Stable Diffusion

Open-weight image generation models that run on your own hardware

AI Image GenerationFree planOverseasβ˜…β˜…β˜…β˜…β˜… 5.0

What is Stable Diffusion?

Stable Diffusion is a family of open-weight latent diffusion models for image generation, originally released by Stability AI with academic partners. The weights can be downloaded and run locally, which is the fundamental difference from hosted services: no per-image fee, no content policy enforced by a vendor, and full control over fine-tuning. Users typically run them through community interfaces, train LoRA or DreamBooth adaptations on their own images, and share checkpoints and embeddings. Licence terms have varied between model versions and change over time.

Last updated: 2026-09-20. This site only provides an index; for exact features, pricing, and licensing, see the official website.

Key features

  • Open-weight latent diffusion models that run locally on your own GPU
  • Text-to-image and image-to-image generation with adjustable guidance
  • Inpainting and outpainting for editing parts of an existing image
  • Fine-tuning through LoRA, DreamBooth and textual inversion methods
  • ControlNet and similar conditioning for pose, depth and edge guidance
  • Large ecosystem of community checkpoints, embeddings and extensions

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • No per-image cost once you have suitable hardware
  • Full control over models, fine-tuning and local data
  • Very large community ecosystem of models and tools

Watch out for

  • A capable GPU with enough video memory is effectively required
  • Setup and model management are genuinely technical tasks
  • Licence terms differ by model version and have changed over time

Best for & use cases

local image generation, custom model fine-tuning, offline work, experimental pipelines

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FAQ

Is Stable Diffusion free?

The model weights can be downloaded without a fee, so you pay nothing per image. The real costs are the hardware to run them, or cloud GPU time if you rent one. Licence terms vary between model versions and deserve a check before commercial use.

Do I need a powerful computer?

Practically, yes. Generation runs on your own GPU, and comfortable use wants a recent graphics card with a reasonable amount of video memory. Machines without one can use CPU inference, which is dramatically slower, or rent cloud capacity.

What is the difference from SD WebUI?

Stable Diffusion refers to the models themselves, which you can drive through many interfaces. SD WebUI is one popular community interface built on top of them, so the two are related but not the same thing: models are the engine, interfaces are the dashboard.