The generative AI market is predicted to grow at an unprecedented rate of 36.10% CAGR until 2032 as investments in AI technology continue to soar. This growth is creating many lucrative opportunities for developers, end users, and everyone in between.
With the rise of ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney, and other generative AI tools comes the demand for prompt engineers. These are people skilled at creating the right prompts so that these AI tools produce acceptable outputs.
While anyone can create prompts, the past months have shown that talking to an AI machine requires a high-level skill if you want a unique and stellar result. This demand has propelled the rise of AI prompt marketplaces. From just one or two marketplaces in mid-2022, the landscape has significantly expanded in the past months, and now there are several key players.
Let’s look at the best AI prompt marketplaces and why you should check them out.
What are Prompt Engineers?
If you’ve attempted to use any generative AI tool to generate an image or write a blog post, you know it’s not easy to get your desired output. You’d need to try several combinations of prompts to get an acceptable first result.
The output of generative AI, like any process, depends on the input quality; in most cases, finding the correct input involves a series of trials and errors.
Image 1 is a generic prompt that yielded general results, vs. Image 2, which is a more comprehensive prompt that uses the right words to describe the desired output.
While anyone can write prompts, only some have the skill and dedication to discover the right set of prompts to produce the needed output. Generative AI remains a largely unpredicted black box and their frequently changing updates in response to malicious prompts complicate matters further.
Technically, prompt engineers are software professionals responsible for fine-tuning AI platforms. They identify the flaws of an AI system and develop exceptional AI language responses by pushing the AI system to its limits using well-written prompts.
However, the field is relatively new, and the supply is limited. Besides, if your goal is to generate quick social media images or good SEO article drafts, then a full-pledge prompt engineer may be overkill.
This is where prompt marketplaces come in to fill the gap.
What to Expect from Prompt Marketplaces?
Prompt marketplaces allow users to buy or sell prompts designed for different AI systems. Advanced users who have extensively used various AI tools sell their best prompts on these platforms to help newbie users avoid the painstaking process of learning or finding the right prompts.
For example, you want to use ChatGPT to generate Amazon product descriptions and titles but are unsure how to start. ChatX, a prompt marketplace for ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, has tons of free prompts, such as this one, that will help you achieve your goal.
If you need something more complex, such as writing an engaging Facebook post, you can check out paid prompts like this. It only sells for $1.99 but gives you a ChatGPT prompt you can use multiple times. Most premium prompts retail for $1.99 to $2.99 depending on the complexity, but there are also prompts, such as a Detailed Book Writing prompt, that sell for $9.99.
Just as AI can generate anything, AI prompt marketplaces can contain any conceivable prompt for every imaginable purpose. Most of the founders of these marketplaces have used generative AI extensively since it was first introduced some years ago and saw the need for skilled prompt engineers to help lesser-skilled new users.
And with the growing interest in generative AI, these marketplaces became an efficient and accessible manner to connect prompt engineers with generative AI users. For prompt engineers, it’s a great way to earn a side income from their AI-generating skills.
So, without further ado, here are the best AI prompt marketplaces in 2024.
Best AI Prompt Marketplaces
1. PromptBase
Launched in June 2022, PromptBase is the first prompt marketplace to give prompt engineers an extra side hustle selling strings of text to users who need them. For only $1.99 per prompt, users can purchase the right words they need to create consistent AI-generated images or develop engaging social media posts.
Initially, only offering prompts for DALL-E2 and GPT-3, PromptBase has expanded to accommodate other AI systems such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and ChatGPT. With this expansion comes the rise of other more valuable prompts, such as marketing prompts selling for as much as $5 to $6 per prompt.
PromptBase has also propelled the rise of prompt marketplaces, showing other enterprising founders what’s possible in this rapidly developing and emerging AI world.
2. ChatX
ChatX is a free prompt marketplace where you can get dozens of basic prompts to help you get started in using generative AI. The prompts are relatively simple but allow you to perform basic functions such as writing product descriptions, creating interior designs, developing logos, and coming up with realistic photo options.
The marketplace provides prompts for ChatGPT, DALL-E-2, and Stable Diffusion. The founders believe that the adoption of generative AI tools will be more efficient and widespread when users understand the power of good prompts and have access to proven successful ones.
ChatX pays prompt engineers 39 CAD for every successful prompt that gets added to their platform. However, they have a strict moderation queue to weed out any fake and malicious prompts and ensure that only the best ones make it to the site. Prompts are sold for free (at the moment), but if you need a custom-generated prompt, you’d have to pay 39 CAD to get it.
