Leonardo AI is an online studio for making images and video with AI. It started in Australia and now belongs to Canva. Instead of a single model it offers dozens of models and ready-made styles, from its own in-house models to models from other companies, plus tools for editing, upscaling and animating images. Its main difference from Midjourney is more control: you can train a custom style, keep a character consistent and fix an image piece by piece on an editing canvas.
What is Leonardo AI good for?#
- Social media images: a content creator generates a series of posts and keeps them consistent with a style reference.
- Game and character design: an indie game developer gets ideas and first drafts for characters, items and backgrounds.
- Product photos and ads: an online store places a plain product photo into different advertising scenes.
- Image animation: turn a still image into a short clip for a story or reel.
- Custom style training: an agency teaches the model a brand's consistent look from a few past works.
Strengths and weaknesses#
Strengths:
- A real free daily allowance, not just a trial period
- Wide choice of models and ready-made styles
- Control tools such as image references, character consistency and style training
- Canva integration for continuing the design
Weaknesses:
- A crowded interface that can confuse beginners
- A complicated token system, with each model costing differently
- Images from free accounts are public
- Text inside images is unreliable, especially in non-Latin scripts
Free tier and pricing#
Leonardo is freemium. Each day you get a free token allowance, enough for a few images; it does not accumulate and refreshes the next day. Paid plans add more tokens, private generation, stronger video models and faster queues. A separate API exists for developers. Check the official site for current pricing.
Language support#
Leonardo understands English prompts far better than other languages. If your English is limited, translate the prompt with a chat assistant first. It also tends to get text inside images wrong in non-Latin scripts, so add that text afterward in Canva or Photoshop.
Getting started in three steps#
- Sign up with a Google account and pick a ready-made style in the image generation section.
- Write a short English prompt and set the aspect ratio to suit a post or story.
- Refine a good image with a style reference or the editing canvas, and upscale it if needed.
Leonardo AI alternatives#
- Midjourney: higher artistic quality, but no free tier.
- Krea: a variety of models plus real-time image generation.
- FLUX: a strong open model that can also run on your own computer.
- Ideogram: for designs that need legible English text.
For better prompts, read AI image generation: prompts, styles and text in images, and for commercial use, copyright and commercial use of AI images.
