M
MNovelAI vs Stable Diffusion
Pricing, features, platforms and who each one suits — side by side.
N
Choose NovelAI if…
- you're in its core audience: anime artists, content creators
S
Choose Stable Diffusion if…
- you want a free plan to start with
- you need an API to build on
- you work on Self-hosted
- you're in its core audience: developers, researchers
Side by side
Feature NovelAI Stable Diffusion
Pricing modelFree trialFreemium
Starting price$10/mo—
Free plan
Free trial
API
Open source
Trains AI on your content—Yes, unless you opt out
Data retention—Kept as long as reasonably necessary, including while account is active
PlatformsWebWeb, API, Self-hosted
CategoryAnime & Art StylesImage Generators
CompanyAnlatan Inc.Stability AI Ltd · United Kingdom
Full feature lists
N NovelAI
- NovelAI Diffusion V5 anime image model
- Natural-language and tag-based prompting
- Separate character definitions for consistency across scenes
- Inpainting to change selected areas of an image
- Director Tools for clothing, lighting and pose edits
- Built-in canvas to guide generations
- Story generator powered by GLM 4.6
- On-demand Anlas credit purchases
S Stable Diffusion
- Text-to-image with the Stable Diffusion 3.5 suite
- SD 3.5 Flash and Turbo variants for faster, cheaper generation
- SDXL 1.0 available from 0.9 credits per image
- Platform API with credit-based billing
- Self-hosted deployment under a license
- Custom model training on the Enterprise plan
What you'd pay
The cheapest plan that fits, per month, billed yearly where the plan offers it.
NovelAI
Starting subscription$10/mo
Stable Diffusion
Community LicenseFree
API credits$0.01 per credit
Enterprise LicenseCustom
Strengths and limitations
NovelAI
- Commercial use allowed without an extra tier
- Prompts are encrypted and images are not stored on its servers
- Image and story tools come in one subscription
- Runs in the browser, including on mobile, with nothing to install
- No free plan; access after the trial needs a subscription or Anlas credits
- Image generation focuses on anime style
Stable Diffusion
- Free Community License for organizations under $1M annual revenue
- 25 free API credits for new accounts
- Choice of model sizes at different per-image costs
- Organizations above $1M annual revenue need a custom-priced Enterprise License
- API is pay-per-credit, with no flat monthly plan listed
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Facts from each vendor's public pages, prices checked Oct 26, 2026. Editorial policy