NovelAI has been one of the most popular anime image generators since 2022. It runs in the browser, and its models have defined what a lot of people expect AI anime art to look like.
When people ask me for a NovelAI alternative, I point them to PixAI and its newest model, Tsubaki.3. It also runs in the browser, but it comes with free daily credits, more than 1.8 million community models and LoRAs, and image editing you do by typing a request.
In this post, I compared PixAI and NovelAI to show you how they are alike and what you can do on both platforms. I will also demonstrate the differences through examples.
Let’s get into the details.
Why Are People Looking for a NovelAI Alternative?
Most people searching for a NovelAI alternative are reacting to how NovelAI now charges for its newest model.
NovelAI Diffusion V5 launched in August 2026. It’s 2.5 times the size of V4.5 and was trained on 268,000 B200 GPU-hours. Bigger models cost more to run, and NovelAI’s answer was to add usage limits to Opus, the plan people paid for because it offered unlimited image generation.
Every V5 image on Opus now draws from an allowance that takes about a week to fully recharge. Older models stay unlimited, but most people subscribe for the newest one.
NovelAI also changed how leftover credits work. Unused subscription Anlas (its credit currency) now reset to zero when your subscription ends. Subscribers in the announcement’s comments said the V5 allowance runs out faster than expected, and some asked for a pricier plan that stays fully unlimited.
There are a few other reasons why I think many people ditch NovelAI:
- No free plan: NovelAI offers a trial, and subscriptions start at $10/month.
- Missing V5 features: Vibe Transfer and Precise Reference weren’t available for V5 at launch.
- No community models: You can only use NovelAI’s own models, so you can’t load a LoRA for a specific style or character.
If you’re paying every month and watching a usage bar, it makes sense to compare.
Now, let me discuss why PixAI and the Tsubaki.3 image model are worth switching to.
Tsubaki.3: PixAI’s Anime Model
PixAI is an anime-only AI art platform that runs in the browser and on iOS and Android. Tsubaki.3 is its newest in-house model.
According to PixAI’s technical report, the team started with about 500 million anime image-text pairs and filtered them down to 50 million. Each image was captioned twice, once with booru-style tags and once in plain English. That’s why Tsubaki.3 handles prompts written as full sentences, the way you’d brief an illustrator.
The model was trained for both text-to-image and image editing. In practice, you can:
- Reuse a character: Upload a reference, call it
@image1in your prompt, and place that character in a new scene. - Edit by typing: Write “change her hoodie to red,” and only the hoodie changes.
- Generate at 2K: Images come out at native 2K resolution.
The report is also candid about weaknesses. Recognition of named art styles plateaued at about 60% in training, and style consistency drops as editing gets more capable. Expect mixed results when you prompt “in the style of” a specific artist or studio.
To access Tsubaki.3 in PixAI, open the image generation dashboard and on the Model tab of the parameters section, set it to Tsubaki.3.
PixAI’s image generator with Tsubaki.3 image model selected. Image by Jim Clyde Monge
You can find the different use cases of the model on this page, and also learn more about its technical details in the article below.
Civitai Alternative For Anime Art Why Creators Are Trying Pixais Tsubaki 3NovelAI vs PixAI at a Glance
The main differences come down to pricing, editing, and what you get beyond the base model.
The table below lines up the features that affect day-to-day use.
NovelAI vs. PixAI side-by-side comparison table. Image by Jim Clyde Monge
If you’re a beginner who wants to dip your toes into AI anime image generation and don’t want to spend a dime, PixAI is the way to go. You get free credits every day, while NovelAI only gives you a trial before asking for at least $10/month.
PixAI also lets you use community-made models and LoRAs, so you can try a lot more art styles than NovelAI’s own models offer.
NovelAI is better if privacy is a big deal for you. It encrypts your prompts and doesn’t save your images on its servers. It also comes with a story writing tool, which is handy if you write visual novels or fiction and want your art and stories in one place.
Now let’s see how both models handle the same prompts.
Side-by-Side: NovelAI V5 vs Tsubaki.3
I used NovelAI Diffusion V5 Full and Tsubaki.3, both on default settings. Each prompt ran four times on each platform, and I judged the full batch.
Test 1: Original Character Creation
One of the most common reasons people use AI image generators is to create original characters. If you’re working on a film, game, manga, or even just building your own fictional world, image models make it easy to experiment with character designs before committing to a final look.
So for the first test, I wanted both models to create the same original samurai character.
Prompt: A handsome young samurai with a tall, lean build, broad shoulders, a long face, and a strong chin stands in a dramatic sword pose. He has long silver-white hair tied in a ponytail with parted bangs, piercing red eyes, and a scar across one eye, wearing a smug expression. He wears striking red samurai armor with gold trim, a red headband, and a red scabbard. Shot from a dynamic low angle beneath a moonlit, cloudy red sky, the scene has a dramatic monochrome aesthetic with vivid red accents, cinematic composition, and exceptional detail.
NovelAI (Left) vs PixAI (Right) original character comparison. Image by Jim Clyde Monge
Both models did a great job here. The characters are detailed, the compositions look dramatic, and both captured the red-and-black aesthetic I was going for.
At this point, I think it mostly comes down to taste and personal preference. I like both results for different reasons, and I wouldn’t call either one an obvious winner based on image quality alone.
But this is where PixAI starts to become more fun.
Tsubaki.3 can be used as the base model, but you’re not limited to what the model produces on its own. PixAI lets you stack multiple add-on LoRAs on top of it to influence the character design, art style, clothing, details, and overall look of the image.
You can also adjust the strength of each LoRA, which gives you much more control over how heavily it affects the final result.
PixAI’s image generation parameter options. Image by Jim Clyde Monge
Check out the example images above with different add-ons applied. The same basic character and prompt can quickly take on a very different look depending on the LoRAs you use.
Sample character design in varied styles on PixAI. Images generated by Jim Clyde Monge
