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Krea 2 vs Stable Diffusion

Since 23 June 2026 this is a fair fight: Krea 2 is a downloadable open-weights model, just like Stable Diffusion 3.5, and both come with the same kind of license (free for commercial use only if your company makes under $1 million a year). Krea 2 is the newer and larger model and is built around style and aesthetics; Stable Diffusion 3.5 is older, smaller, and has a Medium version meant for consumer GPUs. If you don't want to host anything, Krea also runs Krea 2 in its web app, though the app's default model is now Krea 3.

What you download

Krea 2 comes as two checkpoints on Hugging Face: Raw, an undistilled base meant for fine-tuning and LoRA training, and Turbo, an 8-step distilled version for fast generation. Krea's advice is to train LoRAs on Raw and run them on Turbo. The repo says Raw was trained for up to 1K resolution and Turbo handles 1K to 2K. The Hugging Face model card puts the checkpoint at about 12.8 billion parameters, and you have to accept the license to download it.

Stable Diffusion 3.5 comes in Large, Large Turbo and Medium, with SDXL and SDXL Turbo still offered. Large is about 8.1 billion parameters and dates from October 2024; Stability says Medium is built to run on consumer hardware.

Licenses and system requirements

The Krea 2 Community License allows commercial use only if your company's total annual revenue is under $1 million; above that you need an enterprise license from Krea. Stability's Community License draws the line at the same $1 million. So the license won't decide this one for you.

Neither repo publishes a minimum GPU. Krea 2 is the bigger checkpoint, so expect it to need more video memory than SD 3.5 Medium. Krea lists ComfyUI, Diffusers, SGLang and Fal as places to run it, and Ostris AI Toolkit, Kohya and Fal for fine-tuning.

Hosted instead

Krea's web app has a free plan with 100 compute units a day. Pro is $35 a month or $21 a month billed yearly, and Max is $105 or $63. Pro and above include a commercial license. The old $9 Basic plan is no longer on the pricing page. Stability sells API access and its Stable Assistant app separately from the model license.

Krea 2: Pick Krea 2 if you care most about style, want to train style LoRAs, and have a big enough GPU or are happy to use Krea's app or Fal.

Stable Diffusion: Pick Stable Diffusion 3.5 if you need a smaller model that runs on a consumer GPU and has years of community tooling around it.

Facts checked Oct 18, 2026 against 8 sources

Which one should you try?

Krea 2

Freemium

Best for Graphic designers and creative directors seeking instant visual feedback

Visit Krea 2 See full review

Stable Diffusion

Freemium

Best for Developers and creators who want to self-host or fine-tune image models

Visit Stable Diffusion See full review

Pricing, capabilities and platforms side by side. Prices are as of the "Pricing checked" date in the table.

Krea 2

Krea 2

Krea is a browser-based creative platform where designers iterate on images, video, and 3D outputs using a shared workspace — adjusting prompts, painting edits, and chaining steps through a visual node system rather than bouncing between tools. Real-time generation means the canvas updates as you drag sliders, which collapses the feedback loop that kills ideation sessions. LoRA fine-tuning lets teams lock in a visual style and reuse it across campaigns, so brand drift doesn't creep in between projects. The API opens batch workflows for developers embedding generation into their own pipelines. The ceiling appears at high-volume production: the free tier runs on daily compute units that exhaust quickly, and teams doing sustained bulk generation hit rate constraints that require queueing work or upgrading.

Stable Diffusion

Stable Diffusion

Stability AI's text-to-image model family (SD 3.5, SDXL). Self-host under a revenue-limited license or use the hosted API.

AttributeKrea 2Stable Diffusion
PricingFreemiumFreemium
PriceFree (100 units/day); Pro $35/mo ($21/mo billed yearly); Max $105/mo ($63/mo yearly); Business $200/mo ($160/mo yearly)Free under the Community License (under US$1M annual revenue); Enterprise license custom; API usage priced separately
Pricing checkedOct 19, 2026Oct 17, 2026
Free trialNot statedNot stated
Open sourceNoNo
Has APIYesYes
Self-hosted optionNoYes
PlatformsWeb-based; Android mobile app with limited canvas editingSelf-hosted weights, Stability AI API, cloud partners, Stable Assistant (web)
Released2022-03—
Pros
  • Real-time canvas rendering updates as you adjust prompts and parameters, so design reviews don't stall waiting for batch results — a feedback loop that makes live client sessions viable.
  • LoRA fine-tuning on your own visual assets is built into the platform, which means brand-consistent output without re-prompting style descriptions on every generation or accepting drift across a campaign.
  • Image, video, and 3D generation share one workspace, so creative teams stop maintaining separate subscriptions and losing context on every tool switch.
  • Node-based pipeline chaining lets teams build repeatable multi-step workflows without custom code, which means a repeatable production process doesn't require an engineer to maintain it.
  • API access exposes generation programmatically, so developers can embed Krea's output into their own applications or trigger batch jobs from external systems without manual canvas interaction.
  • Weights can be downloaded and run on your own hardware with ComfyUI, diffusers or Stability's reference code.
  • Free under the Community License for research, non-commercial use and businesses under US$1M annual revenue.
  • Fine-tunes and LoRAs are permitted, and users own their outputs subject to law and Stability's AUP.
Cons
  • The free tier runs on a daily compute unit ceiling that depletes quickly during an active session — a design team running a full-day ideation sprint exhausts the allowance before lunch and either pauses work or upgrades mid-project.
  • There is no self-hosted deployment path; all generation runs on Krea's cloud infrastructure. Teams operating under data-residency or IP-confidentiality requirements cannot use Krea for client work that prohibits third-party cloud processing — and that constraint alone moves them to a self-hostable alternative.
  • High-volume unattended batch generation via API hits rate limits that require queueing or off-peak scheduling. Teams needing thousands of outputs per day without human pacing in the loop typically migrate bulk inference to a dedicated provider and reduce Krea to the interactive prototyping phase only.
  • Commercial use by organizations over US$1M annual revenue requires a paid Enterprise license.
  • The license bars using the models or outputs to build new foundational models, and downloads require accepting terms.
  • Self-hosting means providing and maintaining your own hardware.

Made up your mind?

Krea 2

Freemium

Best for Graphic designers and creative directors seeking instant visual feedback

Visit Krea 2 See full review

Stable Diffusion

Freemium

Best for Developers and creators who want to self-host or fine-tune image models

Visit Stable Diffusion See full review

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