Recraft
Most AI image generators are toys. Recraft is a tool. While everyone else is busy making surreal astronaut cats for Twitter, Recraft is quietly letting you build actual, usable design assets—specifically vectors (SVGs) that you can scale infinitely without pixelation—and it gives you 30 free credits every single day.
If you’ve ever tried to turn a Midjourney JPEG into a company logo and failed miserably, this is the fix.
🎨 What It Actually Does
- Vector Generation: It creates true SVG files, not just flat images. – Benefit: You can blow up a logo to the size of a billboard or shrink it for a business card, and it will remain crisp, editable, and professional.
- Style Consistency: You can upload an image (like your brand's existing art) and tell Recraft to "copy this style." – Benefit: You stop getting random, mismatched results. Your icons, illustrations, and marketing headers finally look like they belong to the same company.
- Integrated Editing Canvas: It has a built-in whiteboard where you can drag, drop, erase, and repaint parts of an image. – Benefit: You don’t have to switch back and forth between an AI tool and Photoshop just to fix a weird hand or remove a background.
- Mockup Generator: One click wraps your design onto a t-shirt, phone screen, or bottle. – Benefit: You can instantly show a client (or your boss) exactly what the final product will look like in the real world.
The Real Cost (Free vs. Paid)
The free plan is surprisingly generous for a daily allowance, but the "Public" constraint is the dealbreaker for secret projects.
| Plan | Cost | Key Limits/Perks |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 30 Credits/Day (resets daily). Images are Public. No commercial license. Standard speed. |
| Pro | ~$10/mo | 1,000 Credits/Mo. Images are Private. Full commercial ownership. Faster generation. |
How It Stacks Up
- vs. Midjourney: Midjourney creates prettier "art" and atmosphere, but it generally refuses to do text or vectors correctly, and it (usually) has no free plan. Recraft is less "dreamy" but significantly more functional for work.
- vs. Ideogram: Ideogram is the king of putting text inside images (like a sign that says "Coffee"). Recraft is decent at text, but it beats Ideogram on layout control and vector export.
- vs. Canva: Canva is great for dragging things around, but its native AI generation often feels generic. Recraft is a dedicated "asset factory" that you would export into Canva.
The Verdict
Recraft signals the shift from "AI as magic trick" to "AI as employee." It doesn't just want to impress you with a pretty picture; it wants to save you three hours of hunting for the right icon on a stock photo site.
For the average user, it is the best free utility for creating logos, icons, and clean illustrations. For designers, it’s a sketchpad that finally understands the difference between a pixel and a path.
