Flux.1 is currently the best AI image model, and here are 5 websites to try it for free.
Merely a few days since its release, Flux.1 by Black Forest Labs has stolen the spotlight as the best open-weight AI image generator. With a massive 12 billion parameters, it outperforms commercial models like Midjourney V6 and OpenAI’s Dall-E 3.
Since the model is open-weight, you can download it and run it locally on your PC, or use an API to generate images. However, these methods require some technical know-how and might not be the best option for everyone to try Flux.1.
In this article, I am going to show you five websites to access Flux.1 for free. Let’s get started.
Flux labs AI is a platform that lets you generate images with Flux image models and also fine-tune them with your own photos.
After you login with your Google account, head over to the image generation page and set the Flux Model to Flux 1.1 Pro.
These are the settings you can adjust to tweak the resulting image:
In the prompt field, describe the image you want to generate. Here’s an example:
Prompt: POV shot, a photorealistic photo of a female blowing a kiss at the camera, set against Italian street background
Pretty cool, right? You can also view the images under the creations page.
Here’s another example:
Prompt: An image of a cute dog lying on a fluffy circle pillow, smiling for a photoshoot
Awesome! The generation speed is fast, and the result looks absolutely impressive. The details are sharp, the colors are vibrant, and the images look like they were taken by a professional photographer.
Replicate is a cloud-based platform that allows users to run and fine-tune machine learning (ML) models, including open-source and custom models.
To use Flux.1, head over to Blackforest Lab’s page on Replicate, where you’ll see three Flux models listed. Select the one you’d like to test. Note that only the Schnell model is accessible for free.
Next, describe the image you want to generate
Prompt: black forest gateau cake spelling out the words “FLUX SCHNELL”, tasty, food photography, dynamic shot
Awesome. This example shows how good Flux is in rendering text, even with the smallest model. The image generation speed is impressive, taking only 1.6 seconds to create a 16:9 Webp image at 768 x 1344 resolution.
If you are interested in running the Pro and the Dev models, you can set up a payment method and generate images at approximately $0.0021 per run.
Another awesome website to try Flux.1 is fluxaiimagegenerator.com. This isn’t an official website but much appreciation to its creators for making such an awesome platform.
It is also by far the simplest and most straightforward image generator among the others on this list with only four controls: prompt, seed, aspect ratio, output format, and quality. The simplicity of this tool is what I find most appealing. You don’t get bogged down with too many options.
Here’s an example:
Prompt: a frame full of white and black bulls in it
The generation speed is also impressively fast, taking less than five seconds to create an image with a 1344 x 768 resolution in JPG format.
The tool offers three pricing plans.
Fal.ai is a generative media platform for developers that provides AI inference APIs for applications. It’s also a great platform for testing multimodal models like Flux.1.
To use it, head over to Fal.ai and select the Schnell model. The other models require a payment method.
Describe the image you want to generate, adjust the settings, and click “Run”. Here’s an example prompt:
Prompt: Extreme close-up of a single tiger eye, direct frontal view. Detailed iris and pupil. Sharp focus on eye texture and color. Natural lighting to capture authentic eye shine and depth. The word “FLUX” is painted over it in big, white brush strokes with visible texture.
If you want to try the larger Dev model, it costs $0.025 per megapixel. For $1, you can run this model approximately 40 times. You can also use the images for commercial purposes so the pricing is quite reasonable here.
HuggingFace is an open-source platform that allows users to create, train, and deploy machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) models. It’s a community for AI experts and enthusiasts, similar to GitHub for AI.
To try Flux.1 on Hugging Face, create an account and open the space for Flux.1 Schnell.
Enter your prompt on the right side text field and click on the “Compute” button. If ever you encounter an error (like I did), choose a different space in the list below the prompt section.
Here’s an example:
Prompt: an image of an astronaut riding a horse on the moon
Here’s another awesome space from user, Innoai.
Prompt: a tiny astronaut hatching from an egg on the moon
Here's a bonus website you might also wanna check out.
BasedLabs is a creative hub for AI image and video generation, providing users with intuitive tools to explore and craft custom images and videos. Upon signup, you will receive 15 free credits. Each image generation costs 1–5 credits.
To create an image, select “Flux” from the drop-down list of models and describe the image you want to generate.
Let’s see an example with the prompt below:
Prompt: illustration of jupiter clouds by dan mumford, alien landscape and vegetation, epic scene, a lot of swirling clouds, high exposure, highly detailed, realistic, vibrant blue tinted colors, uhd
This is really cool. The quality is very comparable to Midjourney.
BasedLabs offers two subscription plans:
Both plans allow unused credits to carry over to the next month, which is great for those who might not use all their credits every month.
That’s about it. I hope you find this list helpful, and if you know of any other platforms that offer free access to Flux.1, please let me know in the comments.
A bit of a disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the websites I mentioned above. I simply wanted to share them with my readers who want to experiment with this brand-new image generator tool.
In the next article, I will be comparing Flux against Midjourney and Dall-E 3. Thanks for reading and have a great day!
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Software engineer, writer, solopreneur