3. PromptHero
PromptHero is one of the largest AI prompt marketplaces with millions of AI art images, which you can check to see the prompts that generated them. It goes beyond being a marketplace and offers users additional features like a Course Academy that teaches you to become a prompt engineer and a Jobs Portal that helps you find Prompt Engineering or Artificial Intelligence jobs.
The marketplace supports popular systems like Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, Openjourney, DALL-E, and ChatGPT. Prompts are also organized by categories depending on where they can be used.
There’s no hard rule on how AI prompt marketplaces operate. Some, like PromptBase, are straightforward, where you can buy and sell prompts, while others, like PromptHero, allow anyone to easily copy prompts without charging a dime.
Instead, you can create a portfolio on the site to display your creation, then use it to gain jobs.
4. Lexica Art
With Lexica Art, you can discover thousands of Stable Diffusion images and copy the prompts that generated them. Like PromptHero, these prompts are free to be copied and used on your AI generator platform, but they work best with Stable Diffusion.
You can also generate images right within Lexica for a paid subscription. They guarantee faster server response times and better-quality images.
We tried copying a prompt and using it for Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and Lexica, and there were starkly different results.
As we can see above, prompts behave differently depending on the AI system. While they are a good start to the creative process, they may still require your additional input to polish.
5. Arthub.ai
Arthub.ai neatly organizes thousands of prompts into topical folders so you can quickly find the ones you need. They feature thousands of AI art of various styles whose prompts you can easily copy for free. There’s also an in-built generator that uses Stable Diffusion to generate AI art using the prompt you copied.
It’s a free tool that doesn’t charge anything to copy prompts or generate AI art. Anyone can create an account with an email and share their AI-generated images. It was built to be a safe community where AI artists can showcase their work.
6. Etsy
Etsy may not be the first site that comes to mind when considering selling and buying AI prompts. After all, Etsy is known for being a crafting marketplace. But it has long since evolved from that and is now used by virtually anyone selling anything, including digital goods.
AI prompts are no exception, and a quick search on Etsy will reveal thousands of results for downloadable files containing AI prompts for different systems.
Of course, some of these aren’t worth your money since Etsy doesn’t vet the quality of these prompts. But you can always read the reviews to separate the wheat from the chaff. Most reviews will also include a sample of what they’ve generated which can help you determine the best ones.
Unfortunately, a rating system is a feature lacking in the other AI prompt marketplaces in this list. There’s no way for other users to vet if a specific prompt really produced what it said it would. But only time will tell when the others will catch up and transform their marketplaces into truly comprehensive sites.
For now, sites like Etsy, which is a general marketplace, will play a part in the AI prompt marketplace.
Final Thoughts
As the power and usefulness of generative AI become increasingly popular, the clamor for high-quality prompts will increase. After all, people realize that talking to AI systems requires a different skill if you want it to behave the way you intend.
From what we saw on this list, no two marketplaces are alike. There’s still more to be discovered with how generative AI will evolve and be used in the mainstream. This will determine the evolution of these marketplaces and which model will ultimately thrive.
But one thing is for sure. AI is becoming the future, and the demand for skilled prompt engineers will rise, which makes AI prompt marketplaces, whatever form they may be, crucial for tomorrow.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Prompt Marketplace?
A prompt marketplace is a website for users to buy and sell AI prompts that can be used for various AI systems like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and more. Generating high-quality AI text and images requires using the right and appropriate prompts, which most users find challenging.
An AI prompt marketplace addresses this need by bridging the gap between talented AI users skilled at prompt engineering and buyers who need effective prompts crafted for them. As the usefulness of AI systems become mainstream, more people are expected to turn to these prompt marketplaces to find the prompts they need.
Is there any risk in using Prompt Marketplace?
There are still many gray areas and uncharted territories when it comes to AI prompt marketplaces. For one, no two marketplaces are alike in how they handle transactions.
Some, like ChatX, will purchase prompts directly from prompt engineers and then sell them for free on their site to attract users. Others, like PromptBase and PromptSea, are more straightforward in letting the seller price their own prompts and transact directly with buyers. Still, other sites like PromptHero simply exist as a community where AI artists can display their work and the prompts that generated them.
With this uncertainty comes risks such as provenance (Who owns the output of the prompts?), piracy (Can prompts be distributed outside the platform?), and quality (What if prompts don’t produce what they say they will?). There’s also the risk of a marketplace being flooded with bad actors selling prompts that produce disastrous results.
With generative AI still largely a work-in-progress, these AI-prompt marketplaces are expected to continue to adapt and change, eventually addressing the risks involved.