produced extra various digicam angles and dynamic poses than different fashions like Ideogram or Imagen3, remodeling equivalent prompts into distinctly completely different visible interpretations.

Mystic’s sturdy level isn’t immediate adherence, but it nonetheless produces particularly stunning, inventive, and sensible pictures.

Google’s Imagen 3 sits on the reverse finish of the spectrum, with nice immediate coherence and exact element rendering however poor textual content technology (which means phrases are misspelled or outright gibberish).

When supplied with complicated prompts containing a number of particular components, Imagen 3 reliably captured every part.

This precision makes it significantly useful for customers requiring precise visualization of particular ideas in a single shot.

The pure Flux 1.1 occupies a center floor, providing extremely customizable outputs with ok fashion switch capabilities.

Whereas maybe not matching Imagen 3’s precision or Mystic’s inventive aptitude, its flexibility and trainability make it nicely suited to customers looking for to develop constant branded visible types.

Additionally it is the most cost effective one when it comes to credit per technology.

Ideogram rounds out the picture technology choices with explicit energy in incorporating textual content components into pictures. This specialization makes it nice for creating advertising supplies, data graphics, or any content material the place readable textual content integration is important. Till the arrival of ChatGPT’s new mannequin, this was the king for lengthy textual content technology.

Additionally, this mannequin is more likely to be up to date, since Ideogram 3.0 was launched final week.

The platform additionally affords an AI immediate enhancer so as to add particulars and components to a primary immediate, a shade palette picker, a mode picker with completely different framing and lighting choices, and a set of premade characters for customers requiring consistency in topics.

It additionally helps LoRA coaching—principally a small however extremely particular mannequin educated for customized duties—giving customers the opportunity of producing pictures of a selected topic, a customized fashion, or a singular idea.

The “Reimagine” characteristic can be attention-grabbing for these keen to discover concepts.

Customers can add pictures or prompts, and Freepik will spit out dozens of fast pictures in seconds with completely different approaches to the unique, so the consumer can choose one after which iterate on it, dedicating extra compute to generate a extra detailed and higher high quality piece.

It additionally has a sketch mode, which immediately transforms any scribble into regardless of the consumer prompts. It really works nearly immediately, and is much like the “reside portray” software that the generative AI plugin Krita affords—or one of many outdated GauGAN panorama mills that Nvidia constructed earlier than generative AI was cool.

This draft software is nice for fast sketches and conditions through which a number of strokes are sufficient to grasp an idea—for instance, the method of drafting a film script, or sketching the thought of a metropolis panorama.

Past picture technology, Freepik can be recognized for its Magnific AI. The upscaling mannequin is a inventive enhancement know-how that goes past merely rising decision to actively improve picture particulars with outstanding constancy.

In contrast to typical upscalers that depend on interpolating current pixels, Magnific intelligently provides texture and element to boost the unique picture.

Our exams confirmed the “delicate” setting works finest for realism, including texture and element with out bizarre glitches.

Cranking up the creativity settings generally leads to oddities, however the built-in retouching instruments make fixes straightforward.

The aggressive choices really work nicely for nature scenes the place precise matching is not essential—for instance, upscaling a forest can profit from some inventive interpretation, however faces want to truly appear to be faces.

The actual worth right here is having a number of AI fashions in a single place. You need to use every for what it does finest: Mystic for inventive exploration, Imagen 3 for precision work, and Ideogram for textual content integration—all with out leaving the platform.

Video technology

Freepik’s video technology toolkit basically aggregates entry to each vital video AI mannequin available on the market.

The platform helps Minimax (together with specialised variations optimized for illustrations and character consistency), Runway, Luma, Dream Machine, Kling 1.6 (together with skilled tier entry), Hunyuan, and PixVerse—basically the whole present panorama of SOTA video technology AI.

Most notably, Freepik gives entry to Google’s Veo2, ranked as probably the most superior video technology mannequin obtainable right this moment, however geographically restricted in lots of areas.

This inclusion alone represents vital worth for creators in areas the place direct entry to Veo2 would in any other case be unimaginable. However beware, generations with Veo2 are extraordinarily costly, costing round twice the credit required by different fashions comparable to Kling 1.6 Professional.

Testing equivalent prompts throughout completely different video fashions revealed distinct traits that might enchantment to completely different use instances.

Minimax’s illustration-focused mannequin produced extra dynamic and stylized animations, whereas Kling demonstrated superior lighting results, sensible bodily interactions, and, for some purpose, was in a position to maintain the digicam regular in a single place.

Veo2 may be very sensible and produces glorious movies—in all probability not twice the standard of the opposite fashions, however they had been ok for us to crown it as the perfect video mannequin so far.

For a comparability of all of the fashions, examine the video beneath. All used the identical immediate and preliminary body as reference:

Past AI: A whole inventive ecosystem

Whereas AI capabilities appear to be the cornerstone of Freepik’s present worth proposition, the platform maintains its origins as a complete design useful resource hub for artists and designers who don’t incorporate AI into their work.

Customers preserve entry to an intensive library of conventional design assets, together with:

• Vector graphics collections, with hundreds {of professional} illustrations; graphical components that may be mixed with AI-generated content material, or used independently; and a library of icons.
• Skilled design templates for displays, social media, advertising supplies, and different frequent purposes—which, in fact, could be populated with AI-generated components.
• Mockup mills for customers to visualise designs in sensible contexts comparable to product packaging, billboards, or digital units with out requiring complicated 3D modeling or photographic setups.
• Brand and icon-creation instruments and enterprise id packages to streamline the event of constant branding property by way of guided processes and customizable templates.

Pricing

Freepik operates on a tier-based system. Every tier provides customers a certain quantity of credit which can be burned primarily based on use.

For instance, producing a picture will eat fewer credit than producing a video.

The free tier permits customers to discover the platform’s capabilities with out monetary dedication.

Nevertheless, generations underneath this license usually are not allowed for use commercially. Free accounts can entry:

• Twenty AI picture generations each day—sufficient to experiment with completely different fashions and approaches for private or small-scale skilled initiatives.
• Restricted version instruments like 2 up-scales, 1 background removing, 3 retouches, variations, and outpainting. There is no such thing as a entry to video technology, however customers can generate 2 sound results on daily basis.
• 10 downloads per day of Freepik’s inventory content material, together with vectors, pictures, AI pictures, icons, movies, fonts, templates, and extra—basically a competitor to Adobe or related providers.

For skilled or extra skilled customers requiring larger capability, paid subscription plans vary from round $69 to $294 per 12 months.

This pricing positions Freepik favorably in opposition to most of its opponents, like Midjourney (which begins at $96 per 12 months), Ideogram (beginning at $84 per 12 months), and even Adobe and Shutterstock, whose mid-tier plan prices extra whereas providing considerably much less useful range and mannequin selection.

The Verdict: A Swiss Military software for AI artists and creators

Quite than forcing customers to decide on between competing ecosystems or preserve a number of subscriptions, Freepik gives unified entry to just about each main mannequin alongside skilled enhancing capabilities and conventional design assets.

For skilled creators, this consolidation affords tangible workflow advantages past mere comfort.

Initiatives can circulation naturally between completely different AI fashions primarily based on particular wants, endure skilled refinement inside the similar atmosphere, and combine seamlessly with production-ready design components—all with out the cognitive overhead and monetary burden of platform-switching.

For amateurs, this provides the possibility of getting all the most recent AI fashions in a single place with out paying for particular subscriptions. It’s an actual Swiss Military knife that’s positively price attempting.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner