Who owns an AI image you generated on a free plan?
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The Short Answer
- Ideogram — Ideogram's Terms of Service state "we do not restrict your ability to use User Output for your own purposes (including for commercial purposes)" with no free-or-paid distinction, though free images are "public by default".
- Adobe Firefly — Adobe states "Outputs from Adobe Firefly AI models are safe for commercial use", carves out beta-labelled features rather than free accounts, and requires every output to keep its Content Credentials.
- Leonardo.Ai — Leonardo's pricing FAQ grants free users "a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence" for commercial use; its Terms of Service 8.7 records only that ownership "will vest in us upon creation".
- Midjourney — Midjourney states "No free trial is currently available in Discord or the midjourney.com website", and a company over $1M a year "must be subscribed to a 'Pro' or 'Mega' plan to own Your Assets".
| Product | Best for | From | Free plan | Free-tier licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ideogram | The commercial grant is in the binding terms | $15/mo (annual) | Yes | Conditions attached |
| Adobe Firefly | Commercial use stated without a plan qualifier | $9.99/mo | Yes | Conditions attached |
| Leonardo.Ai | Two vendor pages, two different answers | $12/mo | Yes | Conditions attached |
| Midjourney | No free tier, and ownership priced by your revenue | $8/mo (annual) | No | Payment required |
One vendor, two pages, two answers
Leonardo.Ai’s pricing page answers the ownership question like this:
Free tier users: While Leonardo.Ai owns rights to the images you create, you’re granted a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use your generated content for commercial purposes.
Leonardo.Ai’s terms of service, section 8.7, answer it like this:
If you are on one of our free Subscriptions (Free Subscriber) … ownership of all Intellectual Property Rights in any Output you … create while using the Platform will vest in us upon creation … you hereby assign your right, title and interest in the Output (if any) to us.
Read them together. The assignment appears in both. The licence back appears in only one, and it is the one written by marketing rather than by lawyers. The binding document records that the rights leave you and stops there.
We are not going to tell you which one governs. That is a question for a lawyer, and anyone answering it confidently from a review site is guessing. What we can say is that both sentences are Leonardo’s own, that they are not the same sentence, and that you would never know the second one existed if you read the page with the prices on it.
This is the clearest case we have found for the method this whole site runs on. Every aggregator that covers Leonardo reads the pricing FAQ, sees “commercial purposes”, and writes “free tier: commercial use allowed”. That is not false. It is half of a document set.
Where the strongest grant actually is
Ideogram’s is the one to compare it against, because the same permission sits in a different kind of document. Its terms of service, at 2.1:
We do not claim any ownership rights in your User Input or User Output, and we do not restrict your ability to use User Output for your own purposes (including for commercial purposes).
No free-or-paid qualifier anywhere in the sentence, and it is in the binding text rather than an FAQ. Ideogram’s restriction is elsewhere: free images are “public by default”, and private generation is a paid feature. That is a real limitation, and it is a different one — about who else sees the image, not about who owns it.
Adobe’s is similar in strength and differently shaped. “Outputs from Adobe Firefly AI models are safe for commercial use”, with no plan qualifier. The carve-out is by feature rather than by tier: beta-labelled features are excluded “unless explicitly stated otherwise in the product”. Every output must also keep its Content Credentials, which the guidelines require you not to “remove, alter, or disable”. That is C2PA disclosure metadata, not a visible watermark, and the two are worth keeping separate.
Midjourney prices ownership by who you are
Midjourney has no free tier on its own product — “No free trial is currently available in Discord or the midjourney.com website” — so there is nothing free to license. But its ownership clause is unusual enough to belong here anyway:
If you are a company or any employee of a company with more than $1,000,000 USD a year in revenue, you must be subscribed to a ‘Pro’ or ‘Mega’ plan to own Your Assets.
Every other vendor in this category conditions rights on the plan. Midjourney conditions them on the customer’s revenue. Two people paying the identical $10 a month get different ownership, depending on who employs them.
Half of this question has no answer
The axis asks two things: may you sell it, and does the file come back marked. We can answer the first for all four. We can answer the second for none of them with confidence, and for two we cannot answer it at all.
Neither Ideogram nor Leonardo states whether free-tier exports carry a visible watermark. Ideogram’s terms forbid users from removing watermarks, which reads at a glance like a confirmation and is not one — a clause can prohibit removing something that is only sometimes there.
We could have inferred it. The paid tiers advertise clean output, so the free tier presumably is not. That inference has burned us before on this site, in a category where it later turned out to be right, and being right by luck is not a method. So it stays blank, and the blank is the honest finding: two vendors selling images to the public do not say, anywhere, what the free file looks like.
The commercial grant is in the binding terms
1. Ideogram — The commercial grant is in the binding terms
The strongest licence here, restricted on privacy rather than on rights.
Best for A commercial grant in the terms with no free-or-paid distinction
From $15/mo (annual). Free plan: Free plan — 10 slow credits a week, 1 concurrent generation, 2 canvases, and public creations. Private generation requires a paid plan..
- Plus — $15/mo billed annually ($15 a month billed annually ("Save 25%"). The page loaded on the Annually toggle and its monthly figure did not render for us.)
- Pro — $42/mo billed annually ($42 a month billed annually ("Save 30%"). Monthly figure not captured.)
- Team — $20/mo billed annually ($20 per user a month billed annually ("Save 33%"). Monthly figure not captured.)
- Enterprise — price not shown on the page we opened (Custom pricing, contact sales. No figure published.)
Ideogram's Terms of Service 2.1 grants commercial use with no free-or-paid distinction anywhere in the sentence: "We do not claim any ownership rights in your User Input or User Output, and we do not restrict your ability to use User Output for your own purposes (including for commercial purposes)." The docs FAQ repeats it. The condition is privacy rather than licence — "Images are public by default unless you choose private generation where it is available", and private generation is a paid feature. On watermarks the terms only forbid you from removing one, at 6.2(H), and never say whether free exports carry one. We searched the terms, the pricing page and the FAQ; none answers it, so that half stays unanswered rather than inferred from the paid tier.
Pros
- The commercial grant is in the binding terms, not only the marketing FAQ, and carries no plan qualifier.
- Ideogram assigns rights to the user rather than retaining them: "we hereby assign to you all right, title and interest in and to such User Output".
- The free plan needs no card to start.
Skip it if
- Free-tier images are public by default; keeping them off the public gallery requires a paid plan.
- Ideogram never states whether free exports carry a visible watermark — its terms only forbid removing one — so we record that as unknown.
- The pricing page loads on the annual toggle, so the monthly prices for Plus, Pro and Team did not render for us.
Commercial use stated without a plan qualifier
2. Adobe Firefly — Commercial use stated without a plan qualifier
Carves out beta features, not free accounts, and tags every file.
Best for Commercial use stated without a paid-plan qualifier
From $9.99/mo. Free plan: A free plan with no subscription — "free daily generations across image, video, and audio... Limits refresh every day." The number of daily generations is not stated on the page..
- Firefly Standard — $9.99/mo (2,000 generative credits a month. A limited-time promotion ("Save on our biggest Firefly plans until Aug 26") was running and may not apply to this tier.)
- Firefly Pro — $19.99/mo (4,000 generative credits a month.)
- Firefly Pro Plus — price not shown on the page we opened (The plan tab exists on the pricing page but no USD figure rendered for us.)
- Firefly Premium — price not shown on the page we opened (The plan tab exists on the pricing page but no USD figure rendered for us.)
Adobe answers the commercial half without a paid-plan qualifier: "Outputs from Adobe Firefly AI models are safe for commercial use." The carve-out is about features, not tiers — the Firefly FAQ states "For features without the beta label, you can use Firefly-generated outputs in your commercial projects. For features that are in beta, you can use the Firefly-generated outputs for your commercial projects unless explicitly stated otherwise in the product." What every output does carry is a disclosure tag rather than a visible mark: Adobe's generative AI guidelines require that "Adobe may attach or publish Content Credentials for content created or modified with generative AI features... You must not remove, alter, or disable any Content Credentials." That is C2PA metadata, not a watermark, and no Adobe page we read says whether free-tier files also carry a visible one.
Pros
- Commercial use is stated with no paid-plan qualifier: "Outputs from Adobe Firefly AI models are safe for commercial use."
- The free plan needs no subscription and its limits "refresh every day".
- Models are trained on licensed and public-domain content, and Adobe offers IP indemnification to eligible enterprise customers.
Skip it if
- The commercial grant carves out beta-labelled features, which the product rather than the terms decides.
- Every output must keep its Content Credentials — "You must not remove, alter, or disable any Content Credentials" — a mandatory AI-disclosure tag.
- Adobe never states how many free daily generations you get, so the free tier's size is unknown.
Two vendor pages, two different answers
3. Leonardo.Ai — Two vendor pages, two different answers
The most generous free allowance, and the least settled ownership.
Best for Two vendor pages, two different answers about who owns your image
From $12/mo. Free plan: Free plan, $0 — 150 Fast Tokens a day, a 150 Token Bank, one personal collection, Basic quality, and creations access listed as "Public"..
- Essential — $12/mo (The page advertises "Pay Yearly Up to 20% off" but no per-plan annual figure rendered, so none is recorded.)
- Premium — $30/mo (Annual discount advertised, exact figure not rendered.)
- Ultimate — $60/mo (Annual discount advertised, exact figure not rendered.)
- Team Starter — $24/mo (Shown as $72 a month total at $24 per seat. A three-seat minimum would follow from that arithmetic, but the page does not state one, so no seat count is recorded.)
- Team Growth — $48/mo (Shown as $144 a month total at $48 per seat. Same reasoning — no stated seat minimum, so none recorded.)
Leonardo's own two documents answer this differently. The pricing-page FAQ says: "Free tier users: While Leonardo.Ai owns rights to the images you create, you're granted a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use your generated content for commercial purposes." The Terms of Service, section 8.7, states the first half and not the second: "If you are on one of our free Subscriptions (Free Subscriber) ... ownership of all Intellectual Property Rights in any Output you ... create while using the Platform will vest in us upon creation ... you hereby assign your right, title and interest in the Output (if any) to us." The licence back that makes commercial use possible appears on the marketing page; the binding legal text records only the assignment. Recorded as limited on the strength of the FAQ, with the gap stated, because which document governs is a question for a lawyer and not for us. Free creations are separately listed as "Public". No Leonardo page we read states whether free exports carry a watermark.
Pros
- The pricing FAQ grants free users "a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use your generated content for commercial purposes".
- 150 Fast Tokens a day on the free plan, with no card required.
- Paid subscribers get the clean answer: "You retain full ownership and intellectual property rights of your generated images."
Skip it if
- On the free tier Leonardo, not you, owns the output — ToS 8.7 says ownership "will vest in us upon creation" and that you assign your interest to them.
- The commercial licence back appears only in the pricing-page FAQ; the corresponding ToS section does not restate it.
- Free creations are "Public", so other users can access and reuse them.
No free tier, and ownership priced by your revenue
4. Midjourney — No free tier, and ownership priced by your revenue
Nothing free to license, and a clause that reads your accounts.
Best for No free tier, and a revenue threshold on ownership
From $8/mo (annual). No free plan.
- Basic — $10/mo, or $8/mo billed annually ($96 a year.)
- Standard — $30/mo, or $24/mo billed annually ($288 a year.)
- Pro — $60/mo, or $48/mo billed annually ($576 a year. This is the lowest tier at which a company earning over $1M a year owns its assets, per the Terms of Service.)
- Mega — $120/mo, or $96/mo billed annually ($1,152 a year.)
There is nothing free to license. Midjourney's docs state: "A limited trial is available on the niji · journey app, available for iOS and Android devices. No free trial is currently available in Discord or the midjourney.com website." For subscribers the terms are generous and then conditional: "You own all Assets You create with the Services to the fullest extent possible under applicable law. There are some exceptions: If you are a company or any employee of a company with more than $1,000,000 USD a year in revenue, you must be subscribed to a 'Pro' or 'Mega' plan to own Your Assets." Ownership priced by the customer's revenue is a condition no other vendor in this category applies.
Pros
- Ownership survives cancellation: "Your ownership of the Assets you created persists even if in subsequent months You downgrade or cancel Your membership."
- Annual billing cuts 20% off every tier, confirmed on Midjourney's own plan-comparison page.
- Pro and Mega add Stealth Mode, so generations are not published to the public gallery.
Skip it if
- No free tier on midjourney.com or Discord — the only free trial is on the separate niji · journey mobile app.
- A company earning over $1,000,000 a year must be on Pro or Mega, at $60 a month or more, to own what it generates.
- The marketing pricing page is behind a Cloudflare wall and returned 403 and 404 to us, so every figure here came from Midjourney's own docs site instead.
What this means if you are choosing today
If the image is going into something that earns money, Ideogram and Adobe Firefly are the two whose permission sits in the document that would matter in a dispute. Adobe additionally trains on licensed and public-domain content and offers indemnification to eligible enterprise customers, which is a different kind of safety and a real one.
Leonardo gives the most generous free allowance anyone here puts a number on, at 150 tokens a day — Adobe says only that its free limits “refresh every day”. Use it for drafts, comps and things that stay internal. Before you put a free-tier Leonardo image on something that sells, read section 8.7 yourself and decide what you think it means.
And for anything commercial from any of these, download the file and look at it. Two of these four vendors will not tell you what is on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you use free AI-generated images commercially?
It depends on the vendor, and on which of the vendor's pages you read. Ideogram grants it in its binding terms with no plan distinction. Adobe states outputs are "safe for commercial use" and carves out beta features rather than free accounts. Leonardo grants it in a pricing FAQ that its own terms of service do not restate. Midjourney has no free tier to grant anything on.
Does Leonardo.Ai own the images you make on its free plan?
Its terms of service say so. Section 8.7 states that for a Free Subscriber, "ownership of all Intellectual Property Rights in any Output ... will vest in us upon creation" and "you hereby assign your right, title and interest in the Output (if any) to us." Its pricing FAQ adds that you are "granted a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use your generated content for commercial purposes." Both statements are Leonardo's. Only one is in the legal document.
Do free AI image generators add a watermark?
Two of the four here never say. We searched Ideogram's terms, pricing page and FAQ, and Leonardo's terms and pricing pages, and found no statement either way. Ideogram's terms forbid users from removing a watermark, which is not the same as confirming that free exports carry one. We record that as unknown rather than inferring it from what the paid tiers advertise.
Is there a free version of Midjourney?
Not on the main product. Midjourney's own documentation states: "A limited trial is available on the niji · journey app, available for iOS and Android devices. No free trial is currently available in Discord or the midjourney.com website." Paid plans start at $10 a month, or $8 billed annually.
Did you generate images and inspect the files?
No. Every verdict here was read on the vendor's own terms of service, pricing page or documentation on 6 August 2026 and is labelled as read, not run. Generating an image would settle the watermark question that two vendors leave open, and it would not settle the licence question, which only the terms can answer.
How We Keep This Updated
Prices move and vendors rewrite their plan tables, so every value on this page carries the date we read it. When a page changes, the change lands here rather than being edited away quietly. The procedure is on the methodology page. tell us and we will re-check it.
- 2026-08-06 — First published. Licence terms read on each vendor's own terms of service rather than its pricing page. Midjourney's marketing pricing page returned 403 and 404 to us, so its prices came from the vendor's own docs site instead